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What Audio System Powers Your Home Theater?
FusionJunky asks: "My cohorts and I at The GeekPad are working to develop our home theatre into something a little more robust. We picked up a 36" Sony Television and a respectable DVD Player...now we're ready to tackle audio. We've noticed we have this optical out capability from the DVD player, and a bunch of other new fangled plugs back there, and we were wondering what the Slashdot community uses for home theatre audio. We'd like to keep it under $1500." I'd be interested in what you all feel is the best system for the buck, from your choices in tuners to speakers.
The first thing to decide in a receiver is what type and how many connections you need.
Figure out how many audio-only components you have (or will have) and how many audio/video components you need to support. If your receiver doesn't have enough inputs to support them, you're hosed (or have to mess with a secondary switch; ick).
For example, I need:
DVD player: audio/S-video inputs, optical input
VCR: audio/video inputs, audio/video outputs
ReplayTV: audio/S-video inputs, audio/S-video outputs.
and so on.
You can use splitters on the non-digital outputs, if you don't have enough.
Keep in mind with the S-video and composite connections that in most cases you need to hook up both, unless all your components only use S-video. Many receivers don't convert between the two, so you'll need to use the composite out if you're relying on a composite input somewhere.
If you don't think tubes can make a real difference, you've either never heard a properly set up tube audio system, or you've simply ignored the evidence of your senses in favor of the pseudo-scientific snake oil of the mainstream audio world. Well-designed tube amplifiers with proper speakers sound far better than virtually any solid-state amplifiers. There are sound electrical engineering and psychoacoustic reasons for this, but they're lost in the simpleminded marketing bullshit of watts and THD specs, often to the point where listeners make up nonsense like "euphonic distortion" to explain why the tube system sounds so much better than their "audiophile" solid-state systems with gobs of power and low THD.
The basic problem is that the human ear is very good about filtering out signal-following distortions even at high levels (which is why a subwoofer with 10% distortion, like an excellent $2000 Velodyne, is even tolerable), but is extremely sensitive to distortions that don't modulate along with the signal. What we find in the electrical real world of the amp-speaker interface is a lot of mechanically stored energy messing with the signal. Say the amp spits out a big pulse of energy. The speaker stores MOST of that energy as mechanical crud, then spits it back into the amp as an electrical signal, maybe tens or hundreds of milliseconds later (speakers are maybe 1% efficient... where does the 99% go, except to mechanical and thermal dissipation? And a speaker motor also works as a generator for mechanically stored energy in the suspension. This is high school physics). That energy coming back from the speaker in a highly distorted, nonlinear way gets fed back to the beginning of the amplifier via the global negative feedback loop (required to make transistors even remotely linear) as *error correction*, and thus modulates totally unrelated signals occuring well after the original pulse.
And that's just the *beginning* of the problem. This is a very, very difficult problem, despite the simpleton math the marketing departments of the audio makers feed you.
Triode vacuum tubes are the ONLY amplifying devices linear enough to follow a voltage signal accurately without a feedback loop. The better tubes have distortion so low it is difficult to measure. And, as they approach their output limits, the distortion in a properly designed amplification stage is mostly second harmonic - so benign is is inaudible at less than 5% levels, and is perceived as an increase in loudness beyond that. A triode output stage can absorb reflected energy from the speaker via its own impedance, without feeding "error correction" back into previous stages. Thus, a triode with no negative feedback is MUCH better behaved into complex reactive loads with mechanical energy storage - i.e. speakers. The relatively high measured THD of such amps just shows the stupidity of THD measurements.
I could go on into numerous other shortcomings of transistors as amplifying devices for music, but this is a start.
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Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Check out http://www.audioreview.com to look at reviews for different components. It's a good place to start looking at a ton of different devices.
I have a full set of Cambridge SoundWorks speakers in my setup right now. I used their MovieWorks 5.1 speaker system (large center channel, matched pair for left & right, matched pair for left and right surrounds, and a BassCube 10), and added an extra pair of surrounds for the left and right rear surround channels, for a full 6.1 setup. The entire set cost me about $1600, however, so that might fall a little out of your range. They do have less expensive sets, however, and I've never had a problem with their sound quality.
