Crazy Jay - I think the warranty might be a "bit" longer than 3-4 months. if the surround was coming apart, you should have taken them beck for repair/replacement. However, that was 3-years ago....

The line was COMPLETELY changed about 2 years ago, so they are definatley playing with different stuff that what you had...

Additioanlly, "clipping" is not a term usually associated with a speaker. Typically its am amplifier term. Any chance you had an amplifer that was sending a poor (clipped) signal to the speakers?

For a "budget minded" system the Polk dB series is definatley worth a listen to. Are there others? Sure. For the money, theya re definatley worth looking into though.

Possibly you might even want to look at a nicer set of speakers (MOMO line) for the front, and the dB for the rear. Just an idea.