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[#] Tue Nov 04 2014 09:53:38 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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We ended up buying the Epson 2030. It is a 3 LCD, 2000 lumen, 1920x1080 projector.
It's being used in a "mostly dark" room. So far we are all dazzled with its performance.

I normally don't buy the "protection plan" on consumer electronics, but this time I did, and I plan to have a "lamp failure" a month before the end of the plan. (Just like laptop plans include one screen replacement, projector plans include one lamp replacement.)

We're shooting across the shorter measurement of the room, so that probably does improve the brightness of the picture a lot. But even so, the lens is wide enough that it totally fills the long wall of the room that way.

[#] Tue Dec 29 2015 10:44:56 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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I've noticed something.

Aside from the audiophile market, is "home stereo" now completely dead?

Flip through the circulars for your big box stores. Traditional hi-fi systems aren't there anymore. What you *do* see is Bluetooth speakers. Pages and pages of Bluetooth speakers. All shapes and sizes, from a desktop cube to powered towers. I guess this is the new normal, and I wasn't paying attention when the change happened.

(And the audience who reads this message will probably have a higher-than-normal percentage of rack-hugging audiophiles.)

[#] Tue Dec 29 2015 11:45:43 EST from dothebart

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You still got that rack thingabobs if you want to run your own cinema with DTS and n+1 speakers.

However, yes, the traditional boom box with radio could be considered dead.



[#] Tue Dec 29 2015 12:37:14 EST from vince-q <vince-q@ns1.netk2ne.net>

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I - for one - must be an old-fashioned audiophile.
1. still have an A/V controller unit.
2. and four high-end 2-chan pre-amps (Bryston)
3. and a farm of speakers (old-school pre-junk Polk Audio)
4. and a pair of Velodyne *huge* subwoofers
5. and a farm of amps to make it all play,,,
... better than any local theater.

Yep - we are still alive and kicking. And there are quite a number of high-end-only retail stores to sell stuff to us!! <evil grin>

[#] Tue Dec 29 2015 13:57:16 EST from fleeb

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I'm using one of those Bose things with the DVD/CD player and integrated radio to serve my hi-fidelity needs, while sending my smart tv's output to the Bose system so everything sounds nice (instead of tinny from the built-in speakers).

Given that the smart tv lets me stream content, it's a pretty good combination.
Very nice fidelity (better, I think, than the bluetooth, where you'd get synchronization issues, I'd expect), and has decent quality.

But probably a tad old-school. Although Bose still sells them, so... maybe not?

[#] Tue Dec 29 2015 17:13:22 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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Yes, audiophiles still exist, and yes Vince, we know you're one of them :)

I'm somewhere in between. I have a Denon amplifier and Polk speakers in a 5.1 arrangement in my home theater, but there's no additional rack of gear beyond that. I have an HDMI selector box that splits out an optical SPDIF audio link that feeds the Denon, and that's it. No disc player, no tape deck, no radio receiver. Just a Nintendo game system, a Chromecast, and the FiOS set top box. Digital devices for an on-demand world.

For any other room in the house I'd definitely buy powered speakers instead of a rack system at this point.

[#] Tue Dec 29 2015 20:29:01 EST from vince-q <vince-q@ns1.netk2ne.net>

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I will probably make 2 folks unhappy here, but...

[#] Tue Dec 29 2015 20:32:44 EST from vince-q <vince-q@ns1.netk2ne.net>

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I will probably make 2 folks unhappy here, but...


1) Bose speakers in the home - you could not GIVE them to me. They have an

historical inability to produce adequate bass, hence the saying "No lows, must
be Bose." This does not apply to their car sound systems which, quite the

opposite, are among the very finest that you can get "stock from the car

dealer."

2) Denon integrated amplifiers.... megabarf. Same complaint as above -
horrible frequency response on the low side. My opinion is that if you
are spending in the Denon price range you can get Onkyo for the same money and
have a hugely better unit.

[#] Wed Dec 30 2015 08:57:29 EST from fleeb

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Well, admittedly, I am not the audiophile. I appreciate audio, even really good audio, but I'm not so interested in it as to pay a lot of money for the right stuff.

[#] Wed Dec 30 2015 09:23:25 EST from vince-q <vince-q@ns1.netk2ne.net>

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2015-12-30 05:57 from fleeb @uncnsrd (Uncensored)

Well, admittedly, I am not the audiophile. I appreciate audio, even

really good audio, but I'm not so interested in it as to pay a lot of

money for the right stuff.



The way I look at it, if I'm going to drag myself to the movie theater, shell out at least $12 for a ticket (and who knows **how** much more for theater "food") then my equipment cost here at home is at least half paid for by not wasting my money at an inferior movie house and not wasting the gas for the round trip (the nearest cinema to my house on the mountain is a sixt four mile round trip).

Now "at least half paid for" only accounts for roughly 30 of the 60 grand tied up in my two racks of stuff plus speakers. so - yes - the rest is self-admitted audiosnobbery. So sue me. <evil grin>

[#] Wed Dec 30 2015 09:30:11 EST from vince-q <vince-q@ns1.netk2ne.net>

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By the way, fleeb, you do not have to do what I did or pay what I did to have a "much better than the average guy" home theater.

