You pays your money – that could be anything from £100 to however rich you are – and takes yer choice. The thing to realise is that as a minimum you will need to accommodate at least 5 speakers (six if you include a sub-woofer)*.
Ideally your room should be set up like a cinema with the TV in the centre of one wall with you in the middle and the sound system spaced equidistant around you. Few people have the means to do that – TVs tend to be located across a corner out of convenience – so any other arrangement is a compromise and therefore the experience becomes less effective, which makes the idea of spending lots of money a bit extravagant.
My advice is to go along to a hi-fi shop tell them how much you are willing to spend, how you intend to set it up and listen to the what they have to offer. Alternatively buy a hi-fi mag “What Hi-Fi” for example, rummage through the reviews for systems within your budget and then shop around on the internet for the best deal.
* some systems offer simulated surround sound using fewer speakers but these are generally less effective than a multi-speaker arrangement.
looking at some cinema surround packs – anyone use them and have any advice before i purchase. pref wireless setup.
From my experience of surround sound packs, you have to pay decent money to make the difference. TYhe quality is usually in the speakers not the processor. A good stereo would do the same trick.
That’s what happens when you are deprived of your football fix. Nerdy mode kicks in.
Just trying to help the OP on a subject I know a little bit about.
And thanks for the advice Griff. I will be going out shortly.
Well seeing as you know a bit about surround systems, see if you can help me with this one – I’m on my second one (I’ve just upgraded to a Blu-Ray one) and on both systems the audio is out of sync with the picture and I mean well of of sync. I’ve had a look in settings and changed the limited things there are available but that hasn’t done the trick.
Don’t connect your blu-ray player to your system using separate leads. If you use an HDMI lead directly to the TV but a separate audio lead to your surround sound processor amp you will get a delay.
If your surround sound processor is relatively new it should have both HDMI inputs and outputs. If so, then connect the blu-ray directly to the processor using an HDMI lead and then from the processor to the TV also using an HDMI lead.
If your blu-ray player or processor has an audio delay function I am surprised you can’t correct the problem using that. However, if you connect it in the way I’ve suggested there will be no need to use this feature; the video and audio will be syncronised automatically.