Ok so the projector has arrived, the couch and bed are in place, things are really starting to take shape, but… eek! We don’t have any way to play audio in the Sweet! We need a surround sound system for watching tv/movies, but it would also be nice to have a system that is good for music listening. The room is a very hard one- hardwood floors, no curtains, not much on the walls yet, so that needs to be taken into consideration. I don’t think a $10,000 home theater is in order, but I am willing to spend what it will take to get a system that sounds reasonably good. Dana, our new roommate is looking into various options, but I want to know if any of you have seen or heard of anything that struck you as particularly good. If you were buying a surround sound system right now, what would you do?

UPDATE: I had an amazing experience buying the surround sound system. Dana and I went to Fry’s to see what they had, since I knew they would have a bunch of systems we could listen to. After an amazingly bad 1/2hr of being ignored, then given some of the worst, most uninformed customer service imaginable, we looked up local home theater stores on Dana’s iPhone (I need to go buy one). We found The Home Theater Doctor, and went in to see if they would let us listen to some systems in the hopes that I could find something that sounds good but wouldn’t kill my budget. We were the only customers in the store, and we got the best treatment I have ever received in any store in my life.

We listened to a bunch of different speakers, starting with a few beautiful, but complete overkill, Vandersteen cabinets that were breathtakingly good. I do not think I have listened to better speakers in my life, but I am not a complete audiophile so that is not necessarily saying too much. After listening to a few different options, I ended up buying a pair of Usher S-520’s for the two front speakers (On the advice of Tim, our salesman, I got a 4.1 system, as the Sweet doesn’t have room to properly install a center channel), Energy 2.2’s for the surrounds, a Dennon amp and a 12″ sub.

The Sweet is not an ideal room for good sound- lots of bare, hard surfaces, a stairwell down one side, and some awkward construction make it completely less than ideal. But the system I ended up with sounds GREAT, I am extremely pleased with it and I recommend The Home Theater Doctor to anyone in LA who is looking for some new speakers. The advice I got was tailored towards the room I have and the budget I wanted to stick to; at no point did I feel like I was being upsold or steered in my decision towards a more expensive option. Tim and the rest of the team just let me listen to what they thought I would like, and helped me understand the different variables involved in putting together a sound system. So now the Sweet is nearing completion, there are still some big decisions to make, but overall we are looking good.