Paradigm - SE3 vs Monitor 7 vs ?

I apologize if this has been discussed already, but a recent sale has dramatically moved up my purchase date. Most of my experience comes from my HTIB (yamaha) and a family members Paradigm's.

I'm mostly using my speakers for movies in an medium sized living room, but have plans to move my "theatre" to an entire basement. Right now I'm looking at Paradigm SE3's, but am also curious about Monitor 7's as they are half the price.

Receiver: Yamaha RXV571B
Current Speakers are HTIB yamaha bookshelves.
Budget: max is about $1200, but will only go that high if I am able to get a great deal.

The dealer I am looking at is offering the SE3's for 1200 while the Monitors are at about 500.

I am also open to other brands.

Any suggestions/advice would be greatly appreciated. Im looking to buy fairly soon.

Thanks

I have a sub and leftover speakers from my current 5.1 system. They are just HTIB quality but will suffice for the time being. A local dealer is having a "Retirement" sale and from what I can tell has good prices. My plan was to get the best speakers I can afford, whether it be a pair of floor standing, rears, centre or a sub and then worry about the rest later. I'm thinking the best place to start would be to upgrade to floor standings and later in the year upgrade the centre.

Im really a sucker for a good deal. Budget-wise I should be going for something in the price range of the Monitor 7's, but if the SE's come highly recommended I'd love to get the higher end speakers at the lower end price. If that makes sense?

Anyway, I am open to other brand/model suggestions, but Paradigm is what I have already heard.

Thanks for replies.

Oddly enough I was just reading about both of those subs. The HSU seems to come very highly recommended around here. Also, as I'm doing more and more reading, the KEF Q500's seem to be popular. Im starting to wonder if the difference between a $500-700 pair of speakers will perform roughly on par with the SE3's I was looking at.


Should I be looking at the Monitor 7's v.6 or v.7?

Ok, so price-wise, I think I'm going to check out the Paradigm Monitor 7's and the KEF Q500. As mentioned before, these will be my first non HTIB speakers. Is there anything I should be listening for or ignoring? Any other tips?

So I went and listened to the PSB Image T5, KEF Q500 and Paradigm Monitor 7s. PSB's I was very unimpressed with. The KEFs seemed to have very nice low end to them and good clarity. The Paradigms sounded great overall, but seemed to have less bass than the KEFs. The problem I'm having was that the speakers were at different locations with different music. Can anyone share their experience with either the Monitor 7's or the Q500's.

Ok thats gone over my head. I think I have some more reading to do on crossover.

Well I'm sorry to revive a dead thread, but I have just purchased the Monitor 7's and couldn't be happier. In store, they seem to beat out the KEF500's in nearly every category. I think I'd take them over the KEF 700's too, but I might just be biased there. So other than lighting knocking out power to the house just as I hit play on my favourite song, the only problem I've had was with the centre speaker. The centre is not matched with the mains and sounds so terrible to the point where the mains do a better job by themselves. Will hopefully have the Paradigm Centre 1 by Christmas, unless others have suggestions.