[DaleNixon]

I am by no means a home theater expert. I've gleaned what little knowledge I have from the Internet and a few audiophiles I've met.

The first protip I ever got from an audiophile was "NEVER BUY BOSE". I couldn't believe it as I had always thought Bose speakers were the best. Apparently not.

Over the years I've assembled what I consider to be a very competent budget home theater system. We had some discussion about home theater sound in Tim's lolps3 thread. I decided this stuff could use its own thread even if it's just a place to show off what you've got!

Here is my current setup:


Receiver: Harman Kardon AVR525 – I have bosses who go through electronics like I go through toilet paper. They tend to sell me their “old” stuff at very reasonable prices. I recently scored this receiver. It doesn't have all the HD surround formats, but it does a great job with DTS/Dolby Digital/Pro-Logic I and II/etc. This thing made my setup sound worlds better than the old RCA POS receiver I was using.


Front and Sourround Speakers: RCA Pro-LX55 – RCA isn't exactly known for making quality speakers. These are throwbacks from the Optimus home theater days. These speakers sound incredible for the price! I don't believe in “giant killing” bookshelf speakers that blow away big floorstanding models; these are not that. These speakers produce amazing highs and decent upper midrange. The secret is inside:

The midrange speaker cone is made out of Kevlar. I think that means it is bullet proof or something. The tweeter sits on top.

The Linaeum tweeter on top is a dipole tweeter. I've been told that's what makes these speakers so strong in the highs department. Also, these tweeters project 360 degrees of sound. That's like way more degrees than a normal speakers dudes! These are pretty popular with modders and DIYers because they rip the Linaeum tweeter off the top and build a much better speaker around it.

These speakers are solid and heavy and they have really good binding posts. I would love to replace them with some expensive towers, but they sound so awesome and can be found on ebay or possibly in some backwoods Radioshack for like $40 - $100 a pair. Not pictured are my surround speakers because they are the exact same as these!


Center Channel: RCA Pro-C55
Not much to say here except it also has the Kevlar tweeters and you can see the Linaeum dipole tweeter in the middle. Having a matched center channel is really important for reasons I can't explain or understand.


Sub Woofer: JBL Sub 150
A 150-Watt sub woofer I bought from a Vietnamese restaurant that was closing. This sub really isn't that great. It gets the job done and stays out of the way though. It falls apart at very high volume levels. The explosions in Burnout Revenge on the 360 sound great!


Television: Toshiba 57H83
Rear-projection CRT HDTV's are ridiculously cheap compared to the newer technologies. They don't do 1080p and this one doesn't even have an HDMI port (it does have DVI). The picture is gorgeous. I run the 360 at 1080i. I've got next to no input lag, my black levels are outstanding, and there is no ghosting or macroing or any of this other stuff the newer digital models have introduced. I will upgrade someday, but I'm more than satisfied with this set for now. Action shots to come later! Oh yea, this thing doubles as a shaving mirror unless you block out all light in front of it. That's what black-out curtains are for!


Cat: Armando
This guy really complements the setup. He freaking loves the Wii bios and Kororinpa makes him approach and stare at the screen for some reason. If any of you ever hear yowling and meowing during our Gears of War matches it's probably Armando trying to convince me that I should put down the controller and pet him.
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[Toups]

Posting in quality thread. I am taking pics right now to pimp my home theatre setup (which is nowhere near as cool as DN's)
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[DaleNixon]

Thanks Toups! Man I'm sure there are some people around here who can humiliate me with their superior setups! *cough* Shaper *cough*

If anyone's looking to build a budget home theater, the speakers below (Insignia NS-B2111) have gotten quite a bit of praise on the audioasylum, audioholics, and avs forums:


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[Toups]

This is my receiver and component switcher box. The receiver is 800 Watts 5.1 surround sound. If I recall correctly. The switcher box has 4 optical ports which is mostly why I bought it. It doesn't seem to have much effect on the image quality thankfully.


This is my TV. 30" widescreen Samsung CRT. Really nice picture quality. Could be a tad sharper and it's got pretty bad overscan, but overall it's a good set.

Yes, that's Earthbound for the NES sitting in my famiclone.


This is my modded Xbox, code named the Pornbox1080. I've been using it as my DVD player lately for reasons I'll get into in a moment.


This is how I store my controllers. Stole the idea from scratchmonkey.


This is my couch. It's a hand-me-down. The surround speakers are mounted on the wall. I know, they aren't very good speakers but I am no longer rich so it is all a poor boy like me can afford. They came with the receiver.


