Any Audiophiles present?

[Kimeran]

Hey everyone,
I am a major audiophile and literally obsess over getting speaker placement right in my house. What is coming out next and speakers and headphones in general. I am also obsessed with television sets especially plasmas as they have the best picture in my opinion.

Anyway, else who loves speakers and home theater on here? The four places that my money goes is girlfriend, dog, golf, and speakers...I am really that bad...in fact you can also find me on AVSforum.com as well under the same screen name.

 

[BigLeftyinAZ]

I'll let this be my answer

Sad thing is,this was my old house and I'm going nuts without that room.Still have all the equipment,just waiting to get it all back up and running.

B&K Ref 50
Gemstone Amp 200X7

7 B&W speakers

 

[Smallville]

AVS is too big. High Def Junkies is where I go for Hi-Def now. In fact at least a few people from there belong to THP also. I'll check out highdefforum too but HDJ is not overwhelmingly huge and easier to find fixes to my problems.

 

[Smallville]

I'll let this be my answer

Nice setup BigLefty.

 

[Kimeran]

I like that AVS is so big because someone on there has an answer for you no matter what your question. That is where I learned about SVSound.com and other ID brands such as AV123 and Ascend Acoustics and Axiom. If it werent for them I would have never had such a nice system that costs less than others and still sounds just as good if not better for a system costing more.

The only thing I would like to try next is DIY speakers but I do not have the skills to do so...

 

[Kimeran]

I'll let this be my answer

Sad thing is,this was my old house and I'm going nuts without that room.Still have all the equipment,just waiting to get it all back up and running.

B&K Ref 50
Gemstone Amp 200X7

7 B&W speakers

I like your setup, what kind of t.v. stand is that...if it can really even be called a stand...

 

[mytime]

I'm not an audiophile, just have a midrange Onkyo HTIB. As far as HDTVs go, I agree plasma is the way to go. I would love to get a Kuro but My Panny does just fine.

 

[Smallville]

Plasmas are the way to go unless you are in a room with a lot of windows and don't want the curtains drawn all day long (reflections). That's I picked an LCD. Cannot argue about the picture quality though, even though LCD ain't bad.

 

[Esox]

I think in my state you have to register if you're an audiophile. There's a list and audiophiles have to go door to door and tell their neighbors when they first move into an area.

Kevin

 

[Kimeran]

I'm not an audiophile, just have a midrange Onkyo HTIB. As far as HDTVs go, I agree plasma is the way to go. I would love to get a Kuro but My Panny does just fine.

good new for you man...Panasonic hired all of the pioneer engineers and purchased all of their patents...and according to the rumors on AVS the 2010 models will begin to use the Kuro technology....I can only pray that this is the truth

As far as too many windows in a room for plasma...that isnt as much of a problem now as it used to be as many now have much brighter screens and anti-glare coatings...but I watch most of my t.v. at night so doesnt matter either way.

 

[mytime]

good new for you man...Panasonic hired all of the pioneer engineers and purchased all of their patents...and according to the rumors on AVS the 2010 models will begin to use the Kuro technology....I can only pray that this is the truth

As far as too many windows in a room for plasma...that isnt as much of a problem now as it used to be as many now have much brighter screens and anti-glare coatings...but I watch most of my t.v. at night so doesnt matter either way.

Yep. The Neo-PDP panel with the AR coating pretty much took care of the glare problems. On the other hand my LG plasma is like a mirror. LOL

 

[BigLeftyinAZ]

I like your setup, what kind of t.v. stand is that...if it can really even be called a stand...

It was custom built to house the electronics and hold the center channel just under the screen.



My front room has a 50" Pioneer Elite ELITE KURO PLASMA.I opted for the 720P version.

 

[Kimeran]

That was a good call Lefty. To get the benefits of 1080p vs. 720p on a 50" tv you have to be sitting pretty close and it saves you an extra buck or two.

I tried explaining to my roomate this as you can get a really nice 720p for the price of a low quality 1080p and he would believe me...tv he wound up with sometimes will just turn off and not turn back on and I have to fix it...he seems to think it is a problem with my equipment though as his tv is connected to my receiver, speakers, ps3, and tivo...yet all i have to do to fix his tv is unplug it and plug it back in...

