Hi all. I've recently purschased a beautiful 42" Pioneer plasma to fully showcase my PS3 and complement my 5.1 surround setup. I have an aging Yamaha receiver which has served me well but now I am intrigued by the True Dolby Digital and uncompressed PCM sound formats that my Blu-ray movies and some PS3 games are capable of putting out. But before I invest in a new receiver capable of decoding these formats (avg price $1500) I wondering if I will notice a difference with my surround setup which are Klipsch Quintet III speakers. They are satellite speakers, 4 surround and a center channel and 10" sub. I just don't know if I would need to invest in a beefier setup including tower speakers in order to take full advantage of next-gen sound. Any suggestions are appreciated.
I would first replace the front L and R quintets with bigger speakers, the speakers have a much bigger effect than the receiver and format. I replaced mine with Polk bookshelf speakers and it made a huge difference, I would even recommend a full-size speaker if possible (I'm saving up for some Zu audio Druids myself). The sub is pretty good, but that would be my second recommendation for an upgrade.
The rear satellites are fine. I would actually recommend placing something with a hard, uneven surface (bookshelves with books are perfect) behind your listening area and pointing the satellites backwards towards that surface. It sounds weird but it dramatically improves the surround effect of mono-pole surrounds like the quintets. Instead of the sound coming from a focused point, it will sound more like it's coming from something behind you.
The closest model to what I have that they sell now is the R15. If you can swing it, I'd definitely recommend stepping up to the RTi A1 or A3. I've heard very good things about them from Stereophile magazine.
You sooooo.... dont have to spend $1500 on a receiver. You can get HD sound out of something as cheap as the Onkyo TX-SR605 at around $400 dollars or you can go up the the TX-SR705 and 805 both of wich are THX certified and can matrix 5.1 into 7.1 and both of those are under 1k. Then you can use the extra money and buy some really nice speakers. The 605 and 705 has 2 HDMI inputs and the 805 has 3 inputs. They are all 1.3 complaint.. naturally since they can do HD sound and they can upconvert 480i signal.
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