This is my roommate. He's looking for Chocolate and Cheese by Ween in my CD book. He will not find it.


This is what I see when I sit on my couch. The TV isn't quite big enough for this room, but c'est la vie.


This is my upscaling DVD player. Strangely enough it lacks optical out for audio. It has HDMI, but my receiver can't do 5.1 sound via HDMI, rendering this DVD player useless to me. Anyone wanna buy it?

Instead I use XBMC which seems to upscale pretty well if you tweak the settings right and it also does surround sound.
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[scratchmonkey]

[Mr Stegosaurus]

That's pretty clever, guys. Thanks for sharing.

[boojiboy7]

Toups, I have that exact same system selector thingamadooger. It ain't half bad at all. I would take a picture of my setup, but it is nohere near picture worthy.

[gooktime]

I would take some pictures of mine but it's just a 32" Samsung and audio powered by a whopping 2 bookshelf speakers and an onkyo receiver.

I like your TV stand toups.

[Waffen]

this thread is right up my alley. A/V is one of my main interests :3

my set-up is still being constructed so there isn't any pictures yet but here's a rundown of what I'm putting together:

TV: 43" Pioneer plasma 720p. Got it about a year ago and now the 50" is the same price :(
while its still the best, plasma is getting its ass kicked by cheapskate consumers and all the DLPs and LCDs they've been buying. prices on plasmas are going down down down.
video is just being input via component because I only have a 360 Premium (no Elite yet) and my satellite box doesn't do HDMI. I need to call Dish Network and have them send me a newer model.
TV also takes VGA input so I've got a long-ass VGA cable I plug into my imac sometimes (with a mini-VGA adapter ofcourse) that I can run white screens on to help out with burn-in and to watch things from the internets.

Receiver: Pioneer VSX-917. 110 watts x 7 channels, 2 HDMI ports, 3 optical ports, Sirius, XM and LCD remote. Still waiting for this to be shipped but when it arrives all my audio and video switching will be managed by it. I don't have anything that has HDMI that I can plug into it yet but eventually I will (maybe a PS3 someday?). atleast I've got optical audio input from the 360 and satellite box. supports SR+ plasma control so lots of functions are displayed onscreen like receiver volume and surround sound settings. can't wait for this thing to arrive :)

Speakers: Polk Audio RM6750 5.1 surround sound. this set sells at the box stores for $500 but I found it online for $275 shipped.
they're decent speakers, sort of entry-level and will probably be upgraded at some point but they're good enough for now.
satellite speakers are getting mounted on some nice stands I picked up and the speaker wire is 16 gauge Monster THX wire with Monster banana clip inputs into the receiver and Monster mini-plugs into the speakers. no twisted up wires shoved into sockets here folks!

Extras: Pioneer ipod dock. cool little dock for my nano with yet another blue light that has a video ouput so you can scroll through your playlists and stuff on-screen with the little remote. nice to be able to pick a song and play it!
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PSN Online ID: SylentButDeadly

[Pijaibros]

I have a DS and headphones
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[DaleNixon]

[wackodave]

I suppose I could take a picture of my parents really nice HDTV that I never get to use and only has a standard definition cable set top box attached to it. I think it would just make me sad though.

[dessgeega]

[Waffen]

on the totally opposite end of the HT spectrum of HDMI, surround sound and Dolby Digital EX Pro Logic II here is a stereo tube amplifier that my brother bought this weekend from a little company in Annapolis, MD:



doesn't do much for $600 but its supposed to sound real good.
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PSN Online ID: SylentButDeadly

[Pijaibros]

Those vacuum tubes look expensive to replace.

They made to last?
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[Waffen]

yeah they're pretty durable. I'm pretty sure they don't like "blow out" or anything on a regular basis.
and if they do the place that makes them is only a couple miles from where my brother lives.
I guess you can change out the tubes to get different types of sound too.
thats sort of how you "tune" those amplifiers I guess as opposed to a digital EQ like our jap receivers have.
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PSN Online ID: SylentButDeadly

[Shapermc]

I'm actually in the middle of a fairly large overhaul of my entertainment center.

It's in a bit of jury-rigged situation currently because after getting my new TV last year the TV stand I bought didn't quite work out for the best. Also, everything is a damn mess as far as wires.

So, I bought a new A/V rack recently, a new receiver, and more wires so that I can hook everything up.

