Anyone here an audiophile or home theater nerd?   Set up a man cave for watching Eagles games?  Share your set up.

Oh man, back in the 1990s I would have been all over this thread.   Now I'm old and just do the soundbar\subwoofer combo.

 

 

But......   we are talking about finishing our basement and putting in a theater.  So I may have something to contribute (or dumb questions to ask) in the near future.

1 hour ago, paco said:

Oh man, back in the 1990s I would have been all over this thread.   Now I'm old and just do the soundbar\subwoofer combo.

 

 

But......   we are talking about finishing our basement and putting in a theater.  So I may have something to contribute (or dumb questions to ask) in the near future.

I love this stuff.  These days, for a family room, the soundbar/sub combo sounds close enough to what a component-based system can do…you’d have to really take over the room with ugly components to do much better, which often doesn’t make sense for aesthetics or cost.

For a man cave/theater/etc when you can get involved pre-construction, the options are a lot of fun.

When we built our house, my wife had control over just about everything but left the basement to me.  I did a kid play room, gym, bar area, and theater room.  We may be moving in the not-too-distant future, so it may be fun to do it again.  I still love the setup and how it sounds, but I made a few mistakes on the acoustics of the room and placement of everything.

1 hour ago, eagle45 said:

I love this stuff.  These days, for a family room, the soundbar/sub combo sounds close enough to what a component-based system can do…you’d have to really take over the room with ugly components to do much better, which often doesn’t make sense for aesthetics or cost.

For a man cave/theater/etc when you can get involved pre-construction, the options are a lot of fun.

When we built our house, my wife had control over just about everything but left the basement to me.  I did a kid play room, gym, bar area, and theater room.  We may be moving in the not-too-distant future, so it may be fun to do it again.  I still love the setup and how it sounds, but I made a few mistakes on the acoustics of the room and placement of everything.

Oh yeah, when you plan it out well before you build it you can do some really fun stuff. 

 

A non audio example, but gives you an idea how stupid I get with this.... here is a before pic of our basement at our old house:

 

I know.  Stunning. Why the hell would I touch this?

 

Anyway, where the tv is over there, we decided to put in a fireplace and mount the tv above in a recessed area above it.  This was the end result:

 

2 things that don't really show up in the picture:  

1) I ran conduit from the recessed area from the tv to either side of the base cabinets so you could run HDMI cables to a cable box.

But what about electric?

2) Not only did I put in outlets on either side of the firebox, I also put in recessed outlets in each of the floating shelves so you could plug whatever you wanted on them without needing to run the cord down the side to the main outlets.  Oh, and of course, you need two sets of outlets in the recessed tv area in case you want to plug in your tv and multiple streaming devices into it.

 

So yeah... I may over think these details a tad  

 

 

(After pic from when we sold the house if you care)

Spoiler

 

One more stupid over thinking detail.... In the before pic there were 3 "pizza hut" lights for the entire basement.  I replaced them with recessed lighting, but also added switches so the basement lighting was basically divided into 4 areas: Entertainment, workout, bar (not pictured) and office (not pictured)

 

4 hours ago, paco said:

Oh yeah, when you plan it out well before you build it you can do some really fun stuff. 

 

A non audio example, but gives you an idea how stupid I get with this.... here is a before pic of our basement at our old house:

 

I know.  Stunning. Why the hell would I touch this?

 

Anyway, where the tv is over there, we decided to put in a fireplace and mount the tv above in a recessed area above it.  This was the end result:

 

2 things that don't really show up in the picture:  

1) I ran conduit from the recessed area from the tv to either side of the base cabinets so you could run HDMI cables to a cable box.

But what about electric?

2) Not only did I put in outlets on either side of the firebox, I also put in recessed outlets in each of the floating shelves so you could plug whatever you wanted on them without needing to run the cord down the side to the main outlets.  Oh, and of course, you need two sets of outlets in the recessed tv area in case you want to plug in your tv and multiple streaming devices into it.

 

So yeah... I may over think these details a tad  

 

 

(After pic from when we sold the house if you care)

  Hide contents

 

One more stupid over thinking detail.... In the before pic there were 3 "pizza hut" lights for the entire basement.  I replaced them with recessed lighting, but also added switches so the basement lighting was basically divided into 4 areas: Entertainment, workout, bar (not pictured) and office (not pictured)

 

Gorgeous room and really well done...and that's a good example of why it's tough to get a good audiophile setup going.  Big clunky speakers would detract from the room and wouldn't be enough of an improvement over a soundbar sub combo, especially with the hard surfaces reflecting all over the place and open wall.

