The Pain,trauma And Madness Of My Ht

[DontCrashR]

Hi All, New to the show but I have lurked a few times....

My original HT was up for replacement, so I started looking.

I have a small box of a room to deal with as well

4.4m x 3m x 2.75m with a 4.4 throw.

I have sort of settled on the following system.

Denon 3313 AVR

Denon DBT-1713 Player

Optoma HD25 or the HD25-LV..... not sold on it yet but close.

Aaron cc-240 Centre (from previous system)

JBL Sub 8" (from previous system)

sort of sorted on the above gear, but new speakers........ I am having trouble.

Looking at a couple of sets....

Klipsch Reference II

RB-61 as fronts

RS-52 as side and rear.

and to round out the system a SW112 Sub

or

PSB Imagine

Imagine B for front & side

Imagine S for rear

and a Series 300 Sub.

I have one other place to go to check out speakers, B&W and Kef.

At the moment I and preferring the Klipsch, even in the fundamentally poor environment of a Harvey Norman store.

The PSB's were awesome with music but didn't grab me in the movie side of the equation, considering the setup will be almost exclusively movies, it seems not much point in going down that path.

BUT

I am also engaging the services of a sound engineer to assess the room and see what we can do to adjust and modify the acoustics to suit my tastes.

So am I going about it the wrong way or have the wrong component combinations or am I just wasting my time?

Thanks James

[DontCrashR]

managed to get a look at a set of Martin Logan speakers yesterday, I am relatively impressed by them, better than B & W and the Kef.

Why does the cost have to keep going up every time I find something that impresses me.....

[blybo]

I see you own an Aussie built Aaron centre yet you haven't auditioned (I assume) and other aussie brands. They tend to represent the best bang for buck as compared to imported brands. I'm told in the past Aaron were a fairly budget brand but making some great stuff now, along with Krix, Whatmough, Adelaide Speakers and Subsonic just to name a few.

Budget? I'd also try to include a new matching centre into your budget. For Movies the centre is more important than your mains and should ideally be matched in timbre to the mains as well.

If we knew your location, local members could point you to stores with Aussie brands for audition.

Good to see you're open to room treatments. Square rooms need more help than most to get the best sound quality.

Edited May 31, 2013 by blybo

[DontCrashR]

Thanks for the reply Blybo, I really appreciate it.

To be honest, I haven't really considered Aussie stuff. Nothing against it just doesn't seem to much locally.

All the research leads to big name brands and more of a mass retail nature.

I am open to replacing the Centre with something else or to a matching set. I had just heard that the Aaron was a great centre speaker and thought that I may as well use it. Point taken on matching the front stage up tho.

I am in Toowoomba Qld, and while it is a big city, doesn't have the services like Brisbane or the Coast. I could duck down there but I run my own business 7 days a week at the moment.

And finally my budget...... well it started out at 5k and is now 10k. That is all for equipment, the room acoustic mods and install can come under a different budget, then I won't be as scared.

It all started out with just some components, then started snowballing with the comment 'if you are going this far why aren't you buying/upgrading........' and hasn't really stopped.

I am open to all advice on the components and better ways of setting it up. A heap of others out there with far more experience than me.

Thanks James

[DontCrashR]

ok, I got in touch with an acoustics engineer, Peter Patrick @ Scientific Acoustics.

We plugged in the dimension's of the room and the materials that it is made of.

It brought up a graph of what the frequencies were the problem. He was able to overlay that to the THX specifications, needless to say it was way off.

He then started putting in various products on the wall to alter the absorption of the excessive frequencies.

We ended up with covering the roof with a CSR acoustic tile, and 2 large panels of a Rippletone product on either side of the room near the front speakers.

It brought the whole room into THX specifications.

Total cost for the mods will be approx. 2500-3000.

He also recommended a few other changes, suggested that I use 5.1 or 5.2 setup, as the room is too small to get the effect from a 7.1 system.

He also suggested that it would be a better sounding stage with a matching front system, so all the front speakers are the same or from a matched set.

On a side note, he showed off a couple of speakers he built about 10 years ago, with his own crossover/amplifier setup.

He said it was from a few bits and pieces that he had got cheap and some good drivers........Needless to say I have not heard anything like it before, from those 2 speakers it created a sound that was truly stunning in its clarity, accuracy, balance and seamlessness. there was plenty of power too. he then mentioned that he was working on doing another set that would be a lot better than those, he just had to get his finger out and build them. I think he said the drivers for 1 speaker were in the 10-12000........

Cheers James