My first HT setup

[SammyG]

New Stuff:

Ok so it took me a week but I've got everthing hooked up and it sounds amazing!!

**drumroll**

Front

Back

Ahhh! Please clean me up...

I even signed up for Blockbuster TA its so nice... How have I watched tv/movies/games without this before?? Even tv sounds better.

Thanks to everyone that gave me advice!!!

END NEW STUFF



Ok this will be a work in progress. My receiver is currently in the shop getting a new power supply, so right now I am just working out where to place my speakers and such.

Edit: receiver gets picked up tomorrow, and then I get to hook it all up!



The Equipment:

receiver: Onkyo TX-DS575

fronts: Paradigm Atoms

center: Klipsch labeled unknown (i just know its a center)

subwoofer: Klipsch RW-8

rears: Technics SB-CL50



Question 1: ANSWERED

I have enough speakers for 5.1; however, my two rear speakers would be an old pair of Technics SB-CL50's that I got my hands on... Would it be better to not use them at all and do a 3.1 setup, or to use them even if they are kind of old.

Note: I have not even listened to them yet, so maybe I should plug them in and see how they sound first?


Question 2: ANSWERED

Can someone please explain the back of my subwoofer to me? I would like to hook it up in the best way possible, so would that be with the RCA or with the speaker wire stands? What do those knobs do and about where should they be set?

Back of my subwoofer


Question 3: ANSWERED

Take a look at where I am thinking of placing my speakers and let me know if there is somewhere better to place them. Green stars indicate future speaker locations, they are not green stars floating around the room.

front

back

Will it be bad to put my rears on the floor under those tables?


Question 4: ANSWERED

Is it even a good idea to use my Swans M-200's as fronts seeing as how they are PC speakers? More importantly, if I do use them, should I keep them plugged in and turned on, or could I somehow cause damage to them doing this?



Ok thats all for now, please let me know what you all think!

 

[montypythizzle]

I would put the rears on the tables for sure.
The LFE plug on the subwoofer is for the dedicated subwoofer channel on the receiver. (it will be labled subwoofer, and also best way to hook up sub)
The one knob is for the subwoofers crossover, making it only to come on at a certain frequency. The on/auto switch is for if you want it on all the time (I'm guessing if used with the front line in) or if you want it to automatically come on whenever the receiver needs for it to come on, as it will send a "signal" to it making it power on and save juice.

 

[SammyG]

Alright, I ordered a digital coax cable for the LFE -> receiver connection, and and optical cable for the xbox -> receiver connection

So the sub can sit on auto all the time, and the knobs I will just have to play around with to see what sounds best...

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

1. I would say go ahead with 5.1 if you have the speakers for it. Having surrounds that don't match isn't a big deal. I'd rather have questionable surrounds going than none at all. If you have everything already, then go ahead and try it. You can always decide against it if you don't like it.

2. Sounds like you have this one figured out.
I leave my subs on all the time actually since they have a bit of trouble "waking up" when I'm playing stuff at lower volumes. If you find you don't have a similar issue, then auto-on should work just fine.
If you have bass management on your receiver (a crossover you can set), then you should probably leave the subwoofer control up high at 120hz so it doesn't mess with the signal that should already be set at a good spot by the receiver.
If you only have one crossover adjustment for all speakers, you might want to try something around 100hz or 120hz. If you can adjust the center / front / surround crossover to different levels in the receiver settings, try about 100hz or 120hz for the center and something lower like 80hz for the fronts and possibly surrounds as well.

I'm not quite sure what you have there for the Klipsch center (quintet series?), but it probably doesn't have much low frequency extension and thus the higher setting.

You can play around with the phase (or better yet, have someone else mess with that while you sit at the listening position) to see if one setting sounds best to you.

I don't see a gain control on the sub? I guess you'll have to try to set the level with just the LFE level on the receiver.

3. The front locations look good for what you have to work with. As was mentioned already, you probably don't want to have the surrounds under the table there.
http://www.dolby.com/consumer/...inment/roomlayout.html

4. This is where I'm most worried about your setup. I'm not too sure how you're going to be able to hook these up. Have you used these before with your receiver? The M200s need a line-level signal rather than the speaker level powered outputs that your receiver is intended to use with normal passive speakers.

There are receiver that have pre-outs that would be good for hooking those up, but you don't have that kind of connection on your receiver.

You might be able to get away with using the tape-out with it, but I'm not sure how your receiver handles routing sources to that, downmixing, and how that would affect your bass management etc.

The M200s are a nice stereo PC option, but they're not the easiest things to integrate into a HT system. I hate to say it, but do you think you might have a different application to use those? You may need to leave them out of this unless you want to buy a new receiver to take advantage of them.

