HT Talk
 

Talk about and post pics of your home theater setup. Here is my neighbors and something I was talking to a guy with on another thread.

I just redid my neighbors setup went form some old school klipsch bella speakers to polk LSi25's with built in powered 10 inch subs and in a room that is 21 by 21 by 17 with openings all around it rocks the room and most of the house.
Also have samsung blu ray player, Onkyo 3 room receiver, pioneer 300 dvd changer, apple tv for all the music, and 2 directv boxes one for tall the rooms and one for that tv.
http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/r...c/100_1334.jpg
http://i483.photobucket.com/albums/r...c/100_1333.jpg

set up looks very nice!

Ya you should hear it like the pod racing scene in star wars.

It must be ridiculous. What do you think of B&W speakers in general? From what i've read they're really good.

There pretty nice speakers they just are power hungry and it will be well worth it to buy a receiver that can put out around 110 watts a channel or even do a preamp and a amp like a outlaw there good value for the money.

Nice, i'll make sure to get a decent receiver for it.

Good to hear it, you just do not want to try to put everything together at once of you can not afford to, take your time some systems take a few years to put together.

Well this is for the family room at my parents house and the whole family room is under renovation right now so the wiring is going in for it as we speak. I know my dad doesn't want anything too fancy because the room isn't huge and it's an odd shape. We'd be taking our time and putting more money into it if it was a legit home theater but this is just to make it sound better than the TV speakers while using the B&W's we bought a few years back. I'm sure it'll come together pretty well, we have a local home theater shop owner working on it for us.

Ya should come out nice, just get a logitech harmony remote the 100 dollar one works fine and that way it is easier for everyone to turn on everything and all one button to turn on everything one button to turn off everything.

Yeah those remotes always looked sick, i'll have to get one. Any good suggestions on a cheap but well made receiver that offers everything i'll need?

No home theater is complete without a high quality digital library playback solution:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...ransporter.png

Logitech Squeezebox

(That's part of my day job by the way, I work on the software/services for this stuff. The one linked above is the expensive audiophile unit, they make reasonably-priced units too :)).

Ah now it all makes sense why you keep recommending logitech stuff lol. Looks good but a little expensive.

The pioneer's are pretty good value and soem of the nicer hardon/kardons are nice as well

That is old school apple tv FTW

Apple TV does the whole video thing, which we don't, but our audio playback quality (and features) are a lot nicer if you're in it mainly for the audio.

LOL well I love it my neighbors do as well all the music is stored in lossless format with not compression and played back unchanged. They do not even use the video feature that it has, also can find a song probably much fast on the apple tv as well. Not trying to fight about it but me and them both tried out the box and didn't like it apple's is so nice and integrated with itunes and all.

My current home theater setup:
~Home theater PC
~PS3
~Uverse (Not in the pictures because it was being installed the next day.)
~Receiver is an Onkyo 8 series of some sort, forget which one. I just got it maybe three or four months ago and love it. Next step is two floor standing speakers later this year, then a center and sub.

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/IMG_0301.jpg
http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/IMG_0298.jpg

Mine is a 64" Pioneer Kuro Elite plasma with a 700 series onkyo receiver and polk speakers, plus a dvd burner, directv HD, PS3 and Harmony 1 remote. I love the way the onkyo uses the mic and test sounds to set the audio up. It sounds better than anything I have had in the past.

I didn't really want to downsize from the 73" mitsu projector we had when it broke, but in addtion to the tv, we also gained 2 and a half feet in our room.

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/4567/dsc04792ms8.jpg

Does anyone know when the Samsung 9000 series is coming out? I'm liking the 55" 8000 series but it doesn't have localized dimming.

Nice big pioneer I like it.

Quick looking through rumors and such, it should be around August hopefully.

Yeah that's what it seemed to me as well but I couldn't find any solid info on it. Hopefully August it is!

Link
Actually, seems this is an older thread and talks about the 9 series but not sure about the 9000 series.

Yeah I found that website too. I think the 9 and 9000 are the same thing depending if your stating the series (9) or the model (xxx9000)

For those who are wondering, if you want to get into home theater a lot, avsforum is a great website.

^^ Thanks Dreamer, I need a new surround sound set up... great info at that forum.

I have an older version of the Onkyo 5.1 set up but one of my rear speakers is blown :mad:

What are you looking for? Another 5.1 setup, space/size of the area, what type of setup do you want/need? And the ultimate question is what can your budget be?

