Went to a hifi shop, came back with the following spec - your thoughts?

[Beansprout]

^ I like that idea, may try

Acoustic energy sell some of their b-stock items on 'a well know auction site' at 1/2 price. They currently have a few Aelite 5.1 packages up for ~£1000, these retail at ~£2000 and are stunning. 5 star rated in mags, I have the lower Aegis 5.1 for home cinema and Aelite 3 floorstanders for stereo and they are truly excellent. I bought the aegis' B stock from them, couldn't tell they weren't new (honestly) and they arrived next day. B-stock are normally review or demo items so far as i cna tell. A superb company and highly recommended.

As for the amp etc, well look on AVforums.com - there are 20-30 new classifieds on there everyday, you can get a 3 year old £1000 amp for ~ £200 (i.e. an 04 Denon 3803), and a 3806 for about £500 - perhaps better than buying new? It is by far the best source of AV info on the net IMO

Nice one - thanks, will look into that - I think I've found a local shop which does some AE stuff.

B&W, B&W, B&W....Owned so many speakers and the only ones which have consistently impressed me have been B&W. They just released the new 600 series which sound fantastic.

They're absolutely stunning in terms of looks, I'm going to listen to some tomorrow - but they're over budget I think

 

[Abyss]

Onkyo make fairly bright amplifiers as far as I am aware, and Mordaunt Short speakers are a little bright. This is unlikely to lead to a combo that you will be happy with. The speakers are only ever so slightly bright, so something like a Denon amp would stand a good chance of getting the sort of sound you are after.

 

[MrWhippy]

i'm another B&W fan myself, but the thing with audio equipment is almost never how good each piece is, its how good they are together. the best speakers and the best amp you can get within a given budget, may not produce the best sound when paired.

B&W look good, and with the right amp do sound sweet, but with the wrong ( for them, but perfectly good in its own right) amp can sound plain and even dull.

 

[Beansprout]

Onkyo make fairly bright amplifiers as far as I am aware, and Mordaunt Short speakers are a little bright. This is unlikely to lead to a combo that you will be happy with. The speakers are only ever so slightly bright, so something like a Denon amp would stand a good chance of getting the sort of sound you are after.

Thanks for the advice, will see what I can find

i'm another B&W fan myself, but the thing with audio equipment is almost never how good each piece is, its how good they are together. the best speakers and the best amp you can get within a given budget, may not produce the best sound when paired.

That's what I reckon too - the B&Ws are quite a bit more expensive, so the Onkyo might not do them justice.

Got a demo booked at another local hifi shop on Saturday - they haven't got the new B&Ws yet, but have got the KEF 2005/3005s and some MA RS6s. Should be good fun!

 

[Beansprout]

Well, this is interesting! Had a demo (my first ever, since this is my first foray into home cinema world) at Sevenoaks yesterday and they were brilliant. the salesman knew his stuff - let me see for myself rather than try and blind me with technical words, but also explained where necessary. He did a great job of showing me what's what

Started off with the KEF 2005 system, then swapped the centre to the 3005 centre and then a full range KEF IQ2C. The difference was astounding!

But that wasn't quite enough - still lacking a bit of involvement. So we swapped the front 2 satellites for a pair of KEF IQ3s and put on the opening parts of Moulin Rouge. Satine's voice was amazing - it was fully right in front of us!

But - the 2005's sub was then shown up...so out that went...and in came a REL Quake. Tiny little thing but wow - it was absolutely brilliant. Tested it out on the opening dance scene in Moulin Rouge which has a great bass track and for the first time I could hear the cello and double bass, rather than just a 'boom-boom'.

So my latest spec is as follows..

Onkyo 605
2x KEF IQ3 (front)
KEF IQ2C
Rel Quake
2x 2005 satellites (rear - might swap these for the KEF IQ1s if I have room)

Total cost (inc. some 'free' cabling) - £1460. Wonder if I can do the same as suggested above and lower the price by cutting down on the doubtless excessively expensive things they've added, but I expect it's the hifi world's way of providing a 'discount' - you can have the discount, but only if it's spent on these expensive cables which carry a large profit margin.

After a bit of reading, the only other setup I'm interested in is B&W's new 600 series, purely because I've liked their previous 600 series speakers and don't want to buy older speakers (I think the KEFs have all been out for a while now.)

Maybe 685s for the front and 686s for the rear - the KEF IQ3s probably compare to the B&W 602 (now 685), but that does bump the price up by about £120 - eek.

Then the HTMC1 (I think) centre and either a B&W sub or the Rel Quake. But they won't have the new series in stock for a couple of weeks yet

 

[V4NT0M]

An HDMI cable is an HDMI cable is an HDMI cable. A £5 one is as good as a £50 one, being digital the signal either gets there or it doesnt. Just my 2p

Whilst I agree there is not much point in an expensive cable your viewpoint is a little narrow, digital signals are suceptible to the same interference as any other eletronic signal. Any argument saying that one HDMI calbe is exactly the same as another is the argument that all speaker/phono wire is the same too.

Interference or bad wiring will cause a bad signal to be put through to your amp/TV... Infact some of the problems caused by interference and bad wiring are worse on digital than on analog signals.

It is true that digital signals are sent in an on/off type way, and you will either recieve that on/off signal or you won't, but this causes problems in the exact way it solves them. For example, you're watching a movie if your wire recieves some interference, or is bad and losing connection on the analog your picture will be noisey and or have ghosting etc.. The same interference/bad wiring on digital will cause your movie to lose pixes, blocks, lines of picture, or even cause it to lose frames altogether, it can also cause your audio to skip too.

Think of it in the same way as a CD player, people reccoment it to be as vibration free as possible to stop the CD player from losing data and 'filling' it in, CDs are digital too.

I would say if you're one who spends extra money on other cables you should spend more on HDMI too. Personally I'm not a fan of expensive cables of any kind.

 

[Beansprout]

All sorted and paid for! Demo'd the new B&W 600 series today (685s and the HTM-1) and it was totally stunning. Only went for around £50 worth of semi-decent cabling in the end (QED Silver Anniversary + much cheaper stuff for the rears), and no HDMI as I'm holding off on the HD DVD until Christmas

Me = Excited

 

[Tesla]

Nice one Dom! The QED SA is very good speaker cable, probably the best performance/price cable around.

 

[Beansprout]

Nice one Dom! The QED SA is very good speaker cable, probably the best performance/price cable around.

Wicked

Reading the thread, maybe I focussed a bit too much on the cost of the cabling in my first post - oops!

Also my comment about not going for the What Hifi stuff - the 685s just won product of the year yesterday (I didn't know this until after when the Sevenoaks guy mentioned it, though )