I am looking 5.1 speaker to match with my XR70. I haven't hooked up this receiver yet. I would like to keep cost below $500, but I still have some room to go up. Should I start with L-C-R and Sub, or just go 5.1? XR70 is bi-amp capable, I am not sure what that means. I am going to use this as part of my HT. Any suggestion, where should I start? Thanks.
"Should I start with L-C-R and Sub, or just go 5.1?"
Depends on how much detail and how high quality a speaker you are looking for. You could get a very respectable 5.1 system for under $500 from Fluance.
However, if you buy just the front three and a sub, obviously more money would go into each speaker.
Along the lines of what DA said, for $500, I'd go with fronts. Save a few bucks over a few months, and add a center. Save for a few months, and add a sub. Save for a few months, and add surrounds.
Suprisingly enough, movies can still sound very good with a 2 channel set up. I'd be willing to bet that a pair of $500 main speakers would sound better for movies than a $500 complete 5.1 speaker system.
Just my opinion, I'm sure not everyone will agree.
Agree with Stu, though I'd order it a little differently:
step 1. If music is your main priority, get the best pair of mains you can afford (Athena AS-F2s, $400 shipped from audioadvisor.com)
OR,
if you mainly do HT and you love action flicks, get the best sub you can afford plus a cheap pair of decent bookshelves that you can use as surrounds later on, for instance Hsu STF-2 subwoofer ($425 shipped A-stock or $350 shipped B-stock, hsuresearch.com) plus Athena AS-B1s ($100/pair shipped, Audioadvisor.com)
step 2. get the best center speaker you can afford, it's the workhorse of your HT system since it handles all the dialogue which is at least 60% of the soundtrack.
step 3. surrounds---a few people here will disagree, but I wouldn't spend more than $100-200/pair unless doing a lot of multichannel music with SACD/DVD-As. With 90% of movies out there, your surrounds might do at most 10% of the work and it's mostly ambient noises or stuff like bullets and cars whizzing by.
You could go with the Fluance SX-HTB+ speaker package from Fluance.com which is very similiar to Athenas in quality and build. I like their sound better than the athenas but that's just my opinion.
that package is around $400 with shipping right now