As far as a receiver goes, I'm using a B&K AVR307 system. It's THX EX certified, and it has more inputs/outputs than I can possibly use. Plus it's upgradeable for future standards (you can swap one of the logic boards and upgrade the software). And it has a serial port for hooking into a home automation system. But that piece was about $3500 alone. I decided that I'd rather spend the money on a really good receiver, since the receiver is going to limit the quality of any other component in the system.
-Todd
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"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
A few things I've learned while shopping recently for a music-listening system (only 2 channels):
1. You may have the impression that one $500 amp is going to sound pretty much the same as another $500 amp (or $1000, or $2000...). It's not true. And it's easy to prove. Go and find yourself a high-end audio store and listen to a half-dozen different setups. And I'm not talking about your local stereo-videogame-and-toaster store here, I mean a real high-end store that sells $10,000 turntables and such, and you can actually listen for ten minutes in a quiet room. Oh, and listen to the same (music, movies) everywhere you go. You'll notice a suprising amount of difference in the sound.
2. Different speakers and amplifiers have different sounds that sound better to different people. Go and listen to a handful of systems and figure out what you like.
3. Unfortunately, all the audioreview.com reviews seem to follow this pattern: eight out of ten reviewers say "sounds great. If you only have $xxx to spend, this is the (amp|speaker) you should buy". Then there's two reviewers who absolutely hate the sound because it's too bright or lifeless. This is true of $500 stuff and $5000 stuff. Since every review follows that same pattern, it's impossible to compare two pieces of equipment realistically.
4. Cheap equipment will drag down the sound. $2000 speakers won't sound too hot on a $200 amplifier. Try and spread your money around to maximize overall system performance.
5. I know I said this in #1 and #2, but go and listen to a bunch of systems at good stores. You really don't need to be an audiophile to hear the difference. Just go and spend a few afternoons hitting the stores and you'll be glad you did.
6. Many high-end shops will let you try stuff out at home. Ask and see if they'll let you.
7. There's a lot of BS floating around out there. Don't believe what other people say. Go and figure it out for yourself.
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314-15-9265
My current home theater rig consists of the following:
61" Sony XBR300 TV
Lexcion DC-1 Preamp (rumor has it George Lucas had one of these things :) )
Parasound HCA-1206 power amp
Toshiba 5109 DVD player (has progressive out)
Sony DSS
Some damn SVHS VCR that I have yet to use
Citation 7000 series speakers
Now... all of that stuff retails for something on the wrong side of $30,000, but you'd be a fool to think I'd actually spend that much money on it. I picked up the power amp, preamp, and speakers all used, at an average of about 1/3 of retail pricing.
So... my whole hearted recommendation is spend some time looking at the used market! Also, stay away from the Good Guys, Circuit City, etc. These stores carry CRAP. Find a local high end dealer and talk to them. Usually their prices are movable and you can do some wheeling and dealing. Also, checkout auidoadvisor.com. They currently have what appears to be the deal of the century at the moment... A complete KEF (excellent speaker brand) 5.1 speaker system for $900.
Here's a short list of good brands to look for:
Electronics (receivers, preamps, amps, etc.)
NAD
Parasound
Some Denon/Yamaha
Anthem
Sherwood Newcastle (make sure it's NEWCASTLE!)
B&K
Adcom
Speakers:
B&W
Paradigm
PSB
KEF
NHT
Aerial
Energy
Boston Accoustics
Brands to stay away from:
Sony (some of the ES Stuff is okay)
BOSE (don't by it, no matter what)
sub $500 recievers from ANYONE (these things are just piles of junk)
Kenwood
Sherwood (non newcastle stuff)
Yamaha speakers
Cerwin Vega
JVC (their SVHS VCRs are the best, however)
Awia
Also, here are a few good links to used audio sites:
audioshopper.com
audiogon.com
jmsound.com
jeffsoundvalues.com
Hope that helps, and for what it's worth, I've spent a good amount of time these past few years learning about all of this crap and if you use the guide above you should get a perfectly good system. I've left out super high end brands, thinking most people not be interested, but if you are just ask.