I have a tricky situation and thought someone here might be able to advise me.
I have 2 good, medium speakers. 2 small, bad speakers. One good looking 13x15 living room which is arranged in such a way that the front speakers (next to the screen) cannot possibly fit in a respectable way. There are antiques, paintings on the walls, it's pristine, and my medium speakers just don't fit there at all. The bad speakers fit, but they are $50 Sonys. Aesthetically I'd rather have no speakers there at all. I can't rearrange the room. I keep the screen in the closet and pop it up when I want to watch a movie. All electronics are hidden, other than electric lights.
The center channel sits atop a molding and is pretty well hidden. The subwoofer is also hidden. The receiver is a decent 5.1 capable Sherwood.
These are my potential solutions, any comments welcome:
1. Use the Sonys as front speakers that make the room a bit uglier, and good rear speakers. This actually sounds fine for home theater but really hurts me when I listen to CDs, which play out of the front (bad) speakers instead of the rear (good and larger) speakers.
2. Use the good speakers only, with a center channel and subwoofer. Set the receiver to "no rear speakers." The good speakers in their current position would be set as "front" but would actually be about 12" behind and 3' to either side of my gal and I as we watched movies. Aesthetically, this is the ideal solution and it's also the best for CDs, but would I be ruining my audio experience?
3. Buy new, small, but high quality front speakers. These would have to be quite small to disappear like the center speaker does (about 6" high). I'd be willing to spend the money, but if I did, my CDs would play out of the little speakers instead of my beautiful big speakers that only fit in the back of the room. Could I possibly get small speakers that would deliver good CD sound? Or, is there a way to toggle between front and rear speakers, where CDs would use the transpose the front and rear sets?
That's something that only he can decide. If he wanted my opinion, I'd suggest selling the antiques to make room for bigger speakers But hey, it's his living room, so he's going to have to deal with it himself.
Em69 - I could replace my sonys with good speakers for HT and use my big speakers to listen to music - if I could figure out how. With my big speakers in the rear channels, CDs play out of the front channels - where the small speakers are. I don't know of any way to switch them based on whether you're listening to a CD or a DVD. I might build a manual switch that would transpose the front and rear speakers - I'd have to figure out how to do it first, though.
But hey, it's his living room, so he's going to have to deal with it himself.