Wow, that's good stuff.

 

come on one hour. cliffs of cliffs of cliffs pls?

 

Human auditory perception and memory sucks. Electronic equipment can accurately measure distortion and quality in audio tracks, human ears cannot. Spending money chasing the best amplifiers, cables, processors, power supplies, soundcards, etc. is typically a waste when the weakest link in the system is almost always the speakers.

That's the gist of it, but with audio examples to drive the point home.

 

So I've been revamping my system over the last few months -- new receiver, new speakers, etc. Then I realized that the old cheap-o TV stand we've had for a few years now wasn't going to cut it. So a new TV stand was purchase, and this morning I spend a couple hours setting everything back up, and also replacing the old super-thin banana plug speaker wire with some good 14GA speaker wire from Monoprice.

The setup is:

Yamaha RX-V471 receiver
Pioneer SP-FS52 speakers
Audiosource SW80 subwoofer
HTPC
Xbox360
Samsung BD-E5300 blu-ray

The two pieces you don't see in the "after" pic is the sub, now moved further to the right into the corner of the room, and the Samsung Blu-Ray player which is inside the cabinet. The sub will be replaced in the near future with a rebuilt HSU VTF-2 Mk1 (with a Dayton SPA250 amp).

 

thanks for the summary.

I tend to agree and feel that while critical listening can detect many things, it is best suited to be the confirmation step that the testing and results are good.

Though I do like a good A/B/X test to show the high end audio guys with silly claims that they are statistically irrelevant.

 

Bumping this.

After buying this house i'm planning on building a new theater setup for the (finished) basement. Want to do something different from the vintage setup i have now. Gonna see if the new stuff is any better.

I'm thinking i may do a network setup so everything is connected. I've got a home surveillance system coming soon. I'd like to integrate that somehow. I'm really leaning towards building a small little media center computer. I'd use an xbox or something that already exists but that's dumb and what fun is that.

I'm looking to do something very very minimalistic, but have a ton of features. As dumb as this sounds, i'd like to use a "cube" size speaker. I currently have some old bose cube "redline" speakers and i like them. But i'd like to have all new and separate system from the main living room. The least amount components and "clean" setup is what i'm going for.

 

Well, why not...

90" Mustang screen
Definitive Technology 8020 towers
Definitive Technology 8040 center
Definitive Technology 8040 rears
Maratnz 5006 receiver
XV-Z17000 projector
Xbox 360
PS3
Wii
Sometimes my PC with Crysis....