After years of wanting to be an audiophile I'm finally in a financial position to do it and have started to research equipment. One thing I've noticed is that there currently seems to be a huge focus on home theaters. Everything at the big box stores is HT and all of the higher end stores in my area seem to have "theater" in their name. Personally I don't have time to sit down and watch a 2 hr movie very often so 95% of the time I'm listening to music. I can't see paying for 4 or 5 extra channels and speakers that will rarely get used since I mostly listen to music. Plus my house has an open floor plan so I'd have a hard time wiring one up. I wonder if anyone else has the same feeling?
So I've been contemplating buying an A/V receiver which has a ton of different I/O options such as ethernet, HDMI, and xm radio or go with a higher end two channel system which doesn't have alot of the extra I/O. The Rotel RX-1052 caught my eye as a starting point but I'm definitely a bit confused because everything seems to be HT focused. I definitely would want to be able to run TV, DVD, xm radio sound through any system I end up buying.
Anyhow any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm definitely leaning towards putting my money into two channels the more I think about it. Also any speaker recommendations with a wide soundstage for an open room would be helpful. I'll be starting from scratch on the system, except for my Onkyo CD player, and I'd like to keep things under $5k to start.
Thanks!
After years of wanting to be an audiophile I'm finally in a financial position to do it and have started to research equipment. One thing I've noticed is that there currently seems to be a huge focus on home theaters. Everything at the big box stores is HT and all of the higher end stores in my area seem to have "theater" in their name. Personally I don't have time to sit down and watch a 2 hr movie very often so 95% of the time I'm listening to music. I can't see paying for 4 or 5 extra channels and speakers that will rarely get used since I mostly listen to music. Plus my house has an open floor plan so I'd have a hard time wiring one up. I wonder if anyone else has the same feeling?
So I've been contemplating buying an A/V receiver which has a ton of different I/O options such as ethernet, HDMI, and xm radio or go with a higher end two channel system which doesn't have alot of the extra I/O. The Rotel RX-1052 caught my eye as a starting point but I'm definitely a bit confused because everything seems to be HT focused. I definitely would want to be able to run TV, DVD, xm radio sound through any system I end up buying.
Anyhow any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm definitely leaning towards putting my money into two channels the more I think about it. Also any speaker recommendations with a wide soundstage for an open room would be helpful. I'll be starting from scratch on the system, except for my Onkyo CD player, and I'd like to keep things under $5k to start.
Thanks!