looking for a modestly priced home theater setup

that system looks fine - speakers are a little big physically, but they got really good reviews on cnet

(http://reviews.cnet.com/Onkyo_HT_S790_black/4505-6740_7-31930511-5.html?tag=nav).

i'd personally like to get a receiver that has HDMI switching and analog-digital converting. but evidently the cheapest receivers that can do this are $600 and are finicky in converting most cable box inputs (although i guess that's a moot point with your directTV). but that way you could enjoy all your components' HDMI signal and just use one input HDMI port on your plasma TV (which will be important to conserve once every component uses HDMI).

all in all, i'd get the Onkyo HT-S790 speakers and receivers since it's "only" $440 at circuit city, but start packing away money for an HDMI receiver in 3-5 years.

 

Without decent specs on the speakers it is hard to say for sure, but I can say I already don't like them. The description is 5 inch midrange drivers, and a 1 inch tweeter. Being a speaker builder and designer I can ascertain a couple things with certainty.

First, a main speaker MTM arrangement (mid-tweeter-mid, which if you look at the picture you have the speakers arranged in this fashion from top to bottom) which houses midrange and tweeters on a direct plane is not good for image depth at all (scattering them is beneficial although the image seems crowded towards the side of the speaker the tweerter resides on). The mid[bold]range[/bold] driver is limited (typically) to decent output over 100Hz. This does 2 things really, since most recievers are crossed over at 80Hz. First, it will leave a huge gap between woofer onset and speaker rolloff, making the set-up harsh or bright. Secondly, big tweeters mean resonance frequency is likely low, which is a good thing, but it really narrows the frequency range that can be performed by the midrange drivers. The short frequency range of the midrange crowding the top and bottom of a tweeter tend to crush the tweeter axis. Imagine soundwaves coming from the cones in a V shape, and picture what the midrange above and below the tweeter will do to the delicate high frequency output of the tweeter. I prefer a MTMW (mid/tweet/mid/mid-woofer) arrangement, a TMW or a simple TW arrangement for optimal dispertion, soundstage, and image. With fairly large tweets I like to see a mid-woofer arrangement, unless we are referring to something like a vocal speaker (center channel) rather than a main, where a broad frequency range is a plus.

I'll search for the DT speakers and see what they look like.

**Edit* which units are you referring to?

http://www.definitivetech.com/specs/specs.html#flagship

They use alot of bi-polar units which are awesome (they scream image depth and deliver HUGE soundstages), and I like their high end units. I LOVE an aluminum dome tweet with soft surrounds. JL first used them with success in their XR series car audio components, and several high end home companies followed suit. B&W, Adire, Paradigm, and others found that you can achieve brilliant accurate highs, typical of a hard dome, and with the soft surround keep them smooth, and steer clear of the harshness associated with hard domes.

 

im not sure which units, they do look really nice but theyre way out of my pricerange heh.
the onkyo is looking like my best option right now.
if anyone can suggest a different set of 7.1 speakers that are good and somewhat affordable i may end up buying a separate reciever and going that route.
anyone?

thanks for all your input.