Two Approaches - Pros and Cons

[DougMac]

I'm building a dedicated HT. The room will be 16x18x9. I plan to use a sub (leaning towards SVS). Use will probably be 60/40 movies/music. Space and WAF is not a problem. Listening position will be at what is considered optimum front/back ratio and I have no restraints on speaker placement, therefore they will be at recommended positions.

My original thoughts were to use 340's across the front with 170's as surrounds. Then I read a post by Dave on a forum discussing the 200's. He said essentially the two 4" mid woofers in the 200's has the same area as the one woofer in the 170's. He discussed the advantages the two smaller woofers bring to high mids and that the xover to the tweeter is set higher, which helps keep the tweeter from working so hard with the lower range of its response. He also discussed the quickness in mids the 200's two woofers bring.

That got me thinking about another approach. I'd like some thoughts on the differences in these two systems, which are ~$350 apart, which is doable.

System A: 340's across the front, 4 170's for surrounds.

System B: Sierras across the front, 4 200's for surrounds.

Would one system be better for HT? for music?

Would the advantages of the Sierras over the 340's (arguably smoother response, more detail, better bass) offset the the slight loss in bass response of the 200's vs the 170's? Since I'll be using a good musical sub, would the arguably better midrange of the 200's give it an advantage over the 170's in this setup?

Have I opened a can of worms?

Of course, I'd love to do all Sierras, but I have to live in the real world (plus I'm a Scot).

Doug