New home theater setup in the works
September 13th, 2007
I’ve always enjoyed listening to music and watching movies, but I’ve never spent a whole lot of money on audio/video equipment. While living in the US I did purchase a cheap HTIB (Home Theater In a Box), which has served me well since then. Of course at $350 for a 5-dvd changer/receiver/amplifier, five speakers and a subwoofer, you’re obviously not going to get the ultimate home cimena experience. After bying an HD-capable flat screen tv and a PS3 Blu-ray player, it’s become quite obvious that my HTIB system just doesn’t cut it anymore. Thus my quest to find a reasonably priced setup that both plays well and has a high WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) begins.
The 40″ LCD will be wall mounted in the near future, and in an attempt to avoid that whole “bachelor pad” feel I had to compromise and find a set of wall mountable speakers. Well, there’s a reason why speaker design hasn’t changed much over the last 50 years or so: to achieve optimal sound quality, a speaker enclosure has to be of a certain size. In other words: bigger is usually better, and finding a speaker that looks nice, is relatively flat, plays well AND is reasonably priced is near impossible. I ended up buying three Klipsch Synergy SLX speakers to use as front (left, right and center) channels. I haven’t listened to them myself yet, but all reviews I’ve read claims they sound great (considering the compact enclosure). Size-wise they’re the same height as the tv, so that should work out just fine. The only negative thus far are the speaker grilles, which are dark grey cloth. I’ll try them like that for a while, and if I don’t like it I can always try to dye the grilles black to better match the tv. Most likely I’ll end up buying a separate subwoofer too, but I’ll try the speakers by themselves and see how I like it. I don’t know what I’m gonna get for rear surround speakers, but that’s not crucial at this point.
I’ve also ordered an Onkyo TX-SR605 7.1 channel surround receiver, which will be the heart of my new home theater system. A few noteworthy features are its support for the latest HD audio formats (DTS HD and Dolby TrueHD), 2/1 HDMI v1.3 input/output, Audyssey 2EQ accoustic room correction. The unit has already received an EISA Best Product award for 2007/08, and five stars in What Hi-Fi magazine. Considering all its features, the price seems quite reasonable. If they weren’t backordered I’d have one sitting at home right now. I came across a display unit at a local electronics warehouse, but since the place I ordered it will have it in about a week’s time, I’d rather wait and get one that’s brand new and unused.
Once the receiver is in place, all I’ll need are some decent speaker cables. That’s something I’ve never spent any money on before, but since I’m spending a few thousand dollars on new audio equipment, I’d be a fool to just get some cheapo speaker cables. Thankfully one of my friends knows more about audio stuff than I do, so I know I who to turn to for advice.
Unfortunately, the most expensive part of this whole process still remains: purchasing the surrounding apartments in our building so that I can crank the volume all the way up! 
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