posted
I have a friend I'll call Neckbone. Neckbone's bedroom TV recently died and he bought a flat-screen to replace it. He liked it so much he and his wife decided to upgrade their living-room TV too. They currently have a very nice living room TV ... close to 40", Sony (I think), and only two years old.
I mentioned to him that I'd be interested in buying it from him.
He mentioned to me that he and his wife had already decided to give it to me.
So, I'll have it sometime between now and early October, when they upgrade to their new TV. To complement this new television, I've already purchased a larger stand (from IKEA -- it has glass doors) and a Panasonic 5-disc DVD changer (I'm moving my old TV and DVD player into my bedroom).
I'm interested in getting a surround sound system. I don't know much about surround sound systems -- I've never had one before. I don't know how to set 'em up, hook 'em up, or turn 'em on. I'm not looking to spend more than $200 -- I just want something to enhance my movie experience.
Oh - if you were wonderin'? I got a very nice debt consolidation loan -- rolled all my credit cards AND my car loan into one easy payment. No consolidation services, either (my parents took out a home equity loan and had some of it left over so I used that, and I'm paying 'em back for the next five years). It's worth it.
So, anyway, what can YOU tell ME about surround sound systems?
posted
Woah. Time to seriously buy your pal Neckbone and his wife a steak dinner in way of thanks.
Or ten.
Whee do you live again? Here in So Fla, Brandsmart sells surround systems in the $150-200 range. I dont have one myself though.
Hmm....you could always check ebay. Lots of great stol....er...."bargin" deals there.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Why on Earth would you do that?
Registered: Mar 1999
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
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posted
"So, anyway, what can YOU tell ME about surround sound systems?"
They will add to your debt. Do you really think that is wise, Jeffyboy? DO YOU?
"I'm interested in getting a surround sound system."
Are you also interested in spending the rest of your life, erh, spending loans? Eh?
"I don't know how to set 'em up, hook 'em up, or turn 'em on."
RTFM, RTFM, and RTFM. After you sink yourself deeper into that financial bottomless pit you live in, of course. The guilt might be more bearable if you figure it out all by yourself. Don't throw away that chance!
"I just want something to enhance my movie experience."
A positive bank balance enhances ALL your experiences, and it is cheaper than any sound system. Think, man!
[ August 28, 2005, 04:08 AM: Message edited by: Cartman ]
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
I'm not sure, but I think Cartman is suggesting that buying and installing a surround sound system might be a bit of a financial burden. Also, you'll need something called a Radio Transmission Frequency Modulator. I bet Radio Shack has those.
I don't have any experience with surround sound systems. When I was younger, my parents had a 52" big screen television in the front room. They hooked up a couple more speakers to it and placed them at the back of the living room. From my understanding, that's not truly surround sound.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Congratulations on your friend's generosity. I'm no expert (But when has that ever stopped me from a long-winded rant?) I do know a thing or two:
The first is that it's usually pretty expensive for not a whole lot more that you'd notice. The other thing is that quality totally counts. The other, other thing is that for $200 you are NOT going to get quality.
If that's OK with you then we'll move on. I don't know if you have a Fry's or a Best Buy near you, but a lot of places (Circuit City, Good Guys, etc) will have these package deals where you get the amp/receiver and the speakers for dirt cheap. These usually suck. But you will have surround.
Five Point WTF?: Ok so in order there is Mono, Stereo, Dolby Surround, 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1. You will not be getting the latter two. I'm sure there is more, but I don't have the time or money to sort that all out and with my ears I'm not sure I'd be able to appreciate the difference. I will assume you understand Mono and Stereo. Dolby Surround is tricky because it encodes for Left, Right, and then also a single rear channel.
Right. So the 5, 6, 7 point one thing. That first number is the number of channels into which the signal is separated and the way the speakers are arrayed--more on that in a sec. The point one is your subwoofer. The subwooofer is the basso profundo of your system and controls what nearly everyone defines as loud. Bass sound is more-or-less unidirectional and once you stick your sub in a nice reflective corner that's all you'll have to do. It's fun, but it's really easy to overdo it. Several years back, I paid $129 for an Energy 6" sub that fills the 40X50X25foot warehouse with bass-aplenty even during raucous (albeit nerdy) premiere parties.
Most amps are clever enough to sort out a center channel from the stereo spread. This makes that center channel speaker optional. Of course, 90% of what you are listening to in the movie and nearly all dialogue will be coming through the center channel occasionally leaning to Left or Right. If your television/stereo is clever enough, sometimes you can use the speakers of the TV itself as a center channel. Ok, so with a subwoofer we're up to 3.1. No one says that in real life, though, so don't say that or people will laugh at you.
Your left and right speakers are your primary investment as far as speakers go. Most of what you hear will be affected by these and this is where really shit quality will make its presence known.