1. decide the total amount of money you want to spend
2. spend half of that on speakers
3. spend the rest of that on a good 7.2 integrated amp. Yamaha makes several in the $500 to $700 range that are quite nice and other than folks like me, would put you in the "best system on the block" category.
4. scrape up a bit extra money for GOOD audio cables. If the cable does not cost at least $1.00 per foot it is complete junk. Mine cost, on average, $5.00 per foot, but you can do quite nicely with MonsterCable (Tributaries is the best, but you do NOT want to pay that much for the type of system I described in steps 1 thru 3 - you'd never notice the difference). Anything LESS than monstercable is garbage - anything significantly more than monstercable would be a waste of your money.

If you shop the sales smartly, you could bring this home for roughly $3,500 total (not counting the TV).

By the way, I never "count the TV."
These days, the TV is almost a disposable commodity. My current audio system is now on its FIFTH television - this one a 55" LCD flattie.

[#] Wed Dec 30 2015 09:56:04 EST from vince-q

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A bit more...

All speaker cables are NOT created equal, not even close.
If there is one place where it is truly worth blowing the budget, it's on speaker cables.

Back in NJ I used an Audio Consultant for most of my purchases. At his place, he had this set of speaker "cables" that looked more like 1.5" diameter pipes! They were 12' long, each, and were kept off the floor using things that, for all the world, looked like "upside-down" muffler clamps like you would see on your car.

So - I asked how much they erere.
The answer.. "For you, twenty five grand."
After I stopped laughing, I paid for my four Bryston pre-amps ($3 grand each) and quietly left...

[#] Wed Dec 30 2015 10:51:42 EST from dothebart

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Got my onkyo from 2001 still running.

Elac front & center, canton dipol rear. It was the time before you could purchase affordable 7:n ;-)

Dreambox sat receiver, a wii, and a pi attached to the logitech media server; all hooked up via s/p diff to the onkyo.

Banana plugs for all speaker cables - thats the problem with yamaha amps, they've got some where only the main front speakers have good connectors, all the other got shitty mini clamp connectors.

The LMS runs on the cubie board powered by an Allwinner A10. Also got a Squeezebox radio as alarm clock.

the 42" sammy replaced the noisy and meanwhile broken Dell-beamer in this setup.



[#] Wed Dec 30 2015 11:02:31 EST from fleeb

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Heh, $3,500 seems like a lot for something I don't use very seriously.

But then, the true audio snobs buy homes where the walls themselves are acoustically ideal. Heh.

[#] Wed Dec 30 2015 13:44:31 EST from vince-q <vince-q@ns1.netk2ne.net>

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Banana plugs for all speaker cables - thats the problem with yamaha
amps, they've got some where only the main front speakers have good
connectors, all the other got shitty mini clamp connectors.


I don't use any of the built-in amps on my Yamaha 7.2 unit. I use the pre-amp (line) outs, tributaries cables to the Bryston pre-amps and from the pre-amps to the Carver amplifier "farm", and Monster from the amps to the speakers.


Both subs have built-in amps (Velodyne has always believed in that) so cabling to the subs is simple - tributaries from the Yamaha line-outs to the two subs and done with it.

But you are right - the speaker connection points on the Yamaha suck - hugely. But they will do just fine if you are building a "better than average" consumer-grade home theater.

[#] Wed Dec 30 2015 13:46:38 EST from vince-q <vince-q@ns1.netk2ne.net>

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2015-12-30 08:02 from fleeb @uncnsrd (Uncensored)

Heh, $3,500 seems like a lot for something I don't use very seriously.



But then, the true audio snobs buy homes where the walls themselves
are acoustically ideal. Heh.



True audio snobs would (I've done this) blow $3,500 just on speaker cabling and interconnects. Back in NJ while I was still teaching, occasionally we would have an AP Physics barbecue - I'd bring the students into "The Room" and walk them behind the main rack.

"You see all those cables? They cost more than your CAR!"

[#] Fri Jan 01 2016 19:15:44 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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I've said it before; I just can't get excited about high end speaker cable.
It's just copper. It really just is copper. I've got a pretty good ear and I can't hear the difference.

Buying good interconnects is worth it, but only for analog. If the interconnects are HDMI or SPDIF, anything more than that required for an error-free digital connection is wasted.

[#] Sat Jan 02 2016 07:32:28 EST from dothebart

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but how does that compare, if you have high quality analog cables, and the digital ones inbetween look like china plastic?



[#] Sat Jan 02 2016 17:36:29 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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I don't care what it looks like. I care what it sounds like. If I *see* cables, it's too sloppy.

[#] Sun Jan 03 2016 21:37:25 EST from Freakdog <freakdog@dogpound2.citadel.org>

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My primary TV is hooked up through a receiver. Blu-Ray, STB, CD player, game console...all go through the receiver (HDMI in for all video signals, optical connection from the CD player) and out through wired front speakers, wireless set up for rear speakers.

My experience with bluetooth speakers/headsets is that there's still too much of a delay between video and audio to make them truly viable as an A/V solution at this time.



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