The new rack will hold (top to bottom): satellite receiver, dvd player, ps3, 360, xbox/wii vertical, receiver. The receiver will take HDMI in from the PS3 and the DVD Player (the receiver accepts hdmi 1.3), the 360 will go through the VGA in on my TV and then into optical audio for digital audio, the Xbox will go component in with optical audio, Wii will go though component input with regular audio, and the satellite will go in composite in (though the receiver will upscale everything to 1080p using that awesome fujidora chip, so this should show some improvement on that for the wife even though I don’t watch TV).

Since this is going to quickly become a mess, I bought the really nice Harmony remote which you can program a bunch of things to one button (like if you hit “Play 360” it will turn the TV to the VGA input, turn on the 360, and then switch the audio on the receiver to that optical input).

The only hold up is that the new receiver is still on backorder as I pre-ordered it. So I haven’t set up the new rack, I haven’t programmed the Harmony remote, and I haven’t rewired anything to the TV. All this shit (plus all the wires) are sitting in my back room waiting for the receiver. Also, when I finally do this project I’m moving all my classic systems (PS2 and earlier) into my back room and connecting it all to a Regular Tube TV. I have enough connectors/switcher boxes to connect them all to the TV at the same time, and they’ll look better than on my HDTV. They’ll also be right next to my arcade cabinets.

Also, most of this was paid for with my Tax return, so don’t think I’m rich and can just go pick all this shit up on a whim. I’ve been working on buying all this equipment for the past two years, and am getting very near to done. My last step will be replacing and mounting all my speakers, as the ones I’m going to use came from a $450 “entertainment center in a box.” But that’s probably going to take another year to get done, possibly more.

So, when it’s all done (with in the next month) I’ll post pictures!
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The bad sleep well at The Gamer's Quarter

[Toups]

[Mikey]

[Corinth]

[Waffen]

I've been building my system for awhile too but only in the last month did I really throw down for the big things like the new Polk speakers and Pio receiver.

in the last month I've made so many goddamn trips to Fry's for cables, wires and adapters you would not believe it and everytime I go there I get more and more blown away by the stupidity of the employees there.
amazing!

I'll also have to take a pic of the shelf in my entertainment center that will house my new receiver. all my cables and wires are going in there and they're just waiting to get plugged in. there must be like 20 different speaker, TOS and component cables in there. good times!
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PSN Online ID: SylentButDeadly

[Shapermc]

[Waffen]

mcdonalds =/= big box stores

keep that in mind and you'll be ok the next time you go to best buy looking for speaker stands or something.

the people who work there are there for a reason- its currently the best they can do and thats it.
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PSN Online ID: SylentButDeadly

[wackodave]

Thank you dudes for inspiring me to get my stuff sorted out. I won't be getting any 42" HDTVs or anything but I've started moving my consoles off the floor and into cabinets. I might even get myself some shelves.

[Shapermc]

[Waffen]

the same clientele is employed in both industries.

basically run of the mill idiots.

I base this opinion on all the follies I've been through with employees at both types of businesses.
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PSN Online ID: SylentButDeadly

[DaleNixon]

Man I wouldn't insult McDonald's employees like that!
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[DaleNixon]

Alright that was pretty harsh. I work with a guy who also happens to work at BestBuy. He's no idiot. He can also get me those ridiculously overpriced Psyclone cables for like 1/10th the price you pay in store.

Dudes I'm fed up with my media pc as it keeps crashing and muting itself at random when I try to watch something. I tried reinstalling Windows Media Center and it crashed during the install :/. I've given up on Windows and decided to make it a Linux/Mythtv box. Sure, I could have done that from the beginning, but I wanted the thing to "just work" when I first got it. Now I want it to work properly.


3 days of uptime and counting. It's amazing how some problematic hardware seems to stop behaving badly when you throw Linux at it.
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[km]

Seeing Gentoo's init output always makes me smile a little bit.

I've been rocking a gentoo myth box/file server for a few years now, so if you have any questions I'd be happy to help (assuming this is your first experience with such a beast). I know dongle is a gentoo user too...


Oh, and re: Best Buy employees. I used to work there, on the universally reviled geek squad no less. A lot of people there are generally pretty cool once you get to know them. I know it depends on the store, but where I worked, the employees knew their shit pretty well, and the ones that didn't were mocked by pretty much everyone else in the store until they either shaped up or quit. Basically, it's decent pay for not too much work and an incredible discount.


To add to the home theater aspect of this thread... Well, basically I'm poor as hell, so right now I have a Sony HT-DDW670 5.1 home theater in a box. It has DD/DTS over optical and coax and was a pretty good deal for $150.

