Building a good home setup

[phil]

Well I finally got a Blue Ray player, and I finally got Pirates, lol as well as Black Hawk down and Casino Royale. Just as a movie fan I had to own both players, but at the moment I don't really have a good sound setup, well there is room improvement. What kind of sound setup do you guys use? I mean should I go with the typical Bose Home Setups?

[ruvic2007]

It depends on your budget and room size. Bose is very famous for WAF (wife approval factor) and not for its performance.

Originally Posted by phil

Well I finally got a Blue Ray player, and I finally got Pirates, lol as well as Black Hawk down and Casino Royale. Just as a movie fan I had to own both players, but at the moment I don't really have a good sound setup, well there is room improvement. What kind of sound setup do you guys use? I mean should I go with the typical Bose Home Setups?

[rmm2112]

I really think sound setup is very preference based and relies not only on room size and dimensions, but what sounds good to you. What size speakers (actual dimensions), price, etc. will fit your needs as well. I personally purchased my speakers separately - meaning I didn't buy a "package". Yes, the speakers are all from the same company (Paradigm) so that they have a timbre match, but I bought the best of what I could afford for each type of speaker. And then, I can upgrade from there.

[phil]

it's a fairly large room 25 feet by 25 feet. currently holding a Grand Piano as well as my LCD television and an work Desktop. I was thinking about moving the whole setup to a living room (that was suppose to be a quite room) which is being built currently. This way I can bury my lines in the wall and hide everything and create a lot of easy good looking Custom work. However building a mini home theater when you wern't even planning on doing that to begin with, often arises questions in my head.

[Pelican170]

In my opinion, I would splurge on a good receiver. This way if you choose to move your setup to different rooms of different sizes, a good receiver can auto adjust so it is at its optimum settings. This way the size of the room doesnt matter.

[ground chuck]

a bose lifestyle system would be the quickest way and easiest way, but if you want to achieve the next level of audio, you'll have to invest some time and money. should you choose the latter, i highly recommend definitive speakers. these are high end speakers so, you'll need a relatively good receiver. i've only owned yahama receivers and was very happy with them, but i'm not a audiophile and i know there are better receivers on the market.

[Manco]

Originally Posted by phil

Well I finally got a Blue Ray player...

PSSST. It's "Blu"

[AV_Integrated]

Originally Posted by phil

Well I finally got a Blue Ray player, and I finally got Pirates, lol as well as Black Hawk down and Casino Royale. Just as a movie fan I had to own both players, but at the moment I don't really have a good sound setup, well there is room improvement. What kind of sound setup do you guys use? I mean should I go with the typical Bose Home Setups?

Always remember Bose's motto: Better products through marketing!

Or is that what every informed online audiophile will tell you?

For the money, you can get much better audio sound with proper connectivity than what Bose will offer. If you can get away with floor standing speakers, etc. then it is a fair amount of research that you have available to you. That is, kind of like car shopping, set your budget, then start checking out the showrooms. Listen to different receivers, do some homework on what is out there, ask questions. There are great online communities, such as www.audioholics.com - where you can get solidly reliable information about A/V and what is important.

If buying new, I wouldn't pass up HDMI 1.3 switching in a receiver for sure. If the WAF was important to deal with, I likely would look for some decnt in-wall or on-wall speakers. Definitive definitely has a good run of on-walls with their Mythos lineup. I would also say that a really good sub can do phenomenal things to make a theater sound good. It's not about the 'bass' it's about the presence that subwoofers provide. Velodyne DD10, Sunfire True... That's some really nice stuff that I've never heard matched for less money.