Receivers has little to do with dialogue clarity. The one reproducing sound are the speakers, not the receiver, the receiver processes it. People need to understand the differences.

If I were you, I'd buy the Yamaha v385 and get just 1 pair of good bookshelve speakers and be done with it. Then over time, you can start adding more and upgrading. HT setup is a journey, not a one and done deal. You simply cannot determine what's best for you without listening to multiple speakers, dealing with your environment and tweaking your system to suit it.

Uhm... you know that if he adds a center channel, literally 70% or more of the sound gets directed to the center channel. So you're just splitting 2 speakers into 1, the same issue happens. In fact, the dialogue may even be worse because most center speakers aren't very good.

I suggest you put most of your budget into the center channel then. 3 identical speakers for the LCR is still the best setup, although most people won't do it for obvious reasons.

That's the normal setup most people will do. A pair of vertical bookshelfs/towers for L/R and then a horizontal center channel. This is because most people have TVs, as expected.

But if you're doing a projector setup, you can always put the speakers behind the screen and use an acoustic transparent screen instead. Some people would also just use a vertical bookshelf for the center channel but sacrifice by mounting their TV higher than their eye level.

It's up to you what you want to do. But yes, the standard setup would be a pair of 3020i and a single 3090c.

Very common for center channels to sound worse than the L/R. Already explained, center channels need to fit under TVs so they're generally limited in size. L/R speakers can be as big as your room allows.

Now a days I don't even turn on my center channel anymore, most of the time I watch movies alone. If there are guests and they're sitting way outside of the center seat (like almost next to the sidewall or something), only then I'll turn on the center channel to lobing issues at bay and so that imaging of dialogue is locked to the middle of the screen.

From your list, only the Denon X250bt and Pioneer 1123k makes sense. Not much between them to be honest, just choose the one that's priced lower.


Not a bad price, as long as you're not holding out for HDMI 2.1 which should presumably be in this year's models.

More than just 8k. HFR for 4k and VRR are 2 important things if you play games. But if you don't nothing really to be concerned about.

Answered in PM.

But for those who wants the public answer; the SB2000 gave me about 6db more output and headroom below 30hz vs the SB1000, in my room (17'x12'x9').


Sound "quality" wise, personally I feel that bass below 60hz is rather vague and it's influenced by the room more than one's ears. Usually people ask if the bass is "cleaner" and less "boomy", well honestly both SB1000 and SB2000s are already very clean sounding subs between 40-80hz. Any sealed subs above them actually don't sound much "cleaner" in these frequencies, they can just play louder with less distortion, they are more adapt at filling larger amount of room space and they can dig deeper with higher headroom.

This post has been edited by SSJBen: Apr 18 2019, 04:38 PM

1) Q Acoustics are "safe" speakers to buy because they generally sound good in just about any content you throw at them yet they are cheap enough in the fact that if you don't like them you can always sell them for not much loss. However, they are kind of like a "jack-of-all-trades" speakers - they don't really excel in any thing. Yes if you are willing, spend the bulk of your speaker budget on the front LCRs first. Surrounds you can do later.

2) AVR stands for Audio Video Receiver. It's a must because you send all your info to the AVR to process and then it'll handle the signals to send to your display and to power your speakers. There's really no such thing as "future proofing" an AVR though, technology on this side moves so fast that your AVR gets outdated in 2-3 years. In fact, last year's AVRs are already about to be outdated in a few months when new ones come out with HDMI 2.1 inputs/outputs. For RM3k budget, the Yamaha v685 is a passable receiver if you need one now.

3) Make sure your living room is at least treated with a heavy carpet rug then. You can buy the most expensive speakers but if your room is just a tunnel of echo, the speakers will still sound like shit.

I'm talking about a throw rug, not carpet. Different things. Throw rugs are much thicker than carpets and don't occupy your entire floor space.

Show me a brand that isn't made in China. Wait perhaps it's not made in China, but what about the parts internally? Where were they sourced or made?

I like these - https://www.parts-express.com/belden-5002up...t-usa--102-1180


Remember what I said about how the audio industry has one of the highest profit margins around? Your video proved my point.

I feel that the SB3000 is the best sealed sub for the buck as far as the Malaysian market goes (RM5999 SRP). Great sub for a medium sized rooms, even more so if you go duals.

The SB3000 is actually very close in performance to the older SB13U as well btw. Only loses out in the mid bass region by 3~4db (50-80hz).

This post has been edited by SSJBen: Apr 25 2019, 02:30 PM

Too vague of a question. Please be specific in regards from speaker to speaker. Understand that specs given are also to be taken with a grain of salt.

Generally a 6.5" woofer will have more bass presence than a 5.25" one, but it also does depend on the material for the cone used, it does depend on the crossover network, it does depend on the cabinet size and design as well.

Depending on the genre. For a very long time, you don't really need bass under 40hz for most genres of music. But then Dub, House, EDM, Techno, etc. started becoming popular and then it was agreed upon that 20hz is where the frequency range for the vast majority of humans start to fall off. 20hz to 20khz is then coined as true full range bandwidth.

Most decent bookshelfs are able to do bass with solid authority (and very minimal distortion) down to 50hz. Then there are ones which pushes down to 40hz but that's where about all bookshelfs tap out.

Good towers can continue to carry it down to 30hz, which was at one time even considered good enough for movies (it wasn't until the 2000s where movies started to have a shit ton more output below 30hz). I can count in 2 hands how many pair of towers that can TRULY go down to 20hz and they'd probably cost half your house.

Ryhtmik FV18HP > PB16U at a lower price.... For slightly more than a single PB16U, you could get a FV25HP which would laugh at the PB16U while doing crunches.

This post has been edited by SSJBen: Apr 29 2019, 04:28 PM

Absolutely, about the best you can get here easily (relatively speaking) other than paying a shit ton to import JTR or Seaton subs.

If you can import multiple Seaton and JTR subs, then you wouldn't be in this thread.

Depends on your room. You have at least 3-4 ft. behind your couch/seats? If yes, then feel free to do a 7.1 setup. Small room, only 1-2 ft. behind your seats? Do 5.1.2.

Set VLC to use bitstream audio output.