A couple of years ago I bought a Pioneer receiver and center channel Athena, and used 4 existing speakers to complement the 5-channel system. The 2 front are Acoustic Audio and the 2 surround are Kenwood from a used-to-be mini system. It is only recently that I have starting looking into this further and even considered matching speakers... although I wouldn't even know where to start. I bought the Acoustic Audio used, and looking for them in the speaker reviews I can't find them, so I wonder if I got taken. What would be the steps you would take at this point? Subwoofer? Replace any of the speakers? How do I know if the Acoustic Audio are any good? Anyway, I'll leave it at that for now. Would appreciate any comments/suggestions.
It all depends on your financial situation largely. Your receiver will work fine, and if you have the money, buy a few more athena speakers and a sub. If youre flat broke, dont worry about it too much. Gotta have a budget to work with to make the best suggestion though.
Go to your local store that sells speakers, listen to a few there, note the levels of detail, sound quality, as objectively as possible, and then go home and do the same thing with your speakers. If your speakers are really bad, you'll notice real quick.
For 500 bucks Canadian your best bet is to obtain some Athena bookshelf speakers. Retail they go for 186 a pair or so in Canada I think, so you could probably get them for cheaper. As for a sub, do what you can afford.