After an incredibly frustrating process of choosing new speakers for surround and music use, I chose a pair of Triton Seven's, with a super sat 50C and super sat 3's for the rear. I have a 10+ yr old Onkyo SR505 receiver, and the retailer said the Triton's would be the equivalent of putting retread tires on a race car if I don't upgrade. I'm fine doing that, but am reading a lot of conflicting info on whether it will really make a difference in sound quality. My belief after a ton of research is that there very likely will be an improvement, but I suspect it will be very minor, and likely only noticeable to an extreme expert. Would love any input from experienced users.

I say the process of choosing was frustrating, because there's essentially no way to effectively test speakers! All the listening rooms are different than where the speakers will live, the sources are different, etc. At the retailer where I purchased the Triton's, they had some paradigm Monitor 6000SE's set up in one room, and the Tritons in another. I honestly thought the Paradigm's sounded far better, but they were connected to a $2500 receiver, and the Triton's to a $500 unit. Both rooms were playing entirely different material as well. I ended up doing exactly what I did NOT want to do - bought based on reviews. I expected the Triton's to sound at least twice as good as the old, cheap, single woofer Advent towers I was replacing but when I got them home, I was shocked at how good the Advent's sounded in comparison. Maybe this is partly due to the cheap receiver?? OR - is it a matter of diminishing returns? The $800 Paradigms sounded great, and the $1400, super highly reviewed Triton Seven's did too, but I really didn't hear a ton of difference.

I may upgrade anyway just to gain modern features, and am ok spending $500-$1000. I would really like to know if the sound quality difference is going to be dramatic, or only something a trained audiophile would appreciate. Would there be anything gained by going to a $1500 receiver? If it matters, the system is in a 22 X 21 room with a center-vaulted ceiling going from 8-12ft, so about 4600 cu ft. Sorry for the rambling first post!!

CC66:
Here's what SanthoshEapen, a beloved GE member, said about the Triton 7's:

My music room/library is about 12 feet by 15 feet, so it is a relatively small room. The Triton 7s are perfect for that room. They provide an incredibly detailed musical image. I can hear every instrument and know exactly where they are coming from. I used to listen to music on my Sennheiser HD 800 headphones before I got these speakers. I have not touched the Sennheisers since I got the Triton 7s - except late at night or early in the morning when I do not want to wake up the family. I listened to the Triton 2s and they are great speakers, but I prefer my 7s because I do not need to power them and I actually think my 7s provide better imaging and music (but that could be because of my DAC) than the 2s. Anyway the 2s would have been way too much for my small room. I am amazed how good these speakers are considering that I am playing them through an old (16 years old now) Yamaha RX 595 receiver - hardly an audiophile product.

My Setup:
Sonos with coax digital out to Meridian Director DAC.
Receiver: Yamaha RX 595
Speakers: Triton Sevens

Thoughts on SanthoshEapen post:

Even with a 16 year old Yamaha RX 595 reciever you can obtain Great sound.
Spending more will get you better sound, but generally it's not a night & day difference as many may think.

Hi, cc66

Welcome to the forum!

As Anthem points out, the T7's are highly regarded speakers. You DO have a great speaker set you are trying to get the most out of!

A couple thoughts:

That's a large room and space you are trying to fill with sound. You didn't mention a sub, so is your set up with the T 7's as full range, and the SuperSat's as small, crossed at something like 120 HZ? It may take a bit of playing with the T 7's positions and degree of toe in, plus some break in time, to get the most out of what they can contribute. So it's worth giving yourself a little time to get the new speaker set up settled in.

And given the size of the space, your Onkyo's amps may have their work cut out for them providing all the power (I think they're around 75 wpc? Hard to find spec's for older receivers). If what you think you might want some more of includes dynamic punch, a sense of some real body to the music, another option is to add a sub, let it do the heavy lifting, take a load off the Onkyo's amps. A FF 3 or 4, ideally a SuperSub X, would add lots of "body" to the sound in a large room.

And, yes, good speakers love good feeds, and the better the speaker, the more it responds to better feeds. I hope some folks who have direct experience with the Onkyo SR505 driving Tritons can chime in here with comments on it's suitability for playing with sound quality and sufficient power in large rooms. I can't answer that.

Hang in there! You have a great speaker set up.

Rick

Thanks so much for the replies! I do currently have a subwoofer, with both fronts set to small. I still need to play with the settings, as I let the Audessey do its thing but may want to tweak it.
When I compared the old Advents to the Tritons, it was in stereo mode only, so no surrounds.