Surround Sound

[Slomo]

If you aren't an audiophile, there are several good theater-in-a-box systems at there. Some. like those from Yamaha and Kenwood, have decent enough receivers that are worth upgrading with better speakers down the line -- I'm partial to Polk for all around performance and value, but there are plenty of good ones out there. If ease-of-use is a big issue, high end Sony components integrate very well with their remote technology. If the sky is your limit, go to Bjorn's with the names SloMo gave you on your minds.

The one thing I don't like about most surround systems is that the tiny satellite speakers that have no midrange (not a fan of Bose for the same reason) and suck for playing music. For most normal CDs, I have a seperate set of full range speakers on the amp's B channel to use with the subwoofer at a lower crossover frequency.

Yes, I'm a snob.

And cabling does make a difference; Monster Cable is good but there are similar performers available for less.

The small satellite speakers should really only be used for surround and even then it's quite important how good your subwoofer is and how capable the processors in your receiver are.

Cabling plays a big role specially since it is often very difficult to hide big cables around a normal living room (my wife hates it) and therefore people just use the tiny cables that came with the speakers.

An excellent set of front speakers in my opinion is 2xTannoy Eyris 3 (or DC3) + 1xTannoy Eyris C (or DCC). They are on the expensive side but I have rarely heard a better set of speakers across a wide range of music (from classic to hip-hop) they are not the loudest but the quality exceeds most speakers that I've heard. One important trick to remember is to have a receiver that allows you to route the bass to the speakers when listening to music and to the subwoofer and speakers when listening to movies.

And even if you do not want to spend this sort of money on speakers it's still a good decision to invest in a good receiver and then a set of cheaper speakers from a proven manufacturer (I've heard some great sounding Tannoy, Dali and Mission speakers that were below 150 $ for the pair).