How do you divide your HT budget?

[markov]

I'm curious as to how other people divided up their budgets for their home theatre. Specifically what percentage you spent on 5.1 speaker set up vs. electronics (for this purpose lets assume only receiver or pre/pro and 5 channels of amplification and 1 disc player of any type). If you want to give a whole breakdown that might be interesting too!

[David Meek]

There was a thread on this a couple of years ago (?) and I had calculated what my percentages were. Don't have time to search for it right now, but I'm thinking it was around 55% components and 45% speakers. That's a guess though.

[joetama]

There was a thread on this a couple of years ago (?) and I had calculated what my percentages were. Don't have time to search for it right now, but I'm thinking it was around 55% components and 45% speakers. That's a guess though.

I think that is pretty close to true.

Components (MSRP) = 3000+1000+650= 4650
Speakers (MSRP) = 3000+750+600 = 4400

Components .5138
Speakers .4886

[markov]

Thanks for the replies so far. I was previously under the impression that a significant portion (almost 2:1) more should be spent on speakers vs electronics.

My motivation behind the question was put together a sytem that is balanced in performance so that I will feel less of a need to upgrade any signal component. I know thats a stretch but it helps rationalize it in my mind at least for now. And thanks to the reccomendations, it makes selecting my electronics much easier (but harder on the wallet).

[joetama]

I think the ratio depends on the budget.

The lower the budget the more you should spend on the speakers.

Once you get to a certain point the speaker's marginal returns start to roll off, when you get to that point the need for higher quality electronics gets higher and higher.

[markov]

I was budgeting around 3-4k for speakers and I would kind of like to get into seperates for electronics. At a 2:1 ratio that made it extremly hard but at a 1:1 ratio many more options become available.

[Hdale85]

I agree if your spending a total budget around 4k I think more should go towards speakers. But its easy to get some nice HT stuff for relatively cheap. If you have a budget of around 6k total spending 4k on speakers and then going with an Integra DTC-9.8 pre/pro or the new Emotiva UMC-1 with an Emotiva 5 channel amp you get very good value for your money. But if your looking for something more high end well then of course you can get much much more expensive components. I would shoot for something like the Integra DTC-9.8 and an ATI 1807 amplifier. That amp weighs like 95lbs its a beast.

[dtb300]

Speakers - 42%, Components - 58% Based on MSRP

[Chris D]

I spent WAY more on all my components, but that's for a lot of components. Don't have the time to do a full computation.