Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On Fri, 26 May 2006 08:57:18 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article , Stewart Pinkerton
wrote:
On 25 May 2006 12:54:58 -0700, wrote:
Hello Just a bit of very general advice before I splash out the cash.
Is it possible to get decent hi fi sound from a av five speaker set up
or should I just stick to a good quality two speaker system for cd
playing. Any advice appreciated.
Buy five speakers of the same quality as the two you were thinking of,
and you get better sound. Of course, if you meant an identical budget in
each case, that's a more difficult question.
The complication is that it may be harder to find 5 loudspeaker locations
in the room which are domestically acceptable and give optimum audio
results. It may also mean you have to alter the listening position away
from where stereo works best. This isn't anything to do with the quality of
the amp or speakers per se, but the practical difficulties of employing
them in a normal room.

My personal reaction is based on being more concerned to get optimum
results from stereo. Hence I decided to ignore extra speakers, and just use
stereo for 'AV' as well as music. However this will depend on your personal
preferences as well as the details of the room.

Agreed, I use a '2.0' approach to AV, as I don't yet have a projector
in a dedicated 'home cinema', and I find a room-sized soundfield with
a relatively tiny picture extremely distracting - definitely not what
the director intended!

I think an issue with this, if you do use a stereo amplifier, is that
you lose the video soundtrack effects. An AV amplifier, with a couple of
'lesser' rear speakers tucked away, makes a pretty fine fist of video -
again in my limited experience.

Rob