Take TWR wall mounted flanking the flat screen TV with 18" between and an FPS center mounted under TV. Act 1 for surround channels. Sitting distance approx. 15 ft from front speakers.

Pros: dynamics and tonal balance are very convincing,
Cons: visually the subwoofers don't match the sleek style

Buying these new is very unlikely now, but if you can find them used and in good condition they might actually sound better than when they were new. Like good leather these speakers seem to sound better with age. When new, the midrange was a bit forward but that is completely gone now. They are very detailed even at the lowest volume level but not tinny or thin. The FPS is used as a center and has plenty of realistic bass and weight in my system and the front sound staging across the left center and right is seamless. I am using Act 1 for surround on a Yamaha RX-V657 receiver.

How I compare these with previously used audiophile gear:

I downsized my home theater to make it part of a family room as I added another bedroom to our house. As a bachelor it was the Infinity Kappa 8 speakers with Carver and NAD products. I relocated having to sell my large speakers I fell in love with Magnepan MMG speakers which was a beautiful music listening system but not quite the home theater excitement that Paradigm offered in my brother's home. Now that I provided a list of exceptional products to compare the Energy Take TWR speakers it is time to say that of all the speakers mentioned the Energy is best built, and offers the same caliber performance of them all. Since then I have bought Energy speakers for my friends--the Act 6 for a small high performance system, and some used Take speakers for my wife's office. I have become a major fan of this company.

My sister is a movie buff and she spends weekends with her husband watching anything and everything at the movie theater. When she visits our house for a movie night, she and her husband both agree the sound is way better than the theater as the impact and realism of the sound is superior.

The subwoofers I ended up with are not an Energy product. I combined well made passive system with my own amplification. They are a 10 inchers sitting beside each TWR. These are too good of speakers not to carefully setup a good subwoofer system.