So I'm ready to put out about $1500+ for a setup (speakers & receiver)...
 

Give me some recs. I'm finally ready to step out of my cheap yet cost and former small room effective aiwa setup, because I now own a house...

Right now, I'm stuck between 2 receivers and 3 different speaker setups. They are...

Denon AVR-2802 vs. Denon AVR-3802

Energy Take 5.2 with S8.2 sub vs Energy encore 5.1 setup vs. Sound Dynamics 5.1 setup.


I think my money would be best spent on the Denon 3802 (because it pushes 110 watts per channel over the 90 on the 2802, which is nice to have for only a $125 difference) and the take 5.2's for right now, but I may throw an extra few $$ at the encore series...

This is for my 12x14 living room, which has a catherdral ceiling.

So throw some ideas at me here. Any and all are appreciated!

i've heard the Energy Veritas system and it sounded very good- i believe its their top of the line speaker. i haven't heard the take 5's.

ok, here's my $.02 suggestion;

skip the Denons and get a refurb'd NAD 751 reciever (60 watts x 5) for about $400.

for $1200 get an Ascend package w/ 3 cbm 170s for the front, 2- 200s for the rears, and an HSU VTF-2 sub.

before i had ordered the ascends (just to try them out, mind you) i had shopped and listened extensively for about 5 weeks to all kinds of speakers w/ a budget in mind of $2000 for the front 3.
that wasn't including a reciever.
i ran across many great sounding speakers.
the Ascends were not only some of the very best that i heard, excelling in areas like transparency & imaging (they are every bit 'audiophile' quality) they were also, incredibly, among the least expensive by a wiiiiiide margin.

the reason why i suggest the NAD over the Denons is, i primarily used 4 recievers in my auditions,
an Onkyo 600, HK 520, NAD 761, and a denon 4802.
the denon was used in-store, driving B&Ws, M&Ks, and the Energys, the others were in my home.
to my ears there is actually not a whole lot of difference between the more common name brands like Onkyo, HK, Denon, Yamaha, etc.
they all have all the bells and whistles that get the attention and all sound at least fairly decent (like the ONK) and sometimes pretty damn good (like the Denon and HK).
in fact, if i hadn't heard the NAD, i think i would be perfectly happy with the HKs sonic performance.
However, once i did hook up the NAD and directly compared it within minutes of the others, the differences were NOT subtle.
it was like going from a good DD 5.1 track to an excellant DTS track.
With several different brands of speakers (including the Ascends) it was like i had suddenly upgraded to their respective top of the line.
fine detail, spaciousness, imaging all increased.
it was the old cliche of suddenly hearing things you had never heard before, in soundtracks and music you've listend to hundreds of times.
great speakers had suddenly become insanely great!

you think that the 110 watts of the Denon is going to give you better, ballsier sound than the 60 watts of the NAD?
trust me, 60 watts is going to be plenty, and whats even more important is that they are CLEAN watts.


no doubt what you have your eyes on now is probably a great sounding system.
since once you got it in home and set up, and didn't have another system to directly compare with it, it would probably be more than satisfactory.
i'm just giving you another option along with some observations i made durning my intense month of speaker shopping, with quite a bit of direct in-home comparisons.

i have no vested interest in either the NAD or the Ascends.
they are just great products that more people should know about.
before a month ago, i didn't.

get the Denon 2802 and the encore speakers. the denon can easily drive the Energy speakers with 90 watts.

i would get the s10.2 sub however.


by the way if money is not a huge issue also get the 3802 instead since it is only $125 :D

I'm still going for an Energy Setup, but I still can't decide on the Encore or Take 5.2....hmmm

I'm holding out for a month though, because the new Denon 2803 and 3803 will be out, so I can pick up the 02 models cheaper in 30 days...nice huh? so I think the 3803 is going to be the choice there.

I looked at the NADs, I dunno...I'm still leaning toward denon, as that's what we used in our a/v dept at college and I loved every product they made...

how's the 3803 going to be different from the 02? i've been lookin at the 02 for a while, along with the onkyo tx-sr600 and the HK AV-520

Harp...

I wish I could answer that. I simply don't know, and right now it seems mostly rumor. There's a few threads on this over at www.hometheaterforum.com and www.avsforum.com. From what I've heard so far, it seems that there won't be much difference, and that the new ones will be korean or taiwan built instead of japanese, which some of the HT knuckleheads are saying is going to decrease the quality.

As far as my setup, I have a hookup for some deals on paradigm speakers, so I think I'm going with those.