Playing the Name Game
When it comes to speakers for your surround sound system there happen to be all kinds of models, makes, and brands on the market. You will find vast variations in quality and price among the multitudes. With so many from which to choose it is often difficult to know which brands are reputable, which represent good quality, and which are merely treading water when it comes to the wave of home theater and surround sound quality on the market today. We all have budget constraints however and for that reason some of us find that it is preferable to have a better quality of sound than merely watching the television or listening to the flat radio tunes coming from our existing home stereos.
There happen to be some decent brands and makers of speakers in all price ranges. The quality will be distinctly different in lower price ranges than in the high end. I have a preference for Bose speakers. I find the sound created by these speakers is superior to other similar products and am perfectly willing to pay the price that comes along with this sort of quality. That being said, I have had the occasion to find some excellent bargains on Bose surround sound systems in the past quite by accident. If I can find those bargains (some as low as $500 for the set, which is a bargain when you consider the fact that some of their sets begin at $2,000) when not actively searching for a bargain, it is quite possible to get an excellent price when you are seeking just that.
Everyone is different and tastes will vary greatly from one person to another. There are many other wonderful makers when it comes to surround sound systems that offer products that are ideal and provide excellent sound quality in small places. These are great for small budgets that happen to live in small apartments or have small media rooms in their homes. Logitech has some excellent surround sound systems that actually sell for less than $100. They also have systems that sell for considerably more. The best thing you can do is listen to systems in stores, then compare prices on the Internet for bargains among the brands you feel are within your budget and your tastes.
Panasonic actually has a good 5.1 channel surround sound home theater that is very reasonably priced at around $350 (depending on where you are purchasing of course). It makes for a good basic home theater for the average family and that is what most of us require. Other great brands of surround sound speakers for an average sized room will include: JBL, which offers some basic speaker sets; Yamaha, which offers basic to mid-range quality speaker systems; KLH, which offers very basic budget friendly surround sound systems, and Athena Technologies, which has a pretty nice mid range surround sound system on the market at the moment. This of course is by no means an exhaustive list of choices on the market but a good place for budget aware shoppers to begin searching for their perfect surround sound set of speakers.
While I mentioned some specific brand names in this article, it is important that you do not get caught up in the hype of the ‘name game’. There is much that can be said about having a good name in an industry but consumers often pay the price that is associated with that name when in the checkout line. I am a huge fan of Bose and realize that a large part of the sticker price I pay is for the brand of the name. This does not mean that there aren’t some excellent quality speakers on the market that will cost less and be made by manufacturers I’ve never heard of. Check for warranties and take a risk if you like the sound of a little known speaker company. You could have just discovered the company that will topple Bose from its comfortable spot at the top of my personal speaker-buying list.