Your surround speakers aren't actually adding that much more information and the fidelity of that sound is surprisingly not that important to the psycho-accoustic effect it will have on your viewing experience. The surrounds are really for atmosphere, so it's OK if they are small and not super-awesome. The usual arrangement is a left rear and right rear (5.1). 6.1 adds a center rear (not worth it) and 7.1 puts two speakers directly to the side of the audience for "broader" stereo. These last two are nice, but you're not going to notice much difference for the price and most movies only take advantage of 5.1 sound anyway.
Good inexpensive speakers? Polk Audio; Energy; I think Cambridge Soundworks used to be cheap and good, but now that they are Creative, I hear they're either one or the other. Also sometimes you can get decent speakers at garage sales. Only recently I replaced an incredible set of garage sale beauties with some Polk towers, and I have to admit it hasn't made a big difference.
So encoding and cables are something to worry about. The cables you get with your amp+speakers package deal? Those are trash. Go spend eight bucks on a spool of some half-decent stuff at Radioshack. DON'T get Monster Cable . Really.
The other thing is digital audio. Most DVD players have an optical or a coax digital out. This is good. You want your stereo to have at least one in for whichever one that is. This gets into DTS (Digital Theater Sound) decoding, which is super complicated, but basically it boils down to ultra-super-awesome sound quality. Rather than doing tricky inaudible things to a Stereo Channel to trick it into being 5.1 channels, each speaker's channel is encoded separately at ridiculously high quality.
The end result is readily apparent in systems capable of playing back DTS with DVDs encoded for that format (not so many). But, for instance, when I set up my parents' Harmon Kardon DTS head with the Bose rear channels and the ginormous sub and the terrific vintage Fischer mains, watching the Superbit Fifth Element (on their 65" HDTV) was nothing short of amazing.
If you shopped around, you could get decent speakers for $200. You could probably get a half-way decent head for $200. I don't know that you're going to find both for that price. I don't know that it's worth it for you. But if I had $200 and needed surround, I'd probably try to get the best head I could either as a package (like this Sony or this Yamaha) and then save up another hundred (to get some decent Polk bookshelf speakers for L&R) or separately (like this Pioneer or, for over-budget-but-pretty-great-quality, this HK) and then get cheap garage sale speakers until I saved up another 200.
About 15 years ago, I decided to spend a little more money ($400) and bought myself a half-decent Yamaha Dolby ProLogic II stereo head. I guess technically it's 4.1. I added an Energy sub ($129) not long after. I was still using some utterly wretched flea market trash for speakers at the time. My speakers now are much nicer, but I'm still using that head. It's an investment. The technology for receiver/amplifiers isn't changing that fast. Until I bought him that HK, my dad was still using a thirty year old Fischer (nice one, btw). Figure you're going to have it for a while it might be worth a little extra.
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
You know what else you could do with $200? Pay off some of your credit card debt, that's what.
quote:Originally posted by Siegfried: I don't have any experience with surround sound systems. When I was younger, my parents had a 52" big screen television in the front room. They hooked up a couple more speakers to it and placed them at the back of the living room. From my understanding, that's not truly surround sound.
When you were younger? As in...they had a 52" television several years ago when those things were even more expensive? Are you parents the king and queen of Norway?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
My parents are not and have never been members of the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gl�cksburg branch of the House of Oldenburg.
I'd have to dig around for the owner's manual to be certain of the size, but I'm pretty certain it was a 52" screen. It was made by Mitsubishi and was housed inside a light-colored wood cabinet. It was a rear projection model, I think. It had a plastic screen that was got scratched very easily. If I remember correctly, my parents bought it on sale at a electronics store that was about to go under.
I also suspect it was a low-end model. The electron guns were constantly out of alignment, the speakers developed a static problem, and the buttons fell out of the control panel. We got rid of it (either gave it to someone or donated it, I can't remember) a few years ago.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Hookers! You could (probably) get a nice one for $200! "You'd get more mileage than from a cheap pair of speakers..."
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
My parents have two Regent HD-391 surround systems (one upstairs on the 32" and one downstairs on the 35") that they bought at....I want to say Wal-Mart, but I'm not sure. I think each system was only $100 or so. No idea if Wal-Mart still sells them, though. And they sound pretty darn decent.
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posted
You should write copy for them. I'd buy something that declared "They sound pretty darn decent" on the box.
...but I'm not quite right.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
I guess maybe it doesn't have to be an investment. If you're going to cheap out, at least get the HT-395 for the DTS. Although the name Durabrand does fill me with confidence (and hardly at all destitute Asian children wielding soldering irons), I remain somewhat skeptical about these systems.
Looky! A Pioneer with speakers that is (barely) within your budget.
Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:You know what else you could do with $200? Pay off some of your credit card debt, that's what.
You know what you could do? Read my post. Debt consolidation loan. Set payments. Extra cash on hand to splurge a little.
Or you could use that extra cash to pay off your loan a little bit quicker, thereby lowering the overall amount of interest you'll have to pay and getting yourself out of debt quicker.
You could also spend it on a haircut. You need one.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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