 

[BigLeftyinAZ]

That was a good call Lefty. To get the benefits of 1080p vs. 720p on a 50" tv you have to be sitting pretty close and it saves you an extra buck or two.

Plus nothing on Directv is aired in 1080p.Only going off of what I've heard and unsure if this is truth.

 

[Smallville]

That was a good call Lefty. To get the benefits of 1080p vs. 720p on a 50" tv you have to be sitting pretty close and it saves you an extra buck or two.

I found this chart useful. I bought 1080p anyway, but got a great price.

 

[Vegan702]

I am sort of an audiophile. I just completed my living room setup the other day with the addition of the ent center. I had it custom built to my specs. Above it is a 60" Pioneer Plasma, housed in the cabinet is a Pioneer Elite SC-05 and Panny BDP, and the speakers are Definitive Technology and a Elemental Designs A2-300 sub.

 

[JPsuff]

I was much more of an audiophile "back in the day" than I am today, but I still get into it.

My passion back then was building speakers. I was always fascinated with acoustics and I've built some very impressive speaker sets over the years, even if I do say so myself. My favorite project was a pair of floor-standing speakers based on what's known as "Helmholtz Resonance" which is basically the resonance of a cavity or in this case of an enclosure.

Without getting all technical, the speaker enclosures I built consist of two chambers one of which is half the volume of the other, which are "connected" by a tuned port between them and are ported to atmosphere as if both were one single chamber. These enclosures resonate at two distinct frequencies which are approx. 25Hz and the other around 50Hz. What this does is allow for the enclosure to enhance low range frequencies at two different levels allowing a smoother transition from bass to mids as well as enhancing the bass over a longer period - sort of like two bites at the apple.

It took me about a month to build this particular set and I had to be very precise in my measurements for both the enclosures as well as the porting between them. The enclosures themselves measure about 5 1/2 feet tall and the boxes are a bit more than a foot wide and perhaps fifteen inches deep. Each enclosure is set up with a pair of 10-inch woofers, 2 soft dome mids and a horned piezo tweeter. I originally set them up with 3-way crossovers but switched to 2-ways on the advice of a friend who "knew stuff" and I just modified a few caps to get the numbers right.

They were my regular speakers until we went in the Home Theater direction after which I carefully wrapped them up and they currently are stored in my basement. I miss those speakers. My wife hated them because of their size, but she admits that when it comes to sound, even our new surround sound setup doesn't come close to the warmth and presence of those monsters. Don't get me wrong, I really dig the surround sound setup especially the way it makes me feel as if things are happening all over the place, but digital audio just doesn't have the warmth of analog (like vinyl and tapes), which is what those speakers were designed for.

Today, my "media room" is not a dedicated media room (we just like to call it that) and is more of a converted den. We went in the direction of HDTV when the den became available as a "media room" because I built a 400 sq. ft. extension on the back of my house (carpentry is another thing I love) which is now a family room/dining room, so that left the old den available for media even though we still occasionally use it as a sitting room.

My theater setup consists of:
Sony KDF-60XS955 1080i Rear Projection LCD
Yamaha HTR-5760 1000W A/V Receiver
1 Pair Klipsch Synergy B-3 100W Front Surround
1 Pair Klipsch Synergy S-2 100W Rear Surround
1 Bose VCS-10 100W Center Channel Speaker
1 Klipsch Sub-12 650W Powered Subwoofer
Toshiba SD-5970 Upconverting DVD Player (Sorry, no Blue Ray yet)
Scientific Atlanta 8300HD DVR

I also have a 12 band graphic EQ that I bought for this system which I have yet to install, but I think it's going to solve some "hot spot" problems I have now and then as well as allow me to get a warmer tone when I play music through my surround system.

All in all, I'm nowhere near as tweaked as I used to be over audio, but I still try to get everything as perfect as I can and I'm always "messing with the buttons" just like I used to do.



-JP

 

[Kimeran]

I found this chart useful. I bought 1080p anyway, but got a great price.

Thanks for the cart smallville, that is the one i was talking about but I didnt even know what to search for on google to find it.

