imcarthur

Agree on PSB. Owned by the CDN NAD distributor Lenbrook but Paul still does the design. Also add Paradigm & B&W to your list.

Ian

jumper5836

Thats a lot smaller then I had imagined.
Go with the Bose sat speakers. 5 +1 sub for the theare
4 for the dance area/work out area plus an additional sub for that area.

imcarthur

No to Bose, please. Omar Bose is renowned in the CE industry as a great marketer. You will notice that I didn't mention speaker designer . . .

Just my personal jaded opinion of course . . .

Ian

Dale Gribble

i used to have some old bose car audio stuff and it was good for tiny sports cars (flashes back to the 94 RX-7 with bose acoustic wave thingy). The new bose stuff sounds a bit "off" unless you have a really great acoustic room. my buddy has a set and while they're not bad....i think for the price I can probably piece together something better. Plus its like cars, gotta have room for future mods and upgrades


what kind of cooling requirements do recievers need? if i'm going to go with some decent sized bookshelfs, i'm going to have to move all that equippment underneith the TV, and while its pretty deep, i'm worried about stacking stuff ontop of the amp. I know the xbox needs a good inch or 2 of headroom and backroom otherwise they overheat and die, i'm assuming same rule applies to amps?

imcarthur

I (he admits shamefully) have a Bose system in my Audi. But it was in the car. It's pretty flawed in the mid-band but listenable. No real high-end or bass either, for that matter. But that's 12V . . .

If you ask me nicely, I'll burn you a demo music CD. With 6 or 7 of the right songs & a bucketful of verbal bullsh!t, I can sell a decent speaker to almost anyone.

Ian

PbPedis

I always wonder "why?" when I see a store sell some nice, reasonably high end stuff, but then also sell Bose (eg. Bay Bloor). My personal opinion is that Bose is crap, but don't ever buy speakers solely based on someone else's opinion. Go have a listen and decide for yourself.

Imo000

My brother has a Bose lifestyle (or maybe called something similar) home theatre system and it's excellent. The system is not cheap but it's far better than most of the complete systems out there. The calibration headset is cool. I watched him set up the new centre speaker tonight (Bose too but a little newer and sleaker). For the setup, you have to, with the heatset on sit in, I think, 5 different places and the system will calibrate evertying from there. Thre was a noticable diference in sound quality when he was done.

Imo000

Bose was meant to be used as a complete system. Maybe that's why they sound different in another system.

Dale Gribble

^ bose is great and easy to setup and just hop right into. it is the "mac" of the hifi world.

Aside: Ian, i'll bring an rx-8 around next time with the premium bose package. Have a listen and see what you think.

trickydisco

+1

trickydisco

I agree, the Bose systems sound VERY GOOD relative to most out-of-the-box
systems, but not as good as their $ premium would suggest. They are one or
two classes above the all in one's at Best Buy etc (which are decent), but WELL
below the true high end equipment they market themselves to be.

Either way, the system will transform your space. Have fun with it.

Dale Gribble

Last question before I start throwing money at this project:

Dolby TrueHD and DTS lossless formats that come with HD-DVD: what will I need to decode them?
From my understanding, the HDDVD player will handle the decoding and send the signal to the Reciever/processor, so any 7.1 reciever will do.

Is this a correct assessment?

Dale Gribble

Ok..Final Setup So far:

Speakers (pending in-home audition):
- Axiom
* VF150 center (might have to replace this with a different center...reviews were very mixed)
* M22 Bookshelfs
* QS8 surrounds for all 4 surrounds
*EF500 Sub (head this at a buddy's place..was pretty impressed...he had polk speakers i believe)

Reciever:
- Onkyo TX-SR705

That should give me a good base to start with which can be built up from in the future

trickydisco

I'm not familiar enough with that group, but did you audition all (most) of
it already?

imcarthur

I see Axiom has hired Alan Lofft as a technical expert. He used to write for a CAN midfi mag in the 80s. He was always an 'everything is great - as long as they are an advertiser' reviewer. Axiom has been around for many years but I have not heard them. Small operator near Algonquin Park. They buy Chinese drivers & stuff them in a box, but that's what most others are doing too.

Just bear in mind, Omar, that this is a classic puppy dog. Once it's in your house . . .

So you should still make an effort to hear some alternatives in stores. imho

Ian