[JCD]

The insignia's found at best buy were the darling of the super cheap crowd a while back. They were running only ~$50 back then rather than the ~$88 they are now, but could be what you're looking for. They also go on sale occasionally, so if needed, you could just wait for a sale. I've also seen a few threads around that show some mods that can be made to improve the sound. Or, if you're like me and get a lot of best buy cards because you're hard to buy for, that would be another way to go.

Other than that, maybe keep an eye out on Audiogon.com for some good deals. One I'd look for is the Paradigm mini-monitors. I've always thought those were a great bang for the buck speaker. If you got them at a discount, then even better.

 

[JCD]

I don't think these would be a good match. Since you were able to find the polks so cheaply, I'd see if you could find another pair and use one for the center channel and one maybe in the back for a 6.1 setup. For me, having the same tone/timbre/etc panning across the front three speakers is pretty important for movies. I think that Cynosure is going to be too different. And at $310 for the parts, it seems like you'd have an unbalanced system. For $310, I'd get those polks all around.

But then, that's just me.

 

[JCD]

Is there another speaker design that you could recommend that would have a similar sound? I would like to do some sort of DIY speaker work, and since I have the money and the time during the summer it would be a good time.

Also, I may be able to get a Polk CSi30 center channel speaker for $60, would you recommend this to match with the other speakers I got?

I think with most store bought speakers, it would be hard to timbre/tone/etc match with a DIY project unless you could find the exact drivers used in the l/r speakers. Then you'd have to match up the voicing of the speaker itself. In other words, I think that it'd be difficult to find anything that would do as well as finding something from Polk itself.

I don't know about that particular center channel. It looks like it's designed for another series in Polk's line up. When I look on their website, I couldn't find what the matching "center" channel speaker would be for that line -- finding another T20e would be ideal in any case. Barring that, I'd shoot them an e-mail and see if they have a matching center.

If you're looking for a DIY project, you could build a new sub. I don't know your sub, but maybe a bigger driver to get more oomph might be fun. I do like the looks of those other Epiihany speakers!

Or a new l/r/c for the system where you would then move the polks to the back for surround duty. That'd be a little more scratch, but could be a lot of fun. I really enjoy the whole DIY thing.

Anyway, that's my $0.02.