First a little bit of history: I was an early adopter of home cinema, plugging a Yamaha pro-logic decoder into my integrated, adding to my speaker count, and using a stereo VCR as a video source. Then came DVD, so I got one with a 5.1 decoder and of course I needed a receiver that could take the 5.1 chanel inputs and got a cheap Sherwood from RS. This was home cinema bliss - vibrating sofa, things spinning around the room - great. Then I played music on it - dreadful. IMPORTANT - my home cinema expectations are more easily satisfied than my music ones. What followed was expensive Arcam Alpha 10s, Dave modules and more.
To cut a long story short, over twenty years on, I seems to have downgraded in stages (Exposure 30202SD/Marantz NR1509 via AV8/7 channel Audiolab and Yamaha RX-A2010). I am thinking now about giving up this crusade and getting a Sonos ARC and sub (I already have Sonos speakers I can use as rears), so for about 1600 quid I can fix all this home cinema nonsense to my satisfaction, while also allowing the rest of the household to play what they want with a simple to use app. This will completely liberate my music system.
The alternative would be to keep my current speaker setup and replace the Marantz/Exposure setup (I like the Exposure but the Marantz not so much) with some Arcam at around 3000-4000 quid, then if I want Atmos I will need to spend that again on all new speakers to keep the synergy. When I think what sort of music system I could get for that sort of money (see the important bit above) with the bonus of moving the speakers around the room (not either side of the telly) the Sonos sounds very attractive. I also hate having a huge centre speaker, great though it is.
Has anybody around here done this? Thought about it? Done it and regreted it? I am probably more interested in critiques of my methodology and thought process than any specifics about hardware. Any other ideas?
I fancy getting back into the music side of this hobby and just letting the home cinema take care of itself.
To cut a long story short, over twenty years on, I seems to have downgraded in stages (Exposure 30202SD/Marantz NR1509 via AV8/7 channel Audiolab and Yamaha RX-A2010). I am thinking now about giving up this crusade and getting a Sonos ARC and sub (I already have Sonos speakers I can use as rears), so for about 1600 quid I can fix all this home cinema nonsense to my satisfaction, while also allowing the rest of the household to play what they want with a simple to use app. This will completely liberate my music system.
The alternative would be to keep my current speaker setup and replace the Marantz/Exposure setup (I like the Exposure but the Marantz not so much) with some Arcam at around 3000-4000 quid, then if I want Atmos I will need to spend that again on all new speakers to keep the synergy. When I think what sort of music system I could get for that sort of money (see the important bit above) with the bonus of moving the speakers around the room (not either side of the telly) the Sonos sounds very attractive. I also hate having a huge centre speaker, great though it is.
Has anybody around here done this? Thought about it? Done it and regreted it? I am probably more interested in critiques of my methodology and thought process than any specifics about hardware. Any other ideas?
I fancy getting back into the music side of this hobby and just letting the home cinema take care of itself.