i typed a long post yesterday and then it messed up and got lost
but i was also gonna recommend looking at marantz and cambridge audio, i've had both and both worked well and sounded good.
a little more about subswoofers: as mentioned above, when used with little satelite speakers that only produce mid-high frequencies they make sense...
there are two main reasons subs are used in huge PA rigs but neither really applies to domestic situations - firstly a practical one to do with physics: bass is made up of low frequencies which have
long wavelengths - as a result we don't percieve where the noise is coming from very well, and also they aren't reflected or absorbed as easily. the opposite is true with higher frequencies. so mid-high cabinets are typically mounted high up to carry over a crowd's heads and provide a sense of direction for where the music is coming from... but subs can sit wherever is convenient, and bass will pass through obstacles to arrive at listeners' ears. so in fixed installations (clubs, restaurants...) only
some of the weight has to be screwed into the walls / hung from the ceiling, making it cheaper and safer and less intrusive looking, if you use seperate subs.
secondly, with
very high volume requirements, you really need speakers to be varying sizes to cover all the frequencies, an 18" speaker can't be made to vibrate 15,000 times a second to produce treble... but a one inch speaker, which can easily vibrate 15,000 times a second can't move enough air when it vibrates at only 80 times a second to make suffiently
audible bass. hence the need in huge PA rigs for three (or four) way systems with active crossovers splitting the sound up into low, middle and high frequencies. that's done out of necessity and isn't an ideal solution because it's very hard to get a smooth transition from the speakers handling the low frequencies to those doing the mids, and so on. and crucially, remember that when a bassist twangs his low E string, it isn't just one pitch that's pruduced - the fundamental tone is 80Hz, which is handled by the bass speakers, but there's a whole series of higher pitches produced as well, which are responsible for the character of the sound (that's what makes a bass guitar sound different from a tuba) and these will be produced by the mid and even to an extend the high frequency speakers. so getting it all to sound homogenous and
musical can become hard work as you add more seperate elements.
in a typical living room though a 4" or 6" speaker
can produce enough vibration at low frequencies, and can vibrate quickly enough to do all but the highest sssssssssssss noises from cymbals etc. and for the reasons i'm hinting at above that's kinda a better solution.
apologies if you knew all this, or just if it's boring...
anyhow, let us know what you get, and how it sounds!
