Onkyo 616 / Denon 2113 with Dali Zensors?

It is an excellent set of speakers, especially for that price! KEF speakers would also be nice, but I doubt if the KEF speakers of equal quality would be available for the same price.

I would recommend the Denon receiver, because Onkyo reliability has been rather poor. The Denon has pretty good sound quality and power for its price.

I would recommend that you jump on that setup while that price is available; you can't go wrong!

I am not familiar with those; I had some KEF iQ9 speakers which were excellent, and the Q900 are also excellent.

Yes, there are some combinations of amps that are synergistic...or not.

As an example I had experience with; the NAD C356BEE amplifier has been written up as an excellent one, and the PSB Image T6 speakers are very good speakers (I had them for a couple of years), but that amp and those speakers did not work well together; the sound quality was not the best. There was some sort of mismatch there. That sort of thing can happen.

Certain speakers are a difficult load at certain frequencies, and that may cause some amplifiers to misbehave and sound less than wonderful.

I would not recommend the KEF 3005 setup because from my perspective it has front speakers that are too small for adequate performance. I think that front speakers should always be big enough to give you full output down to 50-55 Hz, and then the sub should go down from there only and NOT be operated much above 50 Hz.

In KEF speakers I would suggest that you get a pair of C3 speakers, a pair of C1 speakers, and a C6 for the center. In US dollars that would cost around $850, so that is maybe 500 pounds in the UK? That would be a very nice system; much better-sounding IMO than the 3005.

The Dali Zensor 5 setup is also well-balanced with those requirements in mind.

A subwoofer should have at least a 12-inch driver and 250 watts of RMS power minimum; if it does not meet those requirements it is unlikely to be of much use.
Edited by commsysman - 7/2/12 at 2:09pm