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how much did you spend on rear surround speakers?

I thought i would share my experience setting up my home theater speaker system. I had Dali Helicon MkII for my fronts and Dali Helicon center. my side surrounds were an old M&K from one of their early surround systems. I replaced the M&K side surrounds with Dali Helicon C200 and was very happy with the sound. I moved the M&Ks to a rear surround position for my 7.1 system. However, when i found a pair of Dali W200 on Audiogon i bought them. After setting up with Audessey from my Marantz AV8801 processor, i was extremely pleased with the improvement in sound. I was very hesitant to spend much on side and rear surrounds, but in my experience, the extra dollars to have matching voices from the Dali helicon line actuallly made a difference i could hear.
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bobnegi
24 posts
 
Thanks Bacardi, you have just given me a reason to spend another $5.2K on surround speakers!...

I am waiting for a second pair of Qs8's to arrive, but you have got me thinking that perhaps I should have saved up to get the matching surrounds for my fronts.

I feel that my exisiting QS8's were easely twice as reveling than my old surrounds. I think your Casta's would be in the same ballpark price wise to my required Focal Prestige series surrounds.

Now I have to justify somehow that spending 500% more on surrounds will be worth the 40-50% gain in bliss...
bacardi's avatar
bacardi
639 posts
 
I can't even explain the difference I heard from the Axioms to the Casta's. Well worth the money spent. If your room is medium to large. Mine is 13 x 19 x 8. This spring/summer it will be 22 x 20 x 8. These surround speakers fill your surround experience so much it's incredible. It also depends on what quality your putting into it - Clean power, speaker wire, interconnects, power cords, isolation devices. Conditioning. I recently added an Audience Adept Response aR6-TSS(latest). This is one piece of equipement I will never ever take out. Just stunning. So all the parts together make a fantastic system. Cheers!!!!!!!!
zephyr24069's avatar
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zephyr24069
1,183 posts
 
Having spent a number of years chasing the high-end 7.1 HT scenario, I definitely agree with all the feedback above; matching of LS, RS, LSB and RSB speakers is essential. If your surround-proc allows it, go for a subwoofer up front and one for your rear channels as well; you won't be sorry. Alternatively consider my last config involved ditching the smaller LS, RS, LSB and RSB speakers that I had and going with a pair of full-size, full-range speakers in the rear that matched my front channels. It was well worth it and frankly HT and multi-channel audio never sounded the same ever again....
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