I love toys, especially when it’s electronics and music. Always been a wannabe audiophile especially with my dad and his envious home stereo system. Now I’m old enough to do it on my own and I’m already developing a few different, unique, systems at home and trying to build them each seperately and at the same time. Money. Ugh.
The Living Room – in-progress -
The living room is where I want the real audiophile stereo system. It’s got vaulted ceilings and open area that I think will make music really rich and engulfing. I started building this system with whatever I had lying around, which were parts of an Infinity HTS satellite speaker set, a 1988 Parasound CA2100 integrated amplifier, and a few other odds and ends. One day the Parasound stopped working, and that was when I decided to re-tool. (that was really a month ago)
Enter today, where I am now waiting for stuff to come in. I’m currently using a Pioneer Stereo Receiver from 1996 or so, and it flat out sucks. I can’t stand it. Sure it’s got some juice (75watts/ch) but it sounds like blah. That 20watt Parasound amp sounded so much better…. so what am I doing? I’m waiting til Friday to receive my new Cambridge Audio Azur 640A amplifier in the mail! I’m pretty excited about this amp. Found a great deal on ebay for it. I also just added a set of Athena AS-F2 tower speakers, which has been very highly rated and coveted, especially for the bargain price they used to sell for. I got them on craigslist. Stereophile once called them the best set of speakers you can find for under $2000… I also added some Acoustic Research bookshelfs to round out the room. On CD, I have a hi-fi Harman Kardon CD player from circa 1995, which still sounds great to this day. To tinker the sound a bit to match the room and the music, I have a Audio Control graphic equalizer. There’s also a cheesey, falling apart ipod dock, and a stereo-jack-line-in for mp3 players. And finally, I’m currently using a NuMark turntable, but am in the market to buy an upgrade at this. I’m looking at a Rega P1 or P2, Pro-Ject Debut or Xpression, or a Music Hall turntable. All three are extremely stylish, and great bang for the buck. Once those pieces fall, I’ll have to look into getting better storage for these toys.
Downstairs – Home Theater
The downstairs has always been thought of as my home theater, and I am making it exclusively that now. Nothing’s intending to change with it the way it is right now, except I’m pretty close to buying a center channel to complete the 5.1 set up. At that point, I’ll have to decide if I really want to add 2 rear surrounds (small wall mountable speakers) to make a 7.1 system for new Blu-Ray movies. But as it stands, I have the brain/nucleus of a Pioneer Elite VSX91 AV receiver controlling the inputs of an XBox360 (gaming, streaming movie and music), Playstation 3 (for blu ray movies), Toshiba HD-DVD player, and Verizon FiOS TV set top box, as well as line-in for ipods, stereo-jack in for other mp3 players, hdmi-in for laptop and a Sony LocationFree box to stream tv to my laptop or someone’s PSP. These components are being played over a set of Dahlquist (Profiles) PDQ-200 floorstanding speakers, and Polk Monitor 4 bookshelves on the rear on speaker stands. The low sounds are coming from a Martin Logan Dyanmo sub, which provides some very solid dynamic bass for a very small form-factor. I’m looking to add the Definitive Technology Mythos Seven center channel pretty shortly to complete the system. I badly need a center for this. Finally, it’s all being outputted to my little treasure, the Samsung LN-46A650 “Touch of Color” LCD tv. Such a great display.
Garage – I’m sorta turning half my garage (right side) into a mini play-room. It’s got a couple rugs down now and a foosball table and chairs. Along with it is a stereo system with no components at all except for a stereo line jack in for mp3 players. But the system cranking out the digital tunes is an analog day treat. A Nikko pre-amp controller is sending sound through a Kenwood power amp into a pair of home-made speakerlab oversized bookshelf speakers. It’s very focuses on mid-range sounds, but it’ll do for now.
Master Bedroom – I dont know what I want to do here yet, make it a music set up or a theater set up – more likely it’ll be both, with music-centric. I dont watch that much TV and even less in my room. In fact, I dont even have a working cable feed into my bedroom TV now, and dont ever turn that thing on. So it’ll probably be focused on music. Right now I’m using the Infinity sats with a Harman Kardon AV receiver to process. It’s actually connected to an Akai 27″ LCD and a Panasonic DVD player, which I use to play CDs. And of course it’s got line in for mp3 player. This is a work-in-progress, and it’s got a ways to go.
As you can see, I’m pretty obsessed with this stuff… it’s a bit insane. Once my living room is complete, and my center channel is purchased, I think I’ll be overly satisfied for quite a while. I hope.
Tags: audio, audiophile, home theater, movies, music, speakers, stereo, video