receiver recommendations

jkn

Blatant newbie question...

My wife and I are planning to buy a Surround Bar for our living room - Circuit City is tossing in a free Polk 10" sub to go with it right now. What receivers would you recommend to pair up with the Surround Bar? We're trying to keep the budget under $2k for everything (originally $1k, but we realized that wasn't going to cut it...) We want XM radio, but it appears that just about all receivers have that now. 7.1 as well - as I'll likely get rear speakers down the line.

While you're in the recommending mood - I've been warned the 10" sub might not be the best route to go and to try and upgrade it at Circuit City when I buy it. Of the subs available at a store like that - what would you recommend?

Thanks for your thoughts. I can ramble on about synths and music gear all night long, but I'm not too knowledgeable on home theater equipment.

If it helps - the room is very long and narrow. The doorways kind of make a discrete speaker system hard to do in this room - so I'm excited about the Surround Bar. We also run a line from our TV to a 2nd tv in the kitchen (they both back up against the same wall). I've got the audio and video both working on the 2nd tv with our current system (Sony theater in a box from 2001...) - hopefully the new one will have no problems with that.

Thanks.

jkn

McLoki

you can get both a decent AVR and a good sub for only $500.

I have a feeling you are really looking for new equipment though and preferrably something you can purchase locally...

Given that - if you stay with the polk subs, I would try to step up to at least the Polk PSW-12 or 404. I am sure you will get the free PSW-10 and if you upgrade have to stay with the polk subs. I will be the first to tell you (and have been) that subs are not Polks strongest offering.

For the AVR you should be fine with any of the major brands - Harmon/Kardon, Onkyo, Yamaha or Denon. Get whatever one you like the most and has the features that you like. One thought though - I would stay away from Sony. Their amplifier sections on their lower end avr's are kind of crap. Don't worry to much about power rating - anything over 50-75 watts should be fine. (I would say H/K has the best amplifer section, but I personally hate their user interface/setup.) Other than that - whatever floats your boat.

Michael

jkn

True, you know me well enough to know I'll probably buy new. The sub I was thinking of taking your advice on Outlaw Audio's smaller sub, but then Circuit City added the free sub into the Surround Bar deal the other day. Upgrading to something a little bigger than the 10 would be nice though.

I was reading up on receivers last night - saw some that will do mp3's from flash or usb drives, or just connect to a pc. I'm not a huge mp3 fan, but dropping my collection to a drive would allow me dive into some songs I haven't pulled out in a long time easily...

So many fun possibilities.

As far as the Sony system goes - the unit started acting flaky within 3 years where we'd have to shut it off and on a few times every so often to get it working again - sometimes requiring a 'full reboot' where we shut off the tv and all the lights... ;-) The 5 disc dvd finally broke this month. It worked well for our original needs, but we've grown in what we want a bit.

We're going to do a little shopping this weekend and do some comparisons and hopefully get a chance to actually hear the Surround Bar.

John