First of all, some backstory as I am mostly a lurker on these forums. I was grew up in a household where “TV speakers were just fine.” This remained true for many years after I moved out on my own. I “stepped things up” to a Vizio soundbar after college once my then-girlfriend and I moved into our paper-thin-walls apartment. Being a stereotypical broke college student (GI Bill helped pay for school, but didn't do much for movies and beer :-P ), her and I spent a fair amount of time doing a dinner and a movie at home.

Fast forward to about two years ago, shortly after buying our first house, I had my ears opened for the first time. I had stumbled upon AVS Forums, which led me down a rabbit hole that is home theater. Now my wife and I have our careers and have been able to squirrel away money to enjoy some of the “wants” rather than just the “needs.” She says we’re doing OK, I say we’re still broke , haha. Anyway, one of the wants for me was the pursuit of better sound, which led me to buying my first AVR (Denon X1000), a set CBM-170 SE’s and a Rythmik LV12R. Once I got everything hooked up and fired up Saving Private Ryan….Man, you could almost feel the bullets flying over your head. To say we were blown away would be an understatement.

Anyway, I’m getting long winded here, let’s get down to brass tacks. Earlier this year I added a CMT 340SE center channel and while it wasn’t the same religious experience as going from a soundbar to a legitimate 2.1 setup, I felt like it was a worthwhile investment. Plus, I got a killer deal on it used. Now, we’re doing some remodeling (floors and baseboard + new paint) and I was thinking that it may be a good time to wire up some surrounds and step things up to 5.1. Which leads me to the million dollar question...Where do I go from here?

My thoughts are, based on the layout of the room, to pick up a pair of CMT340SE’s for L/R and move my 170’s to surround L/R position. That being said, being that a first-responder is not a career path where one gets rich, a more economic path is not out of the question. For example, keeping my 170s as L/R and picking up a set of HTM-200s for the surrounds.

What do you guy think/suggest? Would it be worth it to spend the additional $300 on 340’s over a set of HTM-200s? This is the setup that I will likely be keeping for the foreseeable future as our current house/room is not conducive to 7.1.

I’ll include a crude MS Paint sketch of my living room for visual reference, maybe add some pics of the room later as well (it’s a mess right now, we use it as mini storage while we remodel). The room is 21’x13’ with 8’ ceilings.

livingroom1.jpg