Home Theater catch-all

Chairman_Mao wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I added the Sonos Sub to my Sonos Playbar and color me impressed.. for a wireless sub it sure sounds awesome. Probably the best sub I've ever owned. Makes a huge difference watching movies on a non 5.1 or 7.1 setup. Feels more like a true Home Theatre experience over just the soundbar. My wife is happy because its wireless and looks actually pretty cool.. Glossy piano Black with a cool shape it looks more like some sort of art/sculpture than a speaker.

Edit

Did find out something stupid.. in the last round of Panasonic Plasma TV's for some bizarre reason Panasonic got rid of the option to disable the built in speakers.. so I was getting double audio from both the sound bar and built in speakers.. turning down the sound to zero didn't help because no matter what I tried the Xbox One remote or Kinect would send codes to both the Sonos Soundbar and TV. I had to google for a bit and found a few others in my situation.. only option was to put the TV into Hotel Mode and set the min vol and max vol to zero. Thanks internet for rescuing me.

Does your TV not disable the internal speakers when you've got ARC enabled over the HDMI connection? My ST series does this, so I assume the ZT would. Or perhaps you have things connected differently than I do.

How do you enable ARC over HDMI on the TV? or Xbox One?

Unfortunately I'm on the east coast for two weeks and won't be able to look at my settings. I only know for sure that it works when I use the TV's built-in Netflix app or any TV stations. My PS3 is connected directly to my receiver, so I don't need ARC for that. I noticed though that sometimes my TV doesn't handshake properly and I get double sound from my TV and receiver. Restarting the receiver fixes it.

This site's explanation is probably what I had to do, but I'm not sure.

Also, and you might have seen this too, ARC only works if the speakers/receiver is connected via HDMI 2 on the ST60, so that might be the case on yours as well. If you're already doing that, then I'm out of ideas till I get home.

Oh.. yeah there is no receiver in this particular room.. its just the TV and the Sonos Soundbar and Sub.

Ah, the Sonos Playbar has no HDMI connection (and no DTS support!)? I'm surprised, frankly. I wonder why they didn't include one. ARC only works over HDMI, so yeah, without an option to turn off the speakers I think the "hotel mode" is your only choice.

Nope..just an optical jack.

TheGameguru wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I added the Sonos Sub to my Sonos Playbar and color me impressed.. for a wireless sub it sure sounds awesome. Probably the best sub I've ever owned. Makes a huge difference watching movies on a non 5.1 or 7.1 setup. Feels more like a true Home Theatre experience over just the soundbar. My wife is happy because its wireless and looks actually pretty cool.. Glossy piano Black with a cool shape it looks more like some sort of art/sculpture than a speaker.

Edit

Did find out something stupid.. in the last round of Panasonic Plasma TV's for some bizarre reason Panasonic got rid of the option to disable the built in speakers.. so I was getting double audio from both the sound bar and built in speakers.. turning down the sound to zero didn't help because no matter what I tried the Xbox One remote or Kinect would send codes to both the Sonos Soundbar and TV. I had to google for a bit and found a few others in my situation.. only option was to put the TV into Hotel Mode and set the min vol and max vol to zero. Thanks internet for rescuing me.

Does your TV not disable the internal speakers when you've got ARC enabled over the HDMI connection? My ST series does this, so I assume the ZT would. Or perhaps you have things connected differently than I do.

How do you enable ARC over HDMI on the TV? or Xbox One?

Unfortunately I'm on the east coast for two weeks and won't be able to look at my settings. I only know for sure that it works when I use the TV's built-in Netflix app or any TV stations. My PS3 is connected directly to my receiver, so I don't need ARC for that. I noticed though that sometimes my TV doesn't handshake properly and I get double sound from my TV and receiver. Restarting the receiver fixes it.

This site's explanation is probably what I had to do, but I'm not sure.

Also, and you might have seen this too, ARC only works if the speakers/receiver is connected via HDMI 2 on the ST60, so that might be the case on yours as well. If you're already doing that, then I'm out of ideas till I get home.

Oh.. yeah there is no receiver in this particular room.. its just the TV and the Sonos Soundbar and Sub.

Ah, the Sonos Playbar has no HDMI connection (and no DTS support!)? I'm surprised, frankly. I wonder why they didn't include one. ARC only works over HDMI, so yeah, without an option to turn off the speakers I think the "hotel mode" is your only choice.

Nope..just an optical jack.

Well, this thread just happened to start up around the same time... and one post offers another possible fix, if it's worth $75 to you.

