Relatively New to the HT Scene -- Advice Needed!

chadwick537

Hello,
I?m relatively new to the HT scene and am looking for a little bit of help. When I initially purchased my first HT setup, I read a lot of reviews and forums and decided to go with the Polk Monitor series. A little over a year ago, I purchased the following:
(2) Polk Monitor 50s (L/R)
Polk CS2 (Center)
(4) Polk Monitor 30s (4 Surrounds)
Polk PSW110 Subwoofer

For my receiver, I purchased a Sony STR-DH810 (http://store.sony.com/p/STR-DH810/en/p/STRDH810) from a friend for a very good price. I setup it all up in my living room (about 12?x16?), tweaked the settings and have been happy ever since.

Fast forward one year and we are finishing our basement which will include a similar-sized room dedicated as a HT room. Doing some research and now I have the upgrade itch. My initial thinking was to purchase either the Monitor60s or Monitor70s from the Polk eBay store, use those as the L/R and use the 50s as my surround speakers.

I just want to see if I am already under-utilizing my speakers using the receiver I have, or if I go ahead and purchase 60s/70s if I will need a new receiver to get their full potential. I don?t crank the volume full-blast on the receiver and I use the system mainly to watch blu-rays and DirectTV.

I guess what I?m looking for is some advice ? is my receiver going to need upgrading or will I be ok powering all of that with it? If I do need an upgrade, what should I be looking for? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

oleon621

If your going to have a dedicated HT room I would strongly recommend you go up to the RTI/RTIA series speaker. You can get these speakers on ebay as well. These speakers will give you an automatic upgrade that will be apparent right away. Also you might want to get a receiver that can give you the ability to add an external amp in the future(receiver with pre outs). Don't skimp on the center channel and the Sub.

A budget would help more with the recommendation.

Geoff4rfc

Hey Chadwick, welcome to the forum and congratulations on your new dedicated ht room.

The RTiA's would be nice and do put out some killer sound however, the Monitors can give you a ton of great performance also.

The 70's would be a good choice but they like lots of power to sound their best. Your receiver looks like a nice one but I didn't see pre-outs to allow an external amplifier.

Upgrading your receiver with pre-outs can be done pretty inexpensively and there are good deals on amps that can be found.

Since you've already acquired so many Monitors, you could get the 70's, move the 50's to wides and utilize the 30's in different surround configurations. Depending on what receiver/pre-amp you end up getting, you could go 7.1 or 9.1 or even 11.1

chadwick537

I guess what I'm trying to figure out is what range of receiver I should be looking at.. Perhaps something like the Onkyo 890? Would that sufficiently power 70s 50s 30s and the CS2 or would I still be looking at needing an amp in addition? Unfortunately my Sony doesn't have any pre-amp outputs. How much of a difference in sound quality will I gain upgrading from my current setup to something like the Onkyo and 70s?

I'm trying to stay under $1000 on upgrades right now budget-wise.

Geoff4rfc

The 809 could power that set up but wouldn't do the 70's any real justice. They would sound pretty good but to get "awesome" performance, you need to feed them at least 200wpc.

I ran mine with my 807 for awhile and eventually hooked them up to a 200w amp, made a "noticeable" difference.

Once I fed them 300wpc and they sounded better than I'd ever heard them.