Looking for a 7.1 system, space is no problem, as far as price goes... doesn't really matter as long as the system is worth every penny, but I am going to try adn go no higher than $1500 :tup:

At 7.1 your best bet might be to look into mixing/matching basically. Spend some time over on avsforum and get a good grip on what people are talking about and what price range you feel you want to spend. Setting a budget early is a big step, because it will show you where you can spend more and have to cut back on other items.

Also, and I hate saying this, but go to Best Buy and taking a few CDs of your best music and listen to some of their top end brands they carry. Setup a Denon reciever and probably two floor standing speakers and a sub and see how they sound. Get a feel for these and then start doing research online and how they compare to other brands. Also, many websites you can buy audio gear from will have a good 30 day trial period, which in the end can be the best thing. Drop the money, buy them and test them, if you are not happy then send them back. It can be a lot of work, but picking the right audio gear can be difficult.

Thanks for the info!

For those wondering, my current list of items to check out so far are two floor standing speakers from these companies:
~Aperion Intimus 5T Tower Speaker
~Polk TSi 400 maybe 500
~KEF (Have not found any in person so not sure which model)
~Definitive Technology (Probably not but if I can get a discount from a friend maybe)

I think there was already a thread on this a while back but I couldn't find it...my setup is as follows:

Denon 4308ci AV receiver - 7x140W
7 NHT Classic series speakers (2 towers, 1 center, 4 surround and rear surround)
1 NHT Classic Ten 150W sub
Samsung 52" LCD
Panasonic Bluray player
Denon Ipod stand (integrates with on-screen menu)
Xbox 360
Monster "power filter"/surge protection box

I don't have a pic of the whole system at home handy but here's the receiver. The new DTS HD or Dolby HD sound format on newer blu-ray movies is amazing. The home theatre sound is so good that I often catch myself wondering whether the phone ringing or knock at the door is really at my place and not the movie...sometimes its a little freaky. So you can imagine a horror movie. Do you guys have the same experiences?

Any opinions on the Denon 4308 receiver from the audio experts here? I have had my Denon 4308 receiver about a year and probably do not use its full potential, especially because I am in a condo building.

Attachment 3262

Good system, receivers are usually never used to their full potential because they do so much, which is great. Living in a condo/apt. can limit a little use of a receiver, but it is all about getting that clearer sound out of the system, which will make it better for any place. You will not have to turn up the volume as loud which will make others around you happier, but when you do...it is soo sweet. ;)

They are pretty good units right there with onkyo have used one of them plenty of power but you will never get to its max potential.

Heres my system.

Panel
Pioneer Elite PRO-111FD 50" Plasma

Receiver
Pioneer Elite SC-07 Receiver

Sources
Pioneer Elite BDP-09

Speakers
Martin Logan Purity Towers (L&R Fronts)
Martin Logan Feature (Center)
Martin Logan Fresco i (L&R Rears)
Martin Logan Abyss (Sub)

Power
Panamax Power M7500-PRO Line Conditioner

Accessories
Universal Remote Company MX-3000 Tablet
Universal Remote Company MSC-400
Audio Quest Cables
Martin Logan Fresco i Floor Stands

There might be a few other things I'm forgetting but yeah that's the gist of it. The Receiver is 140 WPC but only powers the rears. The front Center (Feature) and Front Towers (Puritys) are self powered with internal 200W amps.

I just play everything stored on my PC with TVersity - Home through my PS3.

Bump

It's really not the same :) There's a million ways to play digital audio, I guess, but the Slim Devices stuff puts a lot of focus on good codec support in the hardware and high quality DACs and outputs. It's audiophile-grade stuff dedicated to the task of reproducing sound, rather than "hey we have audio out, let's tack on mp3 playing support onto our game console". I suppose if you actually are playing low-quality mp3s there might not be much difference anyways (as mp3 loses so much quality right off the bat), but for a FLAC (or other lossless codec) digital collection it matters.

There are only a few true competitors in this segment, the most notable being Olive and Sonos.

Regardless of what you use for the audio out part in the living room, one thing that's really nice to do for any of them is to move your digital audio library to a dedicated little NAS server, so that your PC can be shut off (or busy playing games or whatever). Stuff like the ReadyNAS (or any of its million competitors) is cheap and works well for that sort of thing.

Here is my setup (most not shown in the picture)

Olevia 47 inch LCD
Kenwood 5.1 surround sound w/ Sub
Samsung Blu-ray Player
Xbox360
Wii

TV was mounted above the fireplace in my apartment by me and my friend. Power outlet had to be ran and installed behind the TV and cables were ran separately. It took alot of butchering to the wall and studs but we patched the wall up and it turned out really nice. :tup: On a side note: the wii sensor bar (the wire seen running off the left side) has been replaced by a wireless one now.

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m...n/S7300597.jpg