I have an old Toshiba CRT that got abandoned in the back of our service returns for years and was sold to me for $50 (a customer had gotten a replacement unit, and this TV had been sent off, repaired, and was supposed to be sold again but never was). Nothing remarkable, except that it has component (non-HD) input, which makes it look pretty nice for a SDTV. Connected in the middle of it all is a switchbox with component, optical, and ethernet switching, which is pretty nifty.

Connected to that is an old VCR (for some reason), a GC with component cables, a PS2 with component and optical out, a DC, and my media center running MythTV.

I don't watch much TV, but it does have two tuners; one a PVR-250 with hardware MPEG2 encoding, and an old WinTV Go that doesn't really work right, and I don't care enough to fix. Right now it has something like 570GB of space, which has all my music and video available to myth, as well as a backup for all my other files, shared over NFS and SMB. Myth also has the capability to launch emulators and suchlike, but I haven't dabbled with that much, though I have a PS -> USB converter for the purpose. It also acts as a local portage mirror for my desktop and laptop which also run gentoo, as well as a print server. Occasionally I have it moonlight as a webserver or UT2k4 server.

I have DynDNS set up in my dd-wrt powered WRT54G so I can at the very least SSH in from anywhere.

I have grandiose upgrade plans, but, yeah, the poor is a big issue.
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[DaleNixon]

I've built Gentoo boxes from scratch, but I've never really gotten a mythtv box off the ground before. I think the most difficult part will be getting the correct timings for my tv in the xorg.conf. I'm using ATI's proprietary DVI->component adapter. From what little I've found using google, I may have to go to straight DVI to get it to work without too much of a hassle. It was the other way around with Windows!

Thanks km, I may be hitting you up with questions once I get this thing further along. Right now it's just sitting there being a samba server.
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[gooktime]

When I can afford a Macbook Pro, I'll be using my current Mac Mini as a media centre / irc shell nerd box with DVI-HDMI.

Maybe that's kinda overkill, though, I don't know.

[DaleNixon]

Hey km, care to share your ModeLine values from your xorg.conf? I'm having absolutely no luck getting something that isn't psychedelic garbage to show up when starting X.

[km]

Actually, I just use svideo out with an nvidia card. Took approximately 30 seconds to set up.

ATI in linux is hell man. When I first tried to use linux for serious, I had a 9600XT and it just pissed me off so bad that I went out and bought a $350 6800GT THAT DAY.


Have you tried any of the various modeline generators online?

I remember seeing something the other day that might be more helpful. I'll dig back through my history a big and see what I can find.

Did you look at this page?
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[DaleNixon]

Yea I've looked all up and down that page and the avsforums and various other places. Believe me, if I had built this box myself I would not have put an ATI card in it. It's a Gateway FMC-901 that I inherited. I think I'm going to go ahead and buy an Audio Authority transcoder. I need it for the Dreamcast VGA connection anyway.
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[km]

I've got some older nvidia cards laying around, but they don't do component (AFAIK), so you probably don't want them.

Sorry I can't help, but man, ATI is just shit :(
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[Waffen]

my receiver should be coming in today so my whole "theater" should be done soon.

too bad my stupid 360 broke yesterday :( I was really looking forward to rocking Gears of War in surround sound.

but hopefully I can get some 5.1 content from regular TV to test my new system out.

pics will be posted soon.
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PSN Online ID: SylentButDeadly

[Shapermc]

OK doodz. Got this shit mostly worked out now. Also, I guess I said I got a different rack than I though! Oh well. Anyways:



So, I was going to stick with the small "satellite" speakers from my last receiver, but I decided after it was all said and done that they just didn't have a good enough range. So I grabbed my dad's old Genesis speakers that he gave me when I went to college out of the back room. They bring a much fuller sound to the setup, but they are in pretty ugly shape (note the staining on the grill covers). I just ordered some new speaker grill fabric that will tie the color into the carpet better, and I will recover them in a couple of weeks. At that point I'll be done until next tax season when I plan to buy all new speakers (and enough to utilize my new 7.1-ness). Also, really quick, off to the right is a fairly decent sub-woofer.

The TV is still the same one (Samsung HLS-6187W, 61" DLP with 1080p).

The new AV Rack is nice, and before I brought the Genesis speakers in it seemed very lonely, but the speakers fill the area nicely. The stand was very easy to put together and it looks gorgeous. It cleans up really nicely with canned air, so I'll probably be using that since I use it for my consoles anyways.

