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Building a "Reference" Home Theater
An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad has recently written a 14-page article on building a 'reference' home theater. They go through step-by-step and define all of the issues you need to think about when going with a new home theater setup. Exceptionally detailed but also easy to read."
One of these things is not like the other. One of these things does not belong.
The speakers themselves play little role in your sound system, so it's fine if you get ones so cheap. A real home theatre environment, however, depends entirely on $200 speaker cables. Good (= expensive) speaker cables can compensate for lesser stereo equipment, as well as for a small penis.
The way you do it is you take a CD with a couple of songs you typically listen to (also maybe a sample from a movie soundtrack). Important is that it should be something you're familiar with and preferably uses natural instruments (not synthesizers).
Then, compare speakers in your budget two at a time, make notes on which sounds closest to what the recording should sound like. When doing this make sure of two things:
1) the receiver base and treble settings are set flat
2) No other speakers (or subs are on).
Listen for how clear each instrument (and voice) comes out on each speaker.
When you get your two main speakers you need to get a matching center, you can switch between dolby pro-logic and stereo to compare the sound of your mains vs your central, or better, if they'll let you, hook up one the center channel in place of one of the main speakers and use the L/R fade on the reciever to compare the sound between the two (your music should be pretty even on both channels for this to work well). If you got bookshelf speakers you may want to really consider getting a 3rd identical speaker as your main (you probably will have to buy a 2nd pair since they won't sell them solo but in some cases it's worth it and you have a spare if something goes wrong in the future).
Don't assume the center channel provided by the manufacturer is the best matching center for your mains either. Get the best matching speaker period. When sounds pan across the front you don't want the quality of the sound to change too.
Rear speakers should be reasonably close matches to your fronts. When they're in your room they'll sound different anyway (since the quality of sound we hear is different when the source is in front of us vs the rear). You can also get dedicated surrounds (with drivers facing in different directions) vs traditional speakers for the rear. Always audition the rear speakers as you did your mains. Make sure they're good quality as well.
Last but not least, higher model number, more expensive *does not* mean better sounding. Louder.. maybe. But there are alot of considerations that go into balancing the sound from a speaker and some manufacturers get it right with their mid range models but lose it as they stray from that design.
Oh and if you're gonna listen to a Bose offering (typically not the best value for the price), really listen to the alternatives, you'll be surprised.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
There's nothing even remotely "reference" level about anything suggested here. Their suggestion for speakers, as mentioned elsewhere, is very poor (Polk? Really?) given that there's much better stuff available from great companies like PSB, Paradigm, and NHT.
That they top it off with a $400 receiver, and completely dodge the notion of getting into separates (other than to say that it's complicated and they haven't really listened to anything), makes it lose all credibility. The cable and power conditioning sections are a joke - they steadfastly refuse to entertain any alternatives to Monster Cable (hint: almost all the alternatives are better values for the money; just because you can get Monster Cable on sale doesn't make it a good value - their markup tends to be 3x-4x that of other cable manufacturers).
I get the feeling that they've listened to a handful of mass market pieces and decided to just suggest whatever crap it was they bought. As mentioned elsewhere, they don't even touch on room acoustics and setup factors, which can greatly influence the end results.
In short these guys don't know anything more about setting up a reference level home theater than your average Best Buy salesperson. Given their selection of brands, that's probably what they are in fact.
Bull. Shit.
/etc. but don't want to get ripped off, use Parts Express. They kick all kinds of ass.
For some reason people seem to turn off their brains and start appealing to voodoo magic when dealing with audio technology. Let's put it in a more familiar context: computers.
Suppose you're downloading a digital representation of music -- an MP3, say -- from the Internet. Now, we all know that an MP3 is just a series of bits, and as long as those bits arrive unmodified the song is going to sound exactly the same. Suppose I were to claim that you needed some super-high-fidelity Ethernet cable in order for the MP3 to sound its best after being downloaded, because otherwise the inter-edge arrival time in the digital signal will be distorted, and this, in turn, would map directly into harmonic distortion in the analog reproduction.
Anybody with half a brain would simply laugh at me. The bits either arrived properly or they didn't, and single-bit errors in the MP3 are going to produce pops and static, rather than anything so clean as harmonic distortion. Harmonic distortion is an analog problem, there's just no plausible way it can occur with a digital signal. Furthermore, we all know that you can hook your computer up with pretty much any old Ethernet cable, and unless the cable is seriously crap it's going to work perfectly even at gigabit speeds (far higher than anything you encounter in audio).
The same is, for the most part, true with digital audio as well. You're either going to get a perfect signal or horrible pops and static. There really isn't an in-between, and you're certainly not going to get harmonic distortion. Admittedly digital audio does not feature error correction, so marginal connections are more likely to give you problems, but it's not going to be subtle.
For the record: I have a home theater with a 160" screen and $15K worth of speakers and audio gear. And I use the absolute cheapest generic (but still quality) digital cables I could find, just as I hook my computers up with the cheapest (but still quality) Ethernet cable I could find. I don't think I spent more than $5 on any of my digital audio cables, and the sound from my setup is still awe-inspiring.
Video, of course, is a different story -- none of the video cable standards were really intended to span the 30' run between my equipment room and the projector, and video runs at a much higher bandwidth than audio. I found that I had to buy relatively expensive video cables in order to get a good signal (but we're still talking $100, not $1000), and again with the digital hookups it's nothing subtle. With good cables, the signal is perfect. With lousy cables, it's covered with white and black snow.
And I'd like to echo the comments of a previous poster: if you are looking for high-quality cables / connectors
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