marksdad

1 simple answer, you are mixing speakers types, so you will not get your desired sound.

congrats on the b&k gear, you will never hear music the same again, it might take a day or 2 to get used to the clarity, but once you do!!! oh my!!! go back through all of your well known favs, and you will hear things you never heard before, plus push a few of your more dynamic movies through these babies and hold on, i am happy for you, keep us posted, yahoooooo, my son made me a cake today, happy fathers day to all you papas

i have heard both with the 7's. definatly go denon, onkyo can be almost as bad an ear bleeder as yammie

7.1? it does not exist yet. when you run 7 speaks the rear 2 are matrixed, keep the speaks but you will find that the same sound is coming out of both speakers for now, it will be a while before there is true 7.1

of course, it is just my opinion, but the only avr i ever owned or listened to extensivly, that did not give me either ear bleeds (yammie) or listener fatigue is the b&k avr 507, it is known as an analytical piece, to me in my experience this means it takes every single note and places it at your feet, and in a very pleasing way without coloration, or personal styling, plus the non current limiting design just makes movies and dynamic sequences in music really explosive, it is a fine piece, i even chose it over a variety of seperates

let me see if i can identify? hmmmmmm? first i had polk and onkyo, than upgraded the onkyo, than needed better speaks, went to a klipsch rf5 setup, including the rc3, center sucked, could not keep up with the front 5's, and rear rf 3's, so i upgraded to the rc 7, massive improvement in soundstage, now electronics were weak, tried yammie, denon, but they werent as good as the speakers, so i went rotel. at the time rotel had just shifted thier manufacturing to china, so they had all kinds of issues, after 15 trips to exchange gear i canned the whole rotel mess and again auditioned everything i could, i happily ended up with my current b&k avr 507, it is sooo, now my speaks could not keep up, so i now run an all heritage ht/2channel rig, and because i made all my decisions to slowely my son now has as his gaming/ht/2 channelrig, 2-rf 5's, 2-rf 3's, 1 rc 7, and an ksw12 sub, so upgrade? it is an illness, but at least we have fun doing it

the pioneer is more musical than the denons, but if you can find one try for the 47ai, it is the best and i believe the price is currently around 500, they used to have a chroma bug problem but that is now supposed to be corrected, and i auditioned all of the mentioned players, but settled on the denon 2900, if it werent for the chroma bug i would have went pioneer

after reading who's remarks i agree with him, the center will have to go!!!!!, the lions share of of ht comes in the center, and the 25 will sound anemic with either the 3,5 or 7, if you upgrade the fronts, you will need an rc 7, to stay on par equality in panning across the front, if not when a plane for instance flyes across the screen it will be huge in the left, go small in the center and than again large as it passes to the right, inother words the 25 will be a bump in the presentation

as far as 5's vs 7's the 7 are a very large improvement, but? it depends on your pocketbook, my son uses the 5's as his fronts and they do everything exceeding well, i really cant see any weakness's until i compare them to my heritage system, plus the denon amp you are looking at is good, but not really good enough to make the 7's shine like they can, to me, the 5's match better with the denon

you might be approaching the system backwords, what i mean is upgrade the speakers first, your current electronics wil be enough to power the new front channels, but if you upgrade the electronics first it will be overkill, it will sound good but the speaks will not be on par with the receiver, it will make you wamting, instead of the reverse, the upgraded speaks will show automatic improvement, while the electronics will show the weakness of the smaller speaks

i bought the 507 when it was brand new, the 1 version, and it did have the popping sound when switching sources, but the b&k people have amayzing customer service, they had me ship it back and redid everything including a few hardware upgrades, now mine is the v2 and everything is everything, it outperforms any reciever i have heard, and when i bought mine i did head to head with denons 5803, as mcgoo statesit is the non current limiting design that really makes this reciever shine, especially in dynamic sequences, explosions and lfe really come from nowhere and land right in your lap, it is well worth your investment, even at full price, scrimping now will just mean anguish later

b&k was mentioned, if you want seperates quality sound in what is called the best reciever on the planet, take a look at the b&k avr 507, it cant be beat for recievers.

the synergy will shake up you living room, but you will be lcking in sound, detail, soundstage....... smaller reference will do alot better and you wont get the upgrade but so fast, synergy will just wet your whistle

b&k laid back? it is anything but laid back, as a matter of fact it is known as an analytical amp/procesor, it is very dynamic, after listening to alot of different products i too liked the sunfire, but the sunfire is better in ht, it seems to lack in delivery in music, wheeas the b&k just seems to have no weaknesses, i will take b&k over sunfire any day and as far as build, the b&k is a tank

no way, heresies and synergy, a bad timbre match

the guys are right, stay with the same line of gear if you can, but i have also done the sunfire b7K COMPARISON, AND I FAR LIKE THE B&K SOUND BETTER the sunfie is good in ht but it lacks in music, plus the b&k gear is known to be very analyticalas opposed to sunfires more laidback approach, what i find with this is that i hear more detail in my music, birds and smaller objects are just there in the room with you, whereas i find that laidback means you miss some detail, plus the non current limiting design of the b&k gear gives mind blowing effects, stay b&k

i agree with the guys, i have had polk products, they are good, but not great, and i have had b*** as well, sorry about that, but once i began searching for a good clock radio i went to the tivoli and receptor, could not audition either in the same store but after about 6 different auditions i did finaly decide on the boston acoustic receptor, it is a great little piece of machinery, it has the same bass response as the tivoli excelt you dont need the addded sub that goe with the tivoli to have really great bass, as far as the other mentioned bose and polk, the receptor cast 159.00, and i know from experience polk does not sond good in small speakers, they are ver bass limited

it is not the 7's it is the yammie, you keep saying brighter speakers, this is wrong, the klipsch give what they get, you are just feeding them bad signal, and yes the other gear you spek about does and will improve your end sound, but do stay away from yammie, but klipsch ar not bright

system 2 is hands down the better system, bot are good, but # 2 is a no brainer better system

i think what colin is saying, and i completly agree, is that 2 heresies would give you better all around sound than 5 synergy, 1 example is my son has a complete reference system, but my 2 khorns just do sound better, the reference are great, but the differences between heritage and synergy just are too vast to explain adequetly

you have to hear them all to knoiw what siuts your taste, but from my experience i would go with the musical fidelity, they jusy are so well built abbd ohhhhh so pleasing to listen to

if you are using digital inputs the dvd player will do the decoding, but if you use the multichannel inputs the receiver will do the decoding

yeah the doc is right, reference would be noticable, but synergy terrible, you need a phantom until you can manage the heresy, i have mixed heritage with reference, and it is tolerable, but very noticable, the sound kind of leaps out at you as you pan through pasages

not spouting off at all, when i made my initial purchases, i had reference and synergy in the same room, running off the same equipmenti spent maybe an hour going from 1 to the other, playing a few discs, and it was clear that synergy was the lower end product, more like polk than klipsch, so yes i have done the comparisons, on those and many many other makes and models, it is my hobbie after all, not just a one time purchase, matter of fact i have sold more equipment than i own, that is what this hobbie does to you, along the line you learn

the center puts out around 70% during ht, in 2 channel listening it is not used, but do place rf's inside cabinets, the rear ports need to breath, if you are planning to place a speaker inside a cabinet go bookshelf's that are not rear ported, enclosing a speaker that is rear ported seriously dulls the speakers overall performance