From bottom to top:
Onkyo SR605 a/v receiver.
Xbox 360
PS3
Xbox(old)/Wii
Samsung Upscaling DVD player

The new receiver is really excellent. The main reason I got it is because I can input (nearly) all my video sources and output them through one HDMI cable out to the TV. The receiver even uses the Faroudja chip for upscaling anything that is passed through analog sources (i.e. the Xbox and Wii have slight visual improvements). Unfortunately the 360 is using the VGA cable, so that has to run straight to the TV. The receiver is also very impressive. I didn't notice how average my old receiver was, but I'm finding out slowly (still it was leagues better than using TV speakers). The spacial separation is now amazing with stuff that I'm use to (like Gears of War) now having even more depth to the audio. The bass is now also passed specifically through the LFE channel so there isn't so much bleed from the general low pass sound (so basically the bass is cleaner and not so constant). At first I thought this was a huge problem because I'm use to so much more bass, but then I watched The Last King of Scotland last night and I was absolutely blown away by the impact that separated bass has on the audio. Honestly, I wasn't expecting too much of an improvement from the audio quality with the receiver, just access to the new audio formats and getting rid of my switcher box for my a/v: so I'm happily surprised with the added bonus.

Well, that's the new set up. Unfortunately I don't have any good photos of the old set-up, but for fun: here's a photo of all the wires after taking down the old shelving, and here's the best old shot I have of the shelves.
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The bad sleep well at The Gamer's Quarter

[Corinth]

Welcome to ATI on Linux, DaleNixon :(

You guys see how the XBMC team wants to port it to PCs?

[Cossix]

Oh man an AV thread I love AV oh man oh man

For my computer (I didn't get a picture of this setup at all, sorry. Partially because my desk is a mess and partially because I don't want to import new photos into iPhoto) I use a pair of Beyerdynamic DT-880s driven by a HeadRoom Total BitHead. I actually have the previous model of the DT-880s, which I like a little bit more and spent a bit of time hunting for before I bought them. One of these days I'll probably upgrade the headphone amp to one from their desktop line. The headphones are actually my favorite headphones I've ever listened to. Also, they're incredibly comfortable. For travel, I use a pair of Etymotics Research ER-6's driven by the same headphone amplifier.


Here's a view from my bed. You can see the TV here. The TV kinda sucks, to be honest. It's a 26" Olevia Syntax HD TV. The black levels are pretty terrible. One of these days I'd love to replace it with a nice DLP projection TV. You can also see our console game collection here. The top shelf is 360 games, the next shelf is Gamecube/Wii games, and the three shelves below that are PS2 games. Also kind of visible is the Onkyo SR-TX574 AV Reciever.




Here's another view of the TV. It's got a better view of the reciever and also a view of our shelf layout(Notice the missing Xbox 360). I've also got one of those Logitech Harmony Xbox 360 remotes for controlling all this stuff. Daphny calls it "The Future". The name has stuck, so that is pretty much what I refer to all of these remotes as.



Here's the rear surround speakers. It's a pair of RTi-4's. You can also see the bunny proofing we have to do to the wires around here. He still fucking chews on the plastic tubing. Also you can see clothes and the box for Daphny's new Pac-Man shoes.



Here's the center channel. It's a Polk CSi-3. One of these days I wouldn't mind replacing it with a CSi-5 or an LSiC, but I'm gonna need a new job first.




The subwoofer is a Polk PSW404. It's a little loud for our apartment complex, so I have to keep it turned down to not bother our downstairs neighbor. I used to live in a house so it was a much more sensible choice then. Also visible: The Silver Spoon (A mediocre cookbook), my old DS, and a bunch of blank CDs.



Here's the front channels, a pair of Polk RTi-6's. These little guys are really really nice actually. EVENTUALLY I'd like to get a pair of tower speakers and use these as the rear surrounds, but that day is not today. Someone left an empty 7-Up bottle on top of it. Argh.

Anyways, that's my setup.

[Daphaknee]

thats not a 7up bottle, its a perrier bottle on top of your speaker also posting a picgture of our headphones because they are sweet



im holding the headphone amplifier, i needed something to hold

[Worm]

I use my computer for any TV that isn't on broadcast or that I miss.

This is the best rear channel setup in the world if you lean forward lots.

This fucker woofs, just trust me, there is nothing sub about it.

This affords me the convenience of three adapters with only costing me one outlet on my power strip.

The glowing keyboard is good for when I'm shrouded in depressing darkness.


Here's the *other* entertainment center.


Barely visible is a stray chair that was rescued from a dumpster. It's lack of bottom makes it perfect for my japanese styled entertainment stand.