Simple Living Room Listening
Hoping to get some advice. We bought a house with a finished basement, and turned it into our den. It has our good TV, as well as all of the good speakers. Currently running an AVR-S760H, SVS Prime Center and Towers, a Speedwoofer Mk2, and 2 older Boston Acoustic bookshelfs as surrounds. We spend all of our evenings and casual time down there.
We're realizing that a basement with a single tiny window isn't really where we want to do the majority of our TV watching, especially for just casually watching TV while doing work or hanging out. So the plan is to move the S95B upstairs into a living room, get a good projector for the basement den, and use the den for movie nights with big sound, so all of the speakers will stay down there. Our normal TV evenings will just be in the living room.
However, I've spoiled my wife to being able to actually hear our TV and hear dialogue. I don't want/need to hear things at reference volume in this space, I just want some good speakers for casual TV/movie watching when we don't want to go into the basement.
Hoping to keep the entire setup under 500$, what is currently recommended for this? I have the ability to run speaker cables through the walls, so if there is a good 5.1 setup, I am open to it. I slowly built my current setup, from 2.0, to 2.1, to 3.1, to 5.1, and the biggest change was 2.1 to 3.1, so maybe that's all I need?
I'd love to hear what you are all doing for your casual watching spaces? What's the recommended setup with a good price to quality ratio? Thanks in advance!