Cross-posting from the Trade thread:

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Probably a long shot but I'll put these up here:

Because space is now an issue, I need to get rid of my Fluance SV10 tower speakers. They're in like new condition. They originally sold for 400, I got them for 300, and I'll part with them for 200 or a decent offer. Given the size I'd rather sell them to someone in the western Washington/Seattle area, but if they really rock your socks off I can look into shipping them for the added cost.

IMAGE(http://www.avsforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=915138&d=1440957094)

edit: in case anyone's wondering, yeah it's like $250+ to ship, so I'm guessing that's an unlikely option for most. I could drive 'em an hour somewhere, but that's about it.

PM sent.

Picked up these speakers to replace my SV10's (pictured above, still available!).
IMAGE(http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0921/3560/products/prime_satellite_BA_pair_grande.jpg)

Had to switch to satellites because we installed bookshelves where the towers used to be (and the towers, though pretty, don't match our color scheme). At first I finding myself really disappointed with them--the imaging was total crap. Couldn't pinpoint an instrument to save my life. I tried toeing them in a bit but that didn't help.

Then I realized I was an idiot and removed the books from around the left speaker so nothing was touching it. The sound snapped into place and they're just wonderful. Hard to believe they're as small as they are. Even sitting outside the sweet spot they sound great. If anything I'd say they're a slight upgrade from the towers, in fact, but that might just be the "hot newness" factor. Of course you need a sub to go with them, but if you have one these are an outstanding option when space is an issue.

Towers or bookshelf/sub combo?

I have a $1500 budget (not including amp, the amp will follow the speaker choice), for a ~300 sq. ft. living room. I currently have some old Klipsch Heresy's I bought for $200 when I was in college, and while they were great for parties and bass heavy movies, not so much for critical music listening. I need an upgrade, and by investing a bit more than my original plan ($1000) I'm hoping to keep this setup for at least a decade. Besides, the Heresy's are quite ugly.

I need a change! Please help!

mr_n00b wrote:

Towers or bookshelf/sub combo?

I have a $1500 budget (not including amp, the amp will follow the speaker choice), for a ~300 sq. ft. living room. I currently have some old Klipsch Heresy's I bought for $200 when I was in college, and while they were great for parties and bass heavy movies, not so much for critical music listening. I need an upgrade, and by investing a bit more than my original plan ($1000) I'm hoping to keep this setup for at least a decade. Besides, the Heresy's are quite ugly.

I need a change! Please help!

sub no matter what. Whether you choose towers or book shelves is more a matter of space really. If you go with the latter just make sure they're rated down to at least 80hz -3dB so they cross over smoothly with the sub.

Edit: how high is your ceiling? Assuming 7ft you'll want at least a 12" ported sub for clean shake the room kind of bass. If you don't need that much, something like sv sound's pb-1000 would probably suffice.

I still have a pair of Heresy I. I love them, but they did not perform like I wanted them to for movies. I have since upgraded to a set of speakers from DIYsoundgroup. I keep the Klipsch hooked to an older 2 channel amp and a turntable just for jazz. I will eventually get a tube amp for this setup, but that is a ways off.

For a sub, check out Parts Express. You can get a kit with cabinet and a speaker that will blow you away. For your space, a Ultimax 10 or 12 would rock. I am running 2 Ultimax 15's with a Behringer 3000dsp amp and it is crazy. A 1000dsp would rock the 10 or 12 for all you want. Subs are a crazy rabbit hole. You can never get enough. Mass produced subs are nice, I have a Carver Sunfire sitting unused in a corner, but the various DIY solutions will crush them for the money.

I like subs in pairs to help balance the nulls your room creates with weird shapes and furniture. Whatever you get for a sub you will need to move it around the room to find the best location to defeat the room nulls.

Go check out the DIY section on avsforum. Way more info than you will ever digest and lots of people to help and advise.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Edit: how high is your ceiling? Assuming 7ft you'll want at least a 12" ported sub for clean shake the room kind of bass. If you don't need that much, something like sv sound's pb-1000 would probably suffice.

I think you might be underestimating the PB-1000 a bit.

If you have 7 foot ceilings and want to vibrate pictures off the walls/shelves and cause doors to rattle in their frames it'll do it just fine.

Thin_J wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

Edit: how high is your ceiling? Assuming 7ft you'll want at least a 12" ported sub for clean shake the room kind of bass. If you don't need that much, something like sv sound's pb-1000 would probably suffice.

I think you might be underestimating the PB-1000 a bit.

If you have 7 foot ceilings and want to vibrate pictures off the walls/shelves and cause doors to rattle in their frames it'll do it just fine.

possibly, probably. Bass is so subjective though, you see the debates on avsforum and no one can agree on what qualifies as "room shaking". Based on fishdude's post I'd say his definition is much different than yours or mine, for example.