 

[SammyG]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello

4. This is where I'm most worried about your setup. I'm not too sure how you're going to be able to hook these up. Have you used these before with your receiver? The M200s need a line-level signal rather than the speaker level powered outputs that your receiver is intended to use with normal passive speakers.

There are receiver that have pre-outs that would be good for hooking those up, but you don't have that kind of connection on your receiver.

You might be able to get away with using the tape-out with it, but I'm not sure how your receiver handles routing sources to that, downmixing, and how that would affect your bass management etc.

The M200s are a nice stereo PC option, but they're not the easiest things to integrate into a HT system. I hate to say it, but do you think you might have a different application to use those? You may need to leave them out of this unless you want to buy a new receiver to take advantage of them.

No, never used the Swans with this receiver, up until now they've been my PC speakers, and it sounds like they should probably stay that way.

Would it be OK to try them out? I don't want to damage them if they're not made to take the signal coming from the receiver...

Also, if I were in the market for some inexpensive fronts (~$100 or so for the pair) where should I begin looking?

Or would it be better to wait until I could afford ~$150-200 or so for the pair if my options and speaker quality would grow?

BTW, thanks for the advice!


Edit

I did some looking around other threads and such and see:

Insignia NS-B2111's - $85/pair at BB

Polk R50's - $180 shipped/pair

AV123 x-ls's - $220 plus shipping/pair


Any comments about those three? Any other suggestions for ~$100/pair now or ~$150-$200/pair later?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

You wouldn't damage them if you could hook them up correctly, but the problem is that you don't really have a place to hook them up.

The front speaker output from your receiver is going to be speaker wire connections driven by the amps in your receiver.

The Swans have their own amp and need an unpowered signal as input. Unless someone has some insight into how you might get the tape-out to work with multiple inputs correctly along with the digital signal decoding, then I think you're out of luck for a way to connect them at all.

If you're willing to go used, then some more options open up for your pricerange but I think you have some of the stronger choices picked out already.

I've only used the AV123 X-LS in my little work system but haven't gotten a chance to hear the others.

Athena is another brand that has some options in this range.
http://www.audioadvisor.com/

Something to consider is that eventually you'll probably want to get a center channel to match the front speakers. The center channel handles something like 70% of the sound from a typical DVD and thus is very important to how things are going to sound.

You'd want to make a choice for front speakers that would allow you to buy a matched set eventually for your upgrade path.

By the way, it's certainly an option to use a bookshelf/floorstanding speakers rather than a "center" as your center channel speaker as long as you can still place it well and don't mind the aesthetics. (I mention this in case you wanted to go with the Insignias from BB and buy 3 pairs eventually for a matched 5.0/6.0 set).

SVS, AV123 X-Series, Axiom, Ascend, etc.
Are some online brands that have bookshelf speakers in the upper range of your budget, especially if you are ok going used.

Something to keep in mind is that everyone's tastes are different. It would be a good idea to get out and listen to some different retail options to see what kind of sound appeals to you.

 

[SammyG]

I set up a pair of Athena AS-B1's for my parents, and the sound fills their kitchen nicely, and a pair of those would come out to about $100 shipped which would be perfect...

Also, on craigslist I found a guy selling some Paradigm Atoms for $150. I sent him an email offering $120, so if he goes for that does anyone have experience with Paradigm Atoms?

I guess whichever fronts I buy for ~$100 I could always send them to be the rears and get new fronts and a center in the future when I can scrape some more cash together.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Paradigm makes good stuff.

One of my old roommates had a pair of Phantoms and a CC170 center from them and they sounded pretty nice

The Atoms used to be part of the performance series that they Phantoms belonged to so I think they would be a pretty good bet :thumbsup:

 

[SammyG]

Ok heading to Arlington to pick up a pair of Paradigm Atoms... I'll update with pictures later in the afternoon

 

[SammyG]

Pics updated...

 

[Tiamat]

Are they the Atom V.4? They were pretty nice sounding when I heard the V.3 a couple years ago!

 

[SammyG]

They're V.3's, and the guy I bought them from had a 5.1 paradigm setup that sounded awesome - I am now very, very jealous... Are V.4's the latest version?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

The latest version of the Atoms is a different animal than the earlier versions since they moved it into the Monitor series as they have ended the performance series.

I think they're on V5 now for the current version?

