Choosing Speakers Argon VS Onkyo VS KEF

USA. So we are not familiar with the Argon except as an industrial gas. And, we don't know what is available to you, where ever you are located. Basics remain basics, however.

True, there is considerably more source material of entertainment that comes with 5.1 sound than 7.1. Some folks are considerable surround sound/home theater fans. (Not me, so much.) Yes, a 7.1 setup simply had an extra pair of surround speakers, usually placed to the rear. Yes, I have rudimentary surround, 5.1 for my great room with big screen TV. I needed to compromise about space for speakers, etc. but am firm that my great room is primarily to be maintained as a living room & not become less comfortable furniture like than necessary. It is NOT primarily a dedicated home theater. I do get benefit of basic surround for the total experience without losing a room in which to live. 5.1 is plenty for me, as I also have the center channel & sub woofer. In the end, always an individual decision.

I would be prone to lean towards the KEF setup.

About receiver & speaker power numbers: Don't get caught up in confusion. Speakers are often labeled as to the maximum wattage they can handle. That would be a maximum volume. High power output by amplifiers does not kill speakers. If anything, insufficient power does. When insufficient, maximum stress occurs, distortion is maximized, perhaps destructively. In addition, power hungry speakers, (but because of imposing a difficult load due to low impedance like 3 or 4 ohms, ) stress underpowered amps to the point of their distortion, too.

Don't worry about an amp being high powered. That is just capacity, not the norm.

but here goes and please forgive me for any misunderstanding. take whatever is helpful, and ignore the rest. the onkyo set is very high value, esp if had for $600 or so as has passed. they are not very sexy though,

7.1 usage is a function of how much space you have behind listener. that being said, space behind listener is desirable anyways. for best acoustics, 38% of room length from wall, you will not suffer muddy bass by having ears next to wall, and you will avoid audio "smearing" with such early reflections from the rear wall boundary

sub in the enclosed furniture sounds like a bad idea. in fact you should "crawl for bass" to find the best position. my personal tastes are to avoid corner positioning at all costs.

must you use furniture in the front? here is what i said very recently here (and in your case, bookshelves are just as good as "towers"):

The best is three towers in the front. Very few do this. I've been ranting and raving for a long time about this. Even a few times just this past week at Audioholics, where I have a 1000 posts, or at AVS where I also have a 1000 posts.

Now, if you have a large DLP sitting on an AV rack, you can't, understood. If you have a flat panel mounted on the wall a few feet high, you absolutely can, and IMO absolutely should.

get a modular rack for $200, and put it anywhere you want, just not up front. Even the closet if you want. A URC (extremely reputable) RF-20 remote + blaster is only $75 last I checked.

By having the identical tower, you will be:

- perfectly matched as matched can be, in all speaker characteristics
- even plane of tweeters/drivers for perfect and even panning
- completely bypass horizontal lobing issues inherent in a horiz mtm design, which usually means a sweetspot at less than 20 degrees. (towers are roughly at 60 deg). Also, the horiz cabinet means vertical dispersion as opposed to horiz dispersion. Sound likes to travel along the path of least resistance (smallest dimension), so to speak.

If it indeed must be horizontal, the best designs will be such as top mounted tweeter (ie B&W), WTMW (ie Revel, AV123), or coincidental (KEF).

Now, if you have only one loveseat, for 1-2 viewers, not as big of a deal, assuming you sit straight on. If you have more than one couch, my suggestions just only regarding center design will benefit you greatly.

Let alone the matching and pans. Oh, you also gain better video immersion since you don't have lights up front anymore.

I've talked about this 100 times at this forum alone.

if you can't, you can't. if going horiz, higher is typically better, but its always particular to setup. as having all tweeters closer to the same plane is usually desired, as you can see it depends. Also, if you have more than one row of seating like i do, higher is definitely better to fire over blocking heads and bodies.

hope this helps, and gl