There's some truth to that, but unless the room is huge or your demands are very specific, (the latter of which covers ALL the people on AVSForum...) then you can end up very, very pleased with a fairly "budget" option from a company like SVS or HSu or several others.

Fishdude is absolutely right in that if self assembly is an option, you have the space for it and the tools and whatever else, then it is definitely a better value. You can build something that can annoy your neighbors and then their neighbors on top for not all that much money. I don't particularly want that kind of sub oomph and definitely do not need it, but if I was interested in that I'd definitely be building instead of buying.

That said I do not have the physical space for a particularly large sub enclosure. I damn near went for one of SVS' standing tube based designs but eventually settled on the more budget of options. Then it turned out that more budget option is more than capable of completely overpowering the space that it's in so I was glad I didn't throw any more money at the problem.

I love my current setup but will be the first to say it is not for everyone. I am single with a house. I like too watch movies, loud. Friends come over here instead of us going to theaters. My sound is better. I can't beat an IMAX screen though. I can watch Fury and tell you definitively what a German 88 sound like in my living room. I watch concerts and it is better than live.

My system is a work in progress as well. I will soon be building a new center channel and 4 new surrounds to match my fronts. I have decided I want more in the sub department as well. I am thinking of switching from sealed to ported. I am also considering adding 2, 12" Ultimax right behind my couch for some near field goodness. Those cabinets are tiny and will fit very well.

It is an addiction.......

fishdude wrote:

It is an addiction.......

...and that's why I will not likely go that route I'm an electrical engineer by training, and those types of projects are catnip to me. I just don't have the time to go down that rabbit hole at this time in my life, especially since I'm currently in the process of preparing a house for sale and work occupies more and more of my free time. One day I would love to go the DIY route, but until that time I need something to fulfill my immediate needs.

With all the love I'm seeing for dedicated subs I believe sub/bookshelf is my best option. There are some killer bookshelves available these days, and I enjoy the idea of keeping those frequency ranges separate, give me some room to fine tune to my hearts desire.

My initial thoughts are to go full SVS, Ultra bookshelves and a SB-1000 (with an upgrade path to a second SB-1000 for next year). I'm also a big fan of Wharfedale bookshelves, the Denton in particular. This will also allow me to drop down to a < 150W/ch. amp as well, which my wallet will be thankful for.

Any recommendations for bookshelves? There's a wealth of choice out there.

Edit: PB-1000s*. Ported or bust.

There are two different ways to DIY. Full blown design it, test it and pray it does what you want or buy a kit someone else did that for you. I went the latter. I bought a component kit and built my cabinets. That said, it is not for everyone.

I am a huge Yamaha fan for receivers but will likely go with a Marantz when I upgrade to 4k in the near future.

Whatever route you choose, enjoy and good luck with your endeavors.

Skippy1997 wrote:

Hope you don't mind if I pop in for advice too. I am finishing my basement this year and I was hoping for some guidance. It is roughly a 12X15 room with an 8-9 foot ceiling. I think I will be sitting roughly 8-ish feet away (looking to maybe add a platform behind a 2-person theater seat to place another 2-seater for quasi-stadium seating). I am looking for the whole set up, not 100% sure on the budget yet, but here are some of my thoughts:

TV - Samsung-UN65JS8500-65 4K. This is a BB Black Friday deal for $2,000, so it may not happen but this seemed pretty reasonable for the quality (Thanks Mao for the rtings.com link, that was very helpful!) If I just want to stay 1080p, I thought this one for $1,400 at BB again Samsung-UN65J6300-65-Inch-1080p.

Speakers - BB has some Klipsch speakers on sale (again, Black Friday) for 50% off. Not high end by any means, but probably good enough for me (thinking two towers or bookshelfs for front, a Center, 2-4 surrounds (not sure if I can pull off 5.1 or 7.1) and a Sub. I have seen many people here recommend SVS, so that is an option too. The link Mao had for the package deal via SVS looked interesting, but do people usually use all of the same speaker for every part of the set up?

Receiver - Two were already linked above and both looked pretty good. Depends if I want to future-proof a bit for Atmos.

Seating - Any suggestions? I have looked around at local store's websites and I think I just need to sit my butt in a few to decide.

Accessories - 16 gauge wire still preferable for running speaker wire? Probably need some plates to hook all if it up behind the wall so I can just plug in the speakers (banana plugs still the thing?) and an HDMI cord for the TV.