 

[mytime]

All in all, I'm nowhere near as tweaked as I used to be over audio, but I still try to get everything as perfect as I can and I'm always "messing with the buttons" just like I used to do.

My wife gave me the strangest look when she came home one day and I was crawling on the floor trying to find the sweet spot for my sub. I told her what I was doing and she just shook her head and said I never knew you were such a geek. LOL

 

[Kimeran]

JP, that is amazing that you used to build your own speakers. I very interested in giving the DIY a shot but I have absolutely NO experience with carpentry as my high school didnt offer wood working class at all...we had religion...joy....

anyways, I decided not to go the DIY route for this reason and it would be a total waste of money if I ruined anything. I had a design drawn out for the basic design of what I wanted to make. Cabinet would have had no parrallel sides to eliminate resonance and "coloring" of the sound with the seperate chambers being different sizes as your design did but I was planning on using Cardboard tubes to do this because the paper properties would allow as much resonance as well. I had also decided that I wanted to use either drivers from Scanspeak or SEAS.

After that I started to look at what else I was going to need to consider...then realized that I dont know how to use wood...only metal(im a welder part time)

so that put a stop to my DIY...for now

 

[JPsuff]

JP, that is amazing that you used to build your own speakers. I very interested in giving the DIY a shot but I have absolutely NO experience with carpentry as my high school didnt offer wood working class at all...we had religion...joy....

anyways, I decided not to go the DIY route for this reason and it would be a total waste of money if I ruined anything. I had a design drawn out for the basic design of what I wanted to make. Cabinet would have had no parrallel sides to eliminate resonance and "coloring" of the sound with the seperate chambers being different sizes as your design did but I was planning on using Cardboard tubes to do this because the paper properties would allow as much resonance as well. I had also decided that I wanted to use either drivers from Scanspeak or SEAS.

After that I started to look at what else I was going to need to consider...then realized that I dont know how to use wood...only metal(im a welder part time)

so that put a stop to my DIY...for now

If you can weld, then that means that you're good with your hands and that all by itself is 90% of the battle. I used to look at welding the same way you're looking at carpentry - that it was this really strange thing and it would take decades to learn.

But I had a job once where a good friend there showed me the basics of welding and had me weld some brackets together. After he watched me do a few and offered some advice and corrected my technique a few times, he left me alone to finish a few dozen of those things. When I was done, there were a few goofs here and there, but overall I did pretty good and after a while welding became much easier.

I think you may see carpentry the same way, but just like my welding experience, all you'd need is for someone to show you the basics and I think you would probably pick things up a lot faster than you give yourself credit for.

The best speaker enclosures are made from high density particle board because particle board is acoustically dead and it doesn't "color" the sound (one of the few really good uses of particle board). I used 3/4-inch thick particle board and I just added a veneer over that to give the speakers a "wood" look. And it's funny you should mention cardboard because the material I used for my port tubes are cores from paper rolls used in the envelope factory where I once worked.
These cores are very substantial in that they're about 1/2-inch thick and they just happened to be the right diameter for the size I worked out (using formulas from a book), so that was a lucky break.

If you can operate a table saw, you're more than halfway home. And if you know what a dado blade is and how it's used, then you're at the doorstep. Besides, particle board is cheap so even if you screw up a few pieces, it won't break the bank. Just use lots of glue and the remember the number one rule of cabinetry: "There is no such thing as too many clamps".

There are plenty of books on building speaker enclosures (think Radio Shack) and many are designed specifically for people who've never built anything like that. In short, all I can say is: "Give it a shot - what's the worst that can happen?"

Believe me, if you take your time and follow the steps, the sound from a set of speakers you've built yourself is a thousand times better than the sound from anything you could buy in a store.



-JP

 

[mytime]

Believe me, if you take your time and follow the steps, the sound from a set of speakers you've built yourself is a thousand times better than the sound from anything you could buy in a store.

Might have to give that a shot. I've been interested in a DIY sub for a long time. If I can nail that down I would give the fronts and rears a go. Ty Mike.

 

[Kimeran]

I might have to as well. You can get some towers that are MTM design kits for only 200 right now at partsexpress.com and it come with everything you need. crossover, drivers, cabinet, insulations, etc.

I am really tempted but I think i would wait till after i graduate to do so.