What speakers? £1000 to spend on a surround sound package.

[Doodles19]

Hi,

I'm in the process of having a large open plan living room / kitchen added to my house.

We plan to put surround sound in, with speakers in the living room as well as the kitchen area. It's now getting to the point of needing to put wires into walls. So I need a set of speakers sooner rather than later!

Does anyone have any recommendations of speaker packages / particular combinations of speakers, including an amplifier / receiver if required all in for £1000.

Ideally I'd need something allowing me to use my phone to play music from Spotify. Anything TV wise would be coming from a Sky box.

Friends of mine have Bose systems and I've been really unimpressed with them. I prefer a meaty, punchy sound, particularly the mid range, albeit not overwhelmed by bass. I find the Bose packages to be lacking in mid-range. Not to mention vastly overpriced.

I'd be grateful for any suggestions, even if its just pointing me in the direction of some good shops / websites that may be able to help.

Cheers!!

[Itsallicanafford]

If it’s just for music, would 3 or 4 Sonos play1’s do the trick over WiFi? We are having similar work done at present but I personally have discounted putting wires in walls and will use a WiFi multi room system (in my case naim). John Lewis have the musoqb speakers at £445 each as a Black Friday deal, you could have one per room? Just an idea?

Or how about a muso for the main room and a musoqb for the kitchen if you can stretch to £1250? Both on the jl website now at a very good discount

Edited by Itsallicanafford on Tuesday 20th November 18:06

[B17NNS]

These are last years models but all very highly regarded kit. I have the same set up but with the 3050 floor standers as fronts.

Amp/receiver:

https://www.richersounds.com/denon-avrx2400-blk.ht...

Surrounds:

https://www.richersounds.com/q-acoustics-3010-x2-3...

Fronts:

https://www.richersounds.com/q-acoustics-q3020-mat...

You could add a couple of in-ceilings for 5.1.2 Atmos and stay within budget.

Edited by B17NNS on Tuesday 20th November 18:29

[Doodles19]

Itsallicanafford said:

If it’s just for music, would 3 or 4 Sonos play1’s do the trick over WiFi? We are having similar work done at present but I personally have discounted putting wires in walls and will use a WiFi multi room system (in my case naim). John Lewis have the musoqb speakers at £445 each as a Black Friday deal, you could have one per room? Just an idea?

Or how about a muso for the main room and a musoqb for the kitchen if you can stretch to £1250? Both on the jl website now at a very good discount

Edited by Itsallicanafford on Tuesday 20th November 18:06

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I'm really not a fan of the Sonos kit. I think its vastly overpriced. I also had a bad experience with some at a hotel. It was a few speakers and a sub set up together. The sub was so overpowering even when turned down. Really not for me unfortunately.

B17NNS said:

These are last years models but all very highly regarded kit. I have the same set up but with the 3050 floor standers as fronts.

Amp/receiver:

https://www.richersounds.com/denon-avrx2400-blk.ht...

Surrounds:

https://www.richersounds.com/q-acoustics-3010-x2-3...

Fronts:

https://www.richersounds.com/q-acoustics-q3020-mat...

You could add a couple of in-ceilings for 5.1.2 Atmos and stay within budget.

Edited by B17NNS on Tuesday 20th November 18:29

This is the sort of thing I had in mind, thank you!

I need to do a bit of research on the whole Dolby Atmos thing. Although the flexibility of some other speakers / ceiling speakers is appealing!

[anonymous-user]

Hmmmm....I’d advise quality over quantity. As you rightly point out the usual Sonos, sound bar thingies are mostly crap.

Same with AV amps, I have a Sony STR-DN1050 7 channel amp sitting in the bottom of my wardrobe doing nothing. It’s only been used for 6m as in spite of winning loads of awards, I could never get along with it for music. Great for film though.

Instead I bought a Yamaha RX-A1070 Aventage amp and it’s amazing for both. I went for second hand, high end ProAc floor standing speakers plus middle channel and a big, BK sub. Whole lot came to about £2k but my goodness it sounds amazing. Don’t bother with Atmos rubbish, instead concentrate on a quality 5.1. You’ll be able to hear where the money went.

[Pravus1]

I went for the monitor audio bronze series and a yamaha amp.

I've been pretty impressed. You can also pick up a lot of nearly new stuff of ebay for dirt cheap

[BRR]

For a similar budget I went with a Yamaha 677 amp, Q-accoustics 700i speakers/sub and an additional BK XL sub, I think if i were to do it again I'd have gone for Dali Zensor speakers instead, though the 700i's are decent

[AC43]

As others have said I'd avoid Sonos/Bose/wireless stuff if you can and go for proper wired kit. My latest set up involves;

- Yamaha RXV- 81 amp (£300)
- Monitor Audio Radius 90's for L&R (£350)
- Monitor Audio Radius 200 for the centre (£200)
- pre-existing Tannoy HTS 101 sub and rear satellites (not expensive)

Yamaha & Denon are two brands that knock out really good AV receivers. Buying used can get you some great bargains - I have a spare s/h Yamaha which is equivalent to the latest top of the range Aventage which I picked up for the same price as my 581. Will give it a go shortly.

Anyway, I'd suggest you definitely go for the cabling and get a decent amp, L&R fronts, centre & sub. To me these are the things that make the biggest difference. To do that with what I used, as an example, could be done for £1k easily.

You can always add the L&R rear satellites at a later date. For some reason mine aren't working at the mo and I'm really not bothered.

Again, as others have said, quality not quantity.