Thanks in advance, I am extremely overwhelmed by all of the choices and I am afraid I will just go "Ooo Shiny!" and buy stuff that doesn't make sense.

Skippy, I think you have a pretty good grasp on things. Klipsch are generally quality speakers--do you know the exact model that's going on sale? To your question about speaker size, no, normally the fronts are tower or bookshelf while the center is its own shape but ideally designed to acoustically match the fronts. You tend to have more flexibility with the surrounds but still nice to get a matching pair. The SVS satellites/sub I pointed to is designed to be a relatively high-end all-in-one package, comparatively speaking. That said, avsforum gave the package pretty remarkable praise. All they really lack is dynamic range, since satellites that size just won't get as loud as most towers can. I use the satellites for fronts now, and have no regrets (I also try not to listen to anything louder than 80dB or so, well below what they can do).

Seating: Sorry, no idea. We use an Ektorp from IKEA.

Wiring: For anything under 20ft or so, 16 gauge is plenty. Probably fine for your surrounds too if they're 30-40 ft away. I ended up going with 12 gauge to my surrounds because of the way my house is set up, and they run about 50ft. Not ideal, of course.

Thanks for all the info Mao, it is much appreciated. I didn't know this thread was out here, more research!!

Klipsch R-28F Towers

Klipsch Sub

They also have a 6 1/2" Tower and some bookshelf pairs. I'm going to get out to a BB and listen to them too. I think they have the matching center and surrounds on sale too.

Thanks again, now off to finalize the damage to my wallet!

Skippy1997 wrote:

Thanks for all the info Mao, it is much appreciated. I didn't know this thread was out here, more research!!

Klipsch R-28F Towers

Klipsch Sub

They also have a 6 1/2" Tower and some bookshelf pairs. I'm going to get out to a BB and listen to them too. I think they have the matching center and surrounds on sale too.

Thanks again, now off to finalize the damage to my wallet!

you linked to the speakers in both your links.

Of course I did, sorry about that.

Klipsch Sub

Skippy1997 wrote:

Of course I did, sorry about that.

Klipsch Sub

Cool. So my personal opinion is that you should be willing to spend more on the sub than you are on the speakers. The speakers you've chosen are very good, no doubt. However, I think this sub will struggle to support them in two ways--volume and extension. Volume matters if you like to listen loud. What will happen is the bass will start to either get muddy or compress as you crank it up, reducing its ability to hit cleanly and low. Extension because it's only rated down to 32hz, which isn't great, especially for a sealed sub. You might get a little more low-end out of it if you place it in a corner, but not much.

Moreover, the speakers you're looking at are rated down to 32hz themselves, so adding the sub isn't going to get you much except a little relief for your receiver. I think you should consider going with a cheaper tower/bookshelf speaker and shifting that savings to get a more powerful sub.

I'll second the suggestion of spending more on subs. I'm running 2 JBL 12" 600 watt subwoofers and it makes a huge difference. You wouldn't think it would, since they're viewed as a one trick pony, but man it's huge difference you can actually hear. Hard to describe what it does, but when you hear it you know.

Thanks Mao and JC, I never really thought much about Subs TBH, I have a cheapie set with one in my living room that never did much of anything.

I will read over this thread and try and educate myself a bit more. Thanks again!

Skippy1997 wrote:

Thanks Mao and JC, I never really thought much about Subs TBH, I have a cheapie set with one in my living room that never did much of anything.

I will read over this thread and try and educate myself a bit more. Thanks again!

sure thing! Check out the op if you missed that, too.

I found myself in San Francisco this past week and I decided to take a "quick" pit stop at Audio Vision SF to demo some speakers. 3 hours and many discussions with fellow audio lovers later, I finally decided to lay down some hard cold cash and buy myself a pair of KEF LS50 Limited Edition's. They arrived Friday and I immediately had to set them up and take a listen. So far, I am a very happy customer. The stereo imaging on these speakers is truly stunning out of the box. My ears still need to get adjusted to their tonality, but I can't pinpoint any particular flaws at this point. That's a win in my book.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/L97mKXl.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/NIco92p.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/5kSfw3p.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/WnNRCfi.jpg)

Still need to play around with positioning, toe-in, port stuffing and what not. Eventually this pair will make it over to the television area, but for now I'm ready to explore some lovely stereo sound while I brake them in.

The only downside to buying these speakers... I have no more fun money for Black Friday Oh well! Seems like a worthy trade to me.

Ohhh, all sorts of fancy stuff going on there!

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Ohhh, all sorts of fancy stuff going on there! :)

Thanks!

