£5000 speakers but wife only wants wall mounts

[Gecko1978]

So I am building a dedicated cinima room and have an AV budget of £10000 of which up to half will be on speakers.

I want at least a 7.1 system and would love to use B&W speakers as I currently use their MT50 package in my current home. Issue I have is the wife will only allow wall mounted speakers so that rules out the great CM floor standers they make.

So any ideas other makes etx to try. Oh and I will be using a yamaha advatag av recover I for get model it's around £1500 currently use there A830 and it's great.

[anonymous-user]

If it's a dedicated cinema room, then what's her issue with having floor standing speakers?

[Evolved]

^ This..

If it's a dedicated room, what's the issue? Grow a set and tell her to concentrate on less complicated things

[theboss]

Tell her the smaller the speakers, the bigger the sub?

[ChrisNic]

M&k MP150's behind a transparent screen (if going for a projector), with surrounds and an equivelant sub it could be pushing the budget though.

XTZ Cinema Series.

[clived]

If you're spending £10k total. I'd suggest that spending £5k on the speakers will leave you slightly short of budget on sources, processor, amp and projector / screen or TV of suitable quality to really justify £5k on speakers.

[Gecko1978]

Projector will come in at around 2500 as current 4k tech is 5 so a layer up grade an AV recover at 1500 should do a really greally great job and the price on BDPs has really come down. My thinking is speakers are the componantes which will last longest etc.

An while its a dedictated room it's part of a total house build project so want everyone to be happy

[REM2112]

Try ArtAcoustic. Not only do they sound great, but the grills can be any colour/design/image.

[P700DEE]

It is possible to have wall mounted speakers that sound good. I was quite impressed with the ones demonstrated at the Whittlebury Show 2014. Can't remember the makers and you might not get them for £5K

[wolfracesonic]

Mmmmmmmmmm....10k AV set up. Are you going to try and install an Atmos set up?

[Junior Bianno]

If it's a dedicated room, why don't you build a false wall, build the speakers in and cover with screens? That keeps everything neat and tidy and provides a great frame for your screen.

I had a void behind so didn't need to build a wall. Just 4 panels covered with dark brown speaker cloth. The added benefit is that the top and bottom screens go up and down to change the ratio from 16:9 to 2.35:1.

[Crackie]

Gecko1978 said:

So I am building a dedicated cinima room and have an AV budget of £10000 of which up to half will be on speakers.

I want at least a 7.1 system and would love to use B&W speakers as I currently use their MT50 package in my current home. Issue I have is the wife will only allow wall mounted speakers so that rules out the great CM floor standers they make.

So any ideas other makes etx to try. Oh and I will be using a yamaha advatag av recover I for get model it's around £1500 currently use there A830 and it's great.

Couple of questions......

How big is the room and how loud do you listen ?

Your cinema system will have a subwoofer ( preferably two ) handling frequencies up to approx. 75Hz which means your satellites don't have deal with any deep and difficult stuff . This means that they can far smaller than any speakers which have to play low frequencies loudly.
Miller & Kriesel 150P is a great place to start, works down to 77Hz and 91dB sensitivity. Try and audition them as your reference; they aren't pretty and will probably be over budget but doing this will give you a performance benchmark.

Edited by Crackie on Sunday 18th January 16:43

[Adrian W]

M&K but not sure your budget will cover it unless it is a fairly small room, remember your Centre speaker will do about 80% of the work, so your spend should reflect this.

Edited by Adrian W on Sunday 18th January 13:41

[gizlaroc]

Is this home cinema only or music as well?

What speakers do you like the sound of?

I think your budget is a bit lop sided to be honest.

If spending £10k on purely home cinema I would spend around £2.5k on the processor, £2.5k on a power amp, couple of grand on projector and the rest on speakers and sub, and go in walls.

[Crackie]

gizlaroc said:

Is this home cinema only or music as well?

What speakers do you like the sound of?

I think your budget is a bit lop sided to be honest.

I think the budget is slightly lopsided too.........not enough on the speakers. I'm heavily biased but I think speakers matter far more than amps/processors.

I think Gecko1978's £10k budget split £2500 projector, £1500-2000 amp, £5000 speakers is spot on. Add an OPPO as source.....happy days.

Edited by Crackie on Sunday 18th January 17:25

[anonymous-user]

I bought some cracking ProAc studio monitors from eBay for £600. They date back to the mid 90s but they look and sound gorgeous, I do agree though - now amps etc are so good, spend money on decent speakers and crossovers/subs. Doesn't need to be expensive or new to sound good, just needs to be set up properly.

Edited by anonymous-user on Sunday 18th January 17:10

[Gecko1978]

The room is 6 x 4.1m as it was half the garage 3 brick walls one stud wall.

I have had some thoughts about building shelves into the walls to allow me books shelf speakers and my preference would be n&w cm speakers but I have looked at M&K today and apart from being unsightly (what hifi review
) are amazing but I doubt in budget. Room will be movies ps3/4 and tv music is only in cat or headphones on the train now with two kids.

[VEX]

I would wire for 7.2 but actually only buy at 5.1 for the start of the project

That way you'll have a better budget for the speakers and you can add to later on.

Personally I don't rate Artcoustic, that might be because I have not had a good demo of them the two times I have visited the demo suite in the UK.

Agree with the other comments on thinking about hiding speakers behind screens or you could go with inwalls and thier matching back boxes.

V.

[gizlaroc]

Crackie said:

I think the budget is slightly lopsided too.........not enough on the speakers. I'm heavily biased but I think speakers matter far more than amps/processors.

I think Gecko1978's £10k budget split £2500 projector, £1500-2000 amp, £5000 speakers is spot on. Add an OPPO as source.....happy days.

Edited by Crackie on Sunday 18th January 17:25

I just don't think you will get an amp for that money, not that will drive £5k speakers.

I had Dunlavey speakers on a top end Denon amp, sounded good, very good, but not as good as my Meridian processor and Cinepro 3K6SE amp sounded on £1500 worth of Kef Custom Install in walls sounded previously.

I sold the Denon amp and bought another Meridian and Cinepro amp, far better.

You need that power with home cinema imho.

Then swapped it all for Meridian DSP system, different league altogether.
But think you may struggle with that budget.

Worth listening to a Meridian system though and seeing if you can find some deals on it.




I hate the M&Ks, absolutely hate them, harsh nasty sounding things. I bought the 150s a while back and lasted 2 weeks with them, lost a fortune. Someone I know well had them on the end of some Levinson mono amps and they still sounded harsh, dynamic yeah, but not nice to listen to for more than a 20 minute demo. Very tiring.

[Crackie]

The M&K suggestion was just so Gecko1978 could set a performance benchmark at approx. the right budget. I could have proposed a very different setup to use as a benchmark; something like sealed Spendor S3/5 for the satellites with a sub from someone REL/BK/B&W would have come in under budget. http://hometheaterreview.com/spendor-s-35-speakers...

The point is that good auditions / good dealers are the route to a good result. Only Gecko1978s ears can decide what sounds good and what doesn't; suggestions on PH can only help populate the shortlist.

Edited by Crackie on Monday 19th January 08:24