what is the best way too get the most out of my system?

Question

just things like the best speaker wire too
use the best way too connect the speakers
too the Receiver and any other advice
so I can the best out of what I have

Answer 1

You can have a lot of fun with a laser pointer.

Use the laser pointer to make sure your center speaker is pointing at the head of the central seat.

Then: adjust the L/R speakers to have some "toe-in".

Put the laser pointer along side the L/R speaker cabinet to see where the sound from the 2 speakers intersect. Adjust them to be symetrical. But you have 3 typical amounts of "toe-in":

A - So the sound intersects 2 ft in front of the central seat (the classic 2 channel music way)
B - So the sound intersects exactly on the central seat
C - So the sound intersects 2 ft behind the central seat

Your speakers and seating distances are different from anyone elses so turn on an effects-heavy chapter, turn OFF the TV and listen to the sound with all 3 amounts of toe-in to hear what sounds best in your room.

CALIBRATION:

Run out and get a Radio Shack Analog SPL meter. Then rent/buy a copy of "Avia" or "Digital Video Essentials". These disks have a tutorial on how to calibrate your speakers.

SUBWOOFER:

Make a long RCA cable with some old CATV coax and 2 "F-to-RCA-Male" adaptors from Radio Shack.

Move your primary seat away and put the sub in the position in the room where you normally sit. Fire up a bass-heavy scene in a movie. (You may want to disconnect the other speakers for this.)

Crawl along the wall where you would normally place your sub. There should be places where the bass is smooth & tight and other places where it is echoey and boomy. Mark the smooth spots with a post-it or a bottle of beer.

After you have several spots picked out, relocate the sub to one of the spots, put your chair back and listen.

By the law of reflection, you should have smooth & tight bass at your primary seat. Try sitting in the L/R seats to hear if the bass is nice there. You may have to relocate the sub to some of the different marked locations to try and get all seats to have nice sound.

Answer 2

Without knowing what is in your system it's hard to answer your question.

Simple things:
- Use larger guage (e.g. 14 awg) rather than smaller guage (e.g. 18 awg) speaker wire if going more than 20 ft or so.
- connect the speakers so the red terminal on the amp is connected to the red terminal on the spekaer (the speaker wire should have an indicator on one wire (white stripe, color thread, brass vs silver, ridges, etc) so you know) ... this ensure speakers are "in phase"
- If you have HD use HDMI rather than component.
- position speakers correctly (do a google search on "speaker+placement")

Answer 3

invest on wires