Denon AVR-X4700H Home theater receiver. 7.2 channels, Infinity IL50 front speakers, with other Infinity's for the front rear and surrounds.  Sony XBR75X950H TV, with a Sony 4K blu ray player and Roku Ultra streaming device. I'd like to add 2 or 4 more front surround speakers to make it a true Atmos or even Auro-3D system but Infinity in-ceiling speakers are now difficult to come by and I don't really want to add another brand to the mix.

So I’m running the following:

Marantz SR8012 AVR

LCR PowertSound Audio MTM 210 x3

Subs: HSU VTF-15h MK2 x4

Height front/rear: Klipsch thx in ceiling x4

Surround: Klipsch thx in wall x4

Sony 4k projector

 

I have the subs stacked 2x2 in the front of the room, but really should have placed one in each corner for a more even sound.  I had the contractor built acoustically transparent boxes in the front of the room to conceal the front speakers and sub stack.  I had wanted to do a full false wall, which would have provided a bit more placement flexibility.  

I was on the fence between the SR8012 and the Denon AVRx4700H.  Had an old Marantz a long time ago that was great, and was leaning towards the SR8012 but the more I looked into them I wound up settling on the Denon.  They're both made by the same company and are largely the same under the hood but the Denon was a little cheaper so I settled.

12 minutes ago, The_Omega said:

I was on the fence between the SR8012 and the Denon AVRx4700H.  Had an old Marantz a long time ago that was great, and was leaning towards the SR8012 but the more I looked into them I wound up settling on the Denon.  They're both made by the same company and are largely the same under the hood but the Denon was a little cheaper so I settled.

The AVRs are generally interchangeable these days, but their older products were known for certain sonic signatures.  Marantz was known for a warm, smooth sound with Denon being more neutral and detailed.  That probably doesn’t hold as true today.  
 

But I went with the Marantz to pair with my speakers, which are all horn loaded…they tend to mate better with smoother, warmer electronics.

I had some Klipsch KG4’s being powered by a Yamaha receiver when I lived in Scotland back in the early’90’s. Those things sounded incredible. 

I'm planning on setting up a Dolby Atmos surround sound system that goes with my Sony A90J

I'm at a bit of a loss here.  For the past few months, when I'm watching cable through the cable box, the signal would drop every so often, screen would go black, sound would go out, for about 5 seconds then come back.  Most times.  Every once in a while the signal wouldn't come back forcing me to shut down and restart.  Knowing what Spectrum was going to say I replaced the HDMI cables and the power cord to the TV, same problem.  Finally took the box back to Spectrum then, for one night it worked flawlessly then went right back to it again.  I was convinced that some Spectrum line guy had placed a filter downstream somewhere that was weakening the signal but, of course, they denied it.  Finally started wondering if maybe the HDMI input on the TV was the issue because the Roku and BluRay players running through other HDMI inputs work fine.  Yesterday I'd had enough and decided to swap the cable and BluRay inputs to see if it helped.  It did.  No issues with the cable signal since.  Must have been the HDMI input right?  Been watching BluRay movies to test it and have had no issues with the BluRay running through the questionable HDMI port.  Weird wild stuff.  The capper is that I had my universal remote set up exactly like I wanted it but, when I went to change the HDMI port to select when turning the cable on it reset all of the commands on the remote and I'm going to have to completely redo it again.  Someday.

On 12/15/2023 at 8:53 AM, eagle45 said:

Anyone here an audiophile or home theater nerd?   Set up a man cave for watching Eagles games?  Share your set up.

I'm not really one, but I did inherit 4 Bose 901Direct/Reflecting Speakers from an uncle about 10 years ago. They're awesome speakers. One of my brothers also got 4 (my uncle had 8). My brother went to a Bose store and spoke with them about the speakers and mentioned that we had 8 of them from our uncle and they were astounded.

They said that 8 would be appropriate for a movie theater and said that one person buying 8 for their home would be like a family of 4 going out to buy a family vehicle for the 4 of them and coming home with a school bus lol. 

My uncle never did anything half way. If it was worth him spending money on, he'd go all out and get the best... price be damned. 

Need a new tv for streaming, games, and with good sound. What you nerds recommend? Probably looking in the 65-75 range. 

1 hour ago, 20dawk4life said:

Need a new tv for streaming, games, and with good sound. What you nerds recommend? Probably looking in the 65-75 range. 

My recommendation is don't use the TV speakers. Get a decent sound bar at least. 

15 hours ago, 20dawk4life said:

Need a new tv for streaming, games, and with good sound. What you nerds recommend? Probably looking in the 65-75 range. 

now that Samsung has developed the "bright" screen in an OLED, I would want to get one of those. But my existing 75" QLED 90-series is not going to get re-sold for what it is market value is, so I will continue to not have the newest technology.