New System for a greenhorn audiophile


Hi,

I'm looking for some recommendations for a audio/home theater system.  Something simple, for good audio and home

reciever
2 speakers, a midrange and sub should suffice
and I know that this may sound impossible but it can't top $2000.00

dnorris63
What I’d do with a $2k budget that needs to cover both music and H/T is get a H/T receiver that has a streamer built in (since that is the source that is becoming the standard for listening - Tidal, Spotify, Qubuz, Amazon, whatever - though of course you can still also connect a CD player or other line sources or a turntable, or bluetooth connect to stream from phone), such as a Marantz 5013 that you can find new for $650 or refurb for $480. It’s a 7.2 Atmos receiver with built-in streamer and room correction and 100 wpc that sounds pretty decent for music (I know, I have the earlier version 5012 which is almost the same).

The Atmos capability (or surround sound in general) will leave the door open for future H/T upgrades if/when you want to add more speakers (as the receiver will support them with amplification and decode), but at your current budget I’d start with a 2.1 system (meaning left and right speaker, and sub). Later, if you want, you can add a center channel speaker, rear surrounds, or even Atmos height channel speakers if you like (or go with a simpler Dolby surround 7 channel speaker setup - the receiver will already support all of that).

Receiver at $650 leaves $1350 for everything else.

Get some good left and right speakers for music and a sub for about $1250 total - maybe $900 for the speakers and $350 for the sub, and then $100-120 total for some Blue Jeans speaker cables and a Pangea power cord for the receiver (just use the stock power cord for the sub).  For the sub cable from receiver to sub, an AmazonBasics for $10 or less should be okay.

For speakers in that price range, I’d try to find a good deal on some Kefs (which are great for both music and H/T) or maybe something in the Focal Aria lineup. For a sub, maybe SVS if they have anything in that range.

Hope that helps - good luck. That’ll be a nice sounding system for the cost.
$2K will go a lot further is you buy used.  Audiogon and Audio Mart are good places to start.  Seems to be a lot of churning in audio.  Except for Oppos and KEF LS50s, I've bought all my stuff used.