just posting some pics of my home theatre setup, sorry its all cellphone pics but this is definitely a system that im enjoying despite the obvious flaws it is very strong when playing stereo music and is capable of providing a very audiophile type of sound yet it can also give a very dynamic surround sound for movies
starting with a pic of when the stuff arrived to my home
now onto a pic of the TV stand as well as the TV and what i replaced - the sony 51cm was getting old in the tooth and ive moved it on into a bedroom - in the lounge ive replaced it with a samsung 50" plasma set. The reason for chosing a plasma over a LCD was that the full HD lcd's actually look terrible in low resolution SDTV and we dont have too many HD broadcasts here in South Africa yet (they have started but its a minimal amount of content) and also when i play Blu-ray then the 720p playback will still be good enough for my purposes - but the advantage is that it was a huge TV at a lower price than the corresponding full HD LCD models
going on to the audio aspects of the surround sound, these are the front speakers. they are acoustic research floorstanding speakers, and dont seem like much until you realize that there is more to them than meets the eye ie you wonder why they seem to be on a raised platform base - well that was done to house an 8" woofer that fires down into the floor. The 8's produce a wonderfully tight and detailed midbass response and go down low enough as well as loud enough so that when playing stereo music the subwoofer is not required, The other distinguishing feature is that the speakers use a ring radiator and this presents a huge soundstage which extends at least a metre beyond the speakers on either side because of the wide dispersion characteristics of that form of tweeter
heres how the pair of front speakers are arranged on either side of the TV
the centre speaker is a matching unit and is identical to the front speakers besides for a lack of the 8" woofers and it uses a soft dome tweeter instead of the ring radiator, i'd have been happier with an identical tweeter cos it would have made for a more believable front stage but its still good enough
grille cover off for the centre speaker
the subwoofer is a 12" unit and produces a fantastically audiophile quality bass when required and is also able to boom with the best of them if required to. I've heard a few better subwoofers than this but most of those cost at least 5 times more, so at the price this is still the best home theatre sub ive ever heard. The amount of detail is staggering for example in house of flying daggers in the dance scene with the beans being tossed about, when the bean reaches the second drum on the screen you are still listening to the sound of it fading away after the first drum hit, and even after you see the bean hitting the second drum and you hear the impact of it hitting the second drum you still hear a decaying note from the first drum while the sound of the second drum start playing ..... absolutely superb
removing the grille cover reveals a rather decent looking speaker
whilst turning it over shows why it is so efficient even with a low amount of power (only 200 watts RMS) it has dual downfiring ports
im using a denon 2808 reciever with a denon 1930 dvd player. the dvd player produces a crisp clear picture quality and is also one of the better units ive had the pleasure of owning. it proves why it costs more than 10 times more than the normal average cheapie dvd player each time i use it and im sure i will be enjoying it until i get myself a Blu-Ray player (prices on these are dropping all the time so when it stops dropping i will purchase one cos im sure it has to stabilize sometime or the other to its natural price level)
for the rear speakers i got rid of the bookshelf speakers and instead got a set of floorstanders identical to the fronts so for 5.1 surround ive got more or less equal sound all round. for 7.1 im sure the rear surround effects will not need really strong effects so ive gotten a smaller set of speakers to place onto the walls as you see in the pic. These are not connected yet and i will only connect them once i have a 7.1 source but the cables are run and waiting to be connected
one other reason whey the front speakers sound so excellent is the speaker cable that im using - these are from MIT (music interface technologies) as are my RCA interconnects from the CD player to the Receiver. the speaker cable cost a packet ie they are worth around R7000 (roughly 42000 rupees)
speaker cable
interconnects and AR HDMI cables
still to get - all i want to add in here now is a blu-ray player and im seriously considering a PS3 for this purpose so that when my nephew and nice visit they can enjoy some large screen gaming and i can use it for blu-ray playback and also i want to get a HD sattelite decoder unit for HDTV broadcasts, but this isnt urgent yet because the only thing id really watch on HD is sport (im a Manchester United supporter so i would watch loads of football matches and the occasional cricket with this setup)
after this im going to start working on getting TV's into each room of the house so whilst my mom watches her Indian movies i can be watching my football in the other room and my brother can watch his comedy sitcoms in his room (this is possible due to the satellite decoder system in this country - if you have a certain combination of decoders you can watch three programs whilst simultaneously recording three others
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