HT Make Over

[ls7z06]

I have been laying low and working to upgrade my HT set up over the last few months. I am very fortunate to now finally have the pieces in place to say I am really happy with how it turned out. I have become a huge fan of Salk speakers and AVA power equipment in the process. Sure, the movies are fantastic, but the multi-channel MUSIC is where this set up has astounded me the most. I left my old set up pics in a separate folder so you can compare to the new set up.... if you are interested, check it out. Thanks.

[tbizzle]

Heh, you like to start new HT threads a lot!

Your old setup was awesome, but you definitely have a killer one now, those Salk's are gorgeous! Nice job man

[crazyBLUE]

Wow ~ That is a big change over you have done

The Salk's , Amplifiers I bet it sounds much better than it did , Congrats on the New Home Theater !

[ejusted]

Very nice set up man! I love the sub. The speakers and amps look great! You get alot of echo in that room?

[Yautja]

Love it, well done!

[ls7z06]

Originally Posted by ejusted

Very nice set up man! I love the sub. The speakers and amps look great! You get alot of echo in that room?

I got lucky on the acoustics in the room I guess. Have not noticed any echo. I think the sloped ceilings reflecting downward must help. I had Jeff Meier with AccuCal calibrate my old system in that same room and when he checked the acoustics in the room, he said it was in pretty good shape. I still plan to experiment with some room treatments to see if I can tell any difference at all. Thanks.

[Irrob]

WOW. Eveything looks great. Nice taste.

[rpatt]

Very nice. I've never had the opportunity to audition Salk speakers.

[erict]

Very nice setup you have there

[croseiv]

Wow. That's one impressive make over there! I'm sure it sounds great!

[callas01]

dude, that looks awesome. great setup. I would love to sit and listen to some SACDs in that system.... I bet you drool when its playing...

[Morrissey]

Well done....those are some beautiful looking speakers.

[kingofgrills]

Wow! Your upgrade to SALK speakers and AVA amps is huge! I bet the system sounds fantastic for multichannel music! I'd love to bring some of my favorite SACDs over for an audition. Does the SVS sub integrate well with the rest of the system for music?

Great job!

[ls7z06]

Originally Posted by kingofgrills

Wow! Your upgrade to SALK speakers and AVA amps is huge! I bet the system sounds fantastic for multichannel music! I'd love to bring some of my favorite SACDs over for an audition. Does the SVS sub integrate well with the rest of the system for music?

Great job!

Thanks again everybody for the kind words. It is really gratifying to get the good comments after putting so much time and effort into this. Thank you.

On the sub.... yes it does integrate well with the speakers. The HT2TL/HT1TL Salks are very, very capable down low for most all music and the SVS would not really be necessary for listening to tunes. But big boom movies are a different story. I think the SVS really delivers on both fronts.. so I just keep it going on everything and still cross over the Salks at 80Hz. The sub is really indistinguishable from the other speakers, just goes lower. I like to crank the gain on the SVS up about 3dB for action movies so I can really feel it down to my bones. The bridge scene in the first Lord of the Rings movie makes me think I am in the cave with them. Then for regular TV or music listening, I turn the sub gain back down. I know there is a setting on my AVR that will do that automatically for me, and typing this has motivated me to go mess around with that tonight.

I also got motivated today to order some acoustic panels from ATS Acoustics and I am looking forward to experimenting with that. I have not noticed an acoustics issue and when I had it checked with professional equipment, it was OK, but I doubt that the panels could hurt anything..... and they might look cool too.

Thanks again.

[ls7z06]

Just got these delivered Friday night and got them up over the weekend and just added a few new pics (towards bottom of gallery photos). So far, I am very pleased. What little boominess and echo that was in the room are gone. Vocals are improved as well. Everything sounds very clean. I would not say this made a night and day difference, but it certainly did make an improvement. Again, I did not think I had a huge acoustics problem to start with, but now with the room treatments, I think it is in very good shape from an acoustics perspective.

[ls7z06]

Tinkering this weekend. I replaced my Oppo BDP-83 with the BDP-83 SE. Ran Blue Jeans Cables from the 7.1 multichannel analog outs, and the 2 channel analog stereo outs to the Onkyo 5007. Also left the HDMI hooked up too (for video and comps). I was pretty darn surprised how well the new set up sounded. The Onkyo 5007 had impressed me with the Burr Brown 32 bit DAC and all of its nice features. But... letting the Oppo SE decode and going analog to the Onk multichannel ins really opened things up. Noticing new details in the music, bigger-deeper soundstage, nice warm sound, very noticable improvements. It is so sweet when you buy something and it is actually an improvement! Posted a couple of new pics of the Oppo front and back in my gallery if you have an interest.