 

[SammyG]

Ok we're all done, thanks again to everyone that gave advice cough cough yoyoyohowsdajello cough cough

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: SammyG
Ok we're all done, thanks again to everyone that gave advice cough cough yoyoyohowsdajello cough cough

:thumbsup:

 

[sdifox]

1. get that receiver off the carpet. Even if you are just jacking up the legs with phonebooks. Otherwise you are going to have a very short lived receiver.

2. Your speakers are aimed wrongly...

3. Relocate the sub, I doubt it will sound good there.

 

[SammyG]

1. Ok got it off the carpet (two phonebooks are my temporary solution) Would a flat piece of wood sitting underneath work fine?

2. Meaning, I have both of my fronts shooting to the left? I have the HT stuff all in the corner, so if I have them shooting like an X wouldn't that limit sound going to the couch part of the room? (which is where I would be usually)

3. Where would you suggest relocating it to?

 

[sdifox]

<div class="FTQUOTE">
<begin quote>Originally posted by: SammyG
1. Ok got it off the carpet (two phonebooks are my temporary solution) Would a flat piece of wood sitting underneath work fine?

2. Meaning, I have both of my fronts shooting to the left? I have the HT stuff all in the corner, so if I have them shooting like an X wouldn't that limit sound going to the couch part of the room? (which is where I would be usually)

3. Where would you suggest relocating it to?</end quote>
</div>

1 A piece of wood would work fine. I suggest you elevate the receiver even a little more. Have the piece of wood and then use small blocks of something that is bigger than the feet and is stable. Something like a 2"x2"x1" of wood. Easiest thing would be marking down where the legs are on the piece of wood and just screw those small pieces of wood into the big flat one. That way they don't move and is a solid foot.

This increases the bottom clearance, helps a lot in venting the receiver. Heat is enemy number one for electronics. I have my 75lbs amp standing on little blocks of ferrite


2 So the couch is at the centre of the back wall while the speakers are at the front right corner? Ideally speaking, you want to set up the speakers as a circle, with the listening position in the centre of the circle. Obviously not everyone has the room for that, so you try to get it as close to that as possible. You should aim your centre towards the couch too if that is the way you want to set it up.

3. An easy test is to put the sub where you would sit, run a sub test tone, then walk around the room. Mark the spots that sound good and pick one that is most convenient for you and sound good.

4
Another thing, get rid of the klipsh. Try running without the centre, it will probably sound better since right now you got some serious timbre matching problems. Or get the matching Paradigm centre. Even if you just get 1 of those Atom to use as your centre, you'll still be better off.

 

[montypythizzle]

Just to make sure, how do you have you DVD player/satellite receiver hooked up?

 

[SammyG]

Ok, I will work on the above suggestions. Would https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/sp.../Random/Mission-72.mp3 (linked to on the show your HT thread) work fine for a sub test?

It will take me a bit before I can replace the center, so I'll try it 4.1 and see how it sounds. It does seem odd to me that most of the sound is coming from the center, even though the atoms are the best sounding speakers I have...

As for connections:

DVD player: DVD - component -> TV
DVD - digital coax -> receiver

Dish receiver: Dish - s-video -> TV
Dish - optical -> receiver

the Dish only has s-video/composite/coax for video connections

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Your sub probably has very very low output at 18hz where the majority of the bass is in that track, so that wouldn't be a good one. In addition, it's pretty much just at one frequency which wouldn't give you a very complete picture of how it sounds.

If you want to get fancy, you could get an SPL meter and use this http://www.hometheatershack.com/roomeq/ to try to find a place with the best response in your room.

I spent a couple days trying to find the right spot for my two subs and came to a compromise that seemed to work best with them.

You might just want to play a song you're familiar with that has some decent bass in it and then try to see where it sounds best to you.

 

[biggestmuff]

Not to derail the topic, but if you're on the ground floor apartment, keep those blinds closed. You're setting yourself up for failure.

 

[SammyG]

Back in march we were burglarized, they got my laptop and a good amount of my wife's jewelry... our $11/mo. renters policy helped us out quite a bit. Funny you mention it because after setting it all up I took pictures of everything and hid the camera under the bed - just in case.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I just showed my wifey your setup, telling her you should be happy I don't spend that kind of bank, and she immediately said "he's a bachelor". So, are you? She says a live-in GF doesn't count. :roll:

 

[SammyG]

Actually I only spent about $500 for the whole setup (most stuff I found on craigslist DC)...

And yes I am married, the TV was payment from my father-in-law after doing some work for him in June - its an EDTV and he had been itching to upgrade - so it was a win-win.

Our First Anniversary - Valentines Day 2007

Tell your wife that since setting this up we have watched a crapload of movies together and spent quality time bonding and stuff. And she thinks her novelas sound better in 5ch stereo.