HOME THEATRE
 

Hey all now my girlfriends birthday is coming up and seeing as how she loves going to the movies i was thinking of converting one of the rooms into a home cinema .I know absolutely nothing about home theatres except that its going to cost quite abit. My budget for this is around 7k usd . I hear you are supposed to spend half of your budget on speakers .So any ideas on home theatres speakers

Having a home theater sounds awesome but my first question is are you only doing this because of your girlfriend? If so, you should consider putting your money into something else or just saving it for awhile.

If not, you should look for some stores that have sample systems on display that way you can go and listem to the different sound systems. Expensive doesn't always mean better. Also, keep in mind that "how a system sounds" will also depend on the room and what objects are in the room and the shape of the room. I'm sure you already know all that though. Think of it like doing a big Maya Project. The more research you do, the better the results. Maybe take some measurements of the room you want to convert and see if there are perferred setups for such a room.

If you have close neighbors, you might want to check out sound proofing costs too haha.

Good luck though.

I'm a big home theater nut, and I set them up often, and I have also set up commercial theater systems.


7k can actually get you a killer sound system. Have you been shopping around to see what available in your price range?

so i did some impulse buying and got logitech x 530 for my pc that i use at home cant seem to get the centre speaker to work any ideas ..............

Oh i also purchased Optoma HD66 HD-66 projector it was quite cheaper than i had anticipated about 600usd

Make sure the speakers are hooked up right, and check your sound card options .It may be set for stereo or Quad. Make sure it's set to 5.1 .

Anyway, I though you were fixing to invest in a home theater?

I am im checking into purchasing a hometheatre in a box. I did a little research and wow it looked extremely daunting I learnt 5min ago the difference between a subwoofer and a woofer. I want to make this as easy as it can be for me ...... the logitech are just for me to play around with in my study room and yeah everything is set up ok but its still not working when i do a 5.1 test every speaker plays ok except for the centre which is weird as the subwoofer works(If im not wrong they are on the same cable).


The dimensions of my room are 5 X 4 metres

You got a 7k budget, and your going to invest in a home theater in a box? Those are like 400$ cheap as they come systems. I have set up many of those, and they just don't sound that good IMO, even with the built in Audyssey EQ. Those things can make your sound even worse, especially in a room with bad acoustics.

I really dont know much about hometheatres i dont even know much about speakers if you could point me in the right direction

Sorry I could not help you with your logitech problem in that last post. I had to cruise the internet to see how it worked.

Anyway, you might not have something set up correctly.

Double check your speaker connections, especially the ones that connect to your PC. If your using the 5.1 to stereo down converter, and you have that plugged into a usb port or something else, and have your sound card set to 5.1, you wont get center channel sound because the channels in a 5.1 signal are all discrete. They are not matrixed like in a 2 channel set up.

If your sound card is 5.1 and it doesn't have the green, black, and orange 1/8 connectors then you need to look up your sound card info and assign the ports because you don't want to plug anything into the pink connector because it's just for mics. And from what I have read, alot of people have been doing that.

Hope this helps out.

thanks i think i had connected something badly cause it started working so i have been checking out speakers and was wondering what you thought about this

http://www.onkyousa.com/model.cfm?m=...ss=Systems&p=i

They're are pro's and con's with the Home THX system. The good thing about it is that the speakers WILL sound good. The bad thing about them are the surrounds. The home THX system uses Dipole surround speakers, meaning they don't fire the sound at you. Instead they fire forwards and backwards alongside the walls. This technique puts the listener in a null, so you can't tell where the surround effects are coming from. The bad thing about that is that when you expect a surround effect to wizz towards the back left for example, you wont be able to hear a specific location. You will hear it, but you wont be able to localize it.

Thats bad in my book. With commercial theaters, you get to localize the surround effects because the speakers fire into the audience. It all basically boils down to the limitations of the "2 surround speaker" design, and their inablilty to sound flat, or give a flat response, or sound smooth. Home THX was actually designed for mono surround systems, with a nod towards 5.1 because the surrounds where 180 degrees out of phase with each other, or better known as decorrelation . When the 5.1 systems came out they didn't need the surrounds to be out of phase since the surround channels in a 5.1 soundtrack were already discrete, but it is still used in pro-logic mode ( mono surround ).

I personally don't have anything against THX home processing, as it actually benefits the movie watching experience a great deal. Home THX processing re-equalizes the front channels, and Timbre matches the surrounds to match the front speakers in tone. So when you hear a sound go behind you it won't change in tone.

About the reciever, Onkyo makes great products,. The receiver will not disappoint. I'm just not too fond of the THX speakers systems because of the surround design.

Is it really worth it to get a home theatre pc like this at 1300 usd

http://www.asrock.com/nettop/overvie...%203D%20Series

I cant say much about those units ( don't know anybody who has bought them ), however, some people I know have custom build similar units of their own. Your biggest concern with something like that is going to be software compatibility with your movies. I have some blu-ray's that just wont work in my PC because the firmware the disc was authored with isn't compatible with the player, but the disc will work in a stand alone player.

I had problems with My PC playing movies through my 72' HDTV. Blu-rays would work fine but DVD was choppy and sluggish.

I recommend just sticking with the standard home theater components, but thats just my own opinion.

You have a 7k budget, why are you looking for cheap hardware deals?

for 7000 you could get a real nice blu ray set up, perhaps complete with THX speakers and amp. And have it all in 7.1 ss. Nice!! The THX speakers will of course be tuned to the room size when the engineer installs them (I kid you not!!)

or


Perhaps do this for her

http://www.gizmag.com/bat-cave-home-...picture/90337/


Jay

i am not an expert. maybe what murabi wants is a suggestion what you would buy with his budget. out of the 7k budget he is willing to spend 3.5k on speakers (not sure if that is including the receiver or not). you mentioned the onkyo receiver is nice. so maybe one of those w/o the speakers and then attach 8 speakers of what to it? 7 of the same and a subwoofer? onkyo or different speakers? maybe that what he needs - list the parts for it w/ model numbers - and he can see if he can find them and agrees with pricerange ???

just a thought