I've been bingeing on audio equipment for the better part of two years now, shifting in and out all manner of speakers, headphones, amps, you name it. Most of it was used electronics I'd find on Craiglist and the sort, but honestly I was getting stressed out with the constant flux. So I sold nearly everything, set a budget back in February, put together a system purchase list, and I've been buying piecemeal ever since.

The only big ? on my list was the speakers, as I have mentioned here before. But after a couple of demos with the LS50s, I decided to splurge a bit. With the LS50s my system is more or less complete.

The current system:

Turntable: Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Esprit SB
Phono Amp: Yaqin MS23B (No ground filter, yikes! Produces an awful 60Hz hum)
DAC/Pre-Amp: Emotiva Stealth DC-1
Power Amp: Emotiva XPA-200
Speakers: KEF LS50 Limited Edition (Frosted Black)
Headphones: Beyerdynamic DT 990 (600 ohms)

At some point all of this will be integrated into my home theater setup (currently an old Logitech Z 5500 system package), but that'll have to wait until the holidays are in full swing.

As you can tell I'm pretty excited right now My gear envy is abated for the foreseeable future.

Cooooool. I'd trade everything I've got for that setup except my speakers. I'm rather fond of those. What's your most prized record there? Mine is probably the Kind of Blue box set. If I could only keep one album that would probably be it.

Now you can focus on my (apparent) problem:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/ezS7eD6.jpg)

Took me a bit to dig that up out of that thread.

Those speakers are pretty!

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Cooooool. What's your most prized record there?

Gosh, how can I choose? I love all my babies! I've probably spent the most time listening to The Alan Parson's Project album Eye In The Sky, it was one of my earlier finds and I had never heard them before. The album blew me away! To me that album reinforces the desire to seek out new and weird stuff as often as possible; you never know when you'll hit a gem. That would be my most prized album, purely for sentimental reasons.

From a quality stand point my near mint copy of Tool's Lateralus is pristine. It is such a well mastered record, it really shines in this format and it is easily one of my favorite albums of all time. Could not part with it.

This thread is great! Just found it. One question: has there been any discussion on either projectors/screens or starting a theater setup on a budget? I recently moved into a place with an awesome basement (12'+ ceilings!) that is screaming to be converted into a theater room. I have a TV but am in the market for pretty much everything else (receiver, projector, screen, speakers). Problem is, I am not ready to drop thousands on this stuff just yet. I am also not needing the BEST quality sound, as this will mainly be for movies/gaming and not so much for music. One thing that I know I want is a receiver with 2 HDMI out, so we can easily switch between TV and Projector as needed.

Alternatively, if I list some stuff, will you far more savvy people let me know if it's good or sh*te? These are what I am looking at so far:
Receiver: Yamaha RX-A840BL
Starter speakers: Onkyo SKS-HT540
Projector: Optoma HD28DSE
Screen: Homegear 120"

Sorry for the skimming, and I will probably go through and read the whole thread. Thanks!

So... I'm gonna give a piece of basic advice first. Don't buy "starter" anything. You can put together a home theater on a budget without buying cheap junk. There's solid bang for the buck audio gear in particular out there now. There's tons of it, in fact, though there are some places where it's just impossible to be super frugal and still get something decent. I'll start with a place it's kind of impossible to cheap out on.

The subwoofer in that speaker package will be fairly crap. Full stop. It will fail miserably to fill a room with 12 foot ceilings with bass. If you want it for movies and games the sub is more important than it would be for music. Buy a separate sub from a company like SVS or Hsu Research. This will hit your budget hard. Like more cost on the sub than that entire speaker package you linked kind of hard. Particularly for movies it will be the most worthwhile expenditure of anything in the entire setup short of maybe the projector. Get something with some kind of meaningful signal response down to or below 20hz. You will thank yourself so much for this later.

I have a PB-1000 from SVS myself, but it's in a room that is very much smaller than what you're describing. I'd probably pack away money for the PB-2000 or PC-2000 if I my room was larger and had higher ceilings. The nice thing about SVS is the 45 day trial period. If you buy a sub and don't feel like it was worth it you have a month and a half to return it for a full refund. Set it up properly if you do get one. Do a sub crawl and make sure you're getting the most out of it.

For the 5 regular speakers in the setup there's like thousands of options. The Pioneer SP-BS22-LR's are great for the low cost. Right now they're $130 for a pair, though they've gone on sale for notably less than that often enough. So three pairs of those plus the center channel which is $100 and you're at $490 for the speakers. These are excellent speakers especially for the money.

And lastly: Straight up just gonna say it. Spend more on the projector. It's the thing you'll notice the limits/quirks/flaws of most often.