Help picking a Home Theater Receiver

[r0bc]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

Depends on the size of the room though. I have a mid sized room (15ft by 25ft) and my Onkyo SR 507 + KEF 1005.2 setup sounds killer.

I just picked up the Onkyo SR607 + KEF 1005.2 last week...sounds pretty good

[bottle]

KEF KHT10005.2 $400

or

Polk Audio RM75BD $350

Both are 5.1 sets. I personally bought the Polk Audio, but ended up returning them. I got my hands on some Paradigms instead. They're perfect for small rooms.
And for those wondering, it comes with the RM75 set + PSW111 sub, supposedly a really good sub.

As for the receiver.. you missed out on the Pioneer 1019. Was a killer deal at $400. I have no other inputs in this section.

Good luck with the sound system!

[lcdguy]

my parents have that polk audio set and it's pretty good considering the price of that whole system was less than my sub. and yes that sub can really kick it when it needs to.

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by r0bc

I just picked up the Onkyo SR607 + KEF 1005.2 last week...sounds pretty good

I'm having a few issues with my subwoofer setup actually. It is probably the room acoustics but I am getting far too much "boom" and not enough of the LFEs blending into the rest of the sound.

[lcdguy]

that could be a couple of issues. Your seperate sub volume could be set to high. I would try checking the following.

1. Master Volume on Subwoofer
2. Cross Over Setting on Subwoofer
3. Channel Volume setting on your amp and crossover on the amp

i would also verify that it is the speakers and not just the media.

[biff]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

I'm having a few issues with my subwoofer setup actually. It is probably the room acoustics but I am getting far too much "boom" and not enough of the LFEs blending into the rest of the sound.

Yeah that sounds like room issues... they can be nasty! Response is going to vary greatly depending on where the sub is placed. The general trend now is to use multiple subs (and they can be smaller) scattered about the room to break up the room modes. For a single sub setup one trick I've heard is to put the sub at your listening position and play some music or whatever and crawl around the room until you get to a spot where the bass sounds the smoothest and that's where your sub goes.

In my personal system I placed the sub as best I could for the smoothest response, then I used measurements along with Room EQ Wizard (Available at HTGuide IIRC) and a parametric EQ. At the listening position the bass is smooth but walking into different parts of the room makes the bass disappear or become very boomy. When I move I'll be going the multiple sub route for sure!

I picked up the 1200w onkyo system a while back. Other than the cheapish speakers the receiver is pretty good for my room size. Cost me 550 all in but that was a whole sale price.

[lcdguy]

besides if the 1200w isn't enough just get some power amps and hook them up to your pre-out connections on the receiver .

[inbalance99]

"The idea of building my own speakers appeals to me as I have a table saw and router. So now I'm going to do some browsing on AV forums, and learn something new."

Ok now you're in for a mess of learning. I went down that path and almost didn't make it back. But I did build 5 monitors and turned my 30 year old boxes into front bass bins/subs/speaker stands.

I'm very satisfies with my DIY speakers, they look a little rough up close but sound great. And my cobbled together subs sound great to me.

I built 5 L18's from Zaph.

I have a two zone, 7.1 receiver. The LFE out has a splitter cable and is patched into the CD in. If I'm watching a movie or some head banging music (very rare) I'll turn on zone 2 with the CD as source. My old 1' x 1' x 2' speakers with 10" woofers are plugged into channels 6 and 7. So I basically get 2, sort of subs, for free, and can adjust the sub volume on the fly. Will keep me happy until I get around to replacing the 10" with quality 10" to match the L18's or with real sub drivers and reinforce the boxes. Others may cringe at this but the LFE volume is more than enough. Also the receiver software/set up found the room nul frequencies and has adjusted accordingly.

You've got a hankerin', table saw, router and 15" ers at hand. I can't wait to see the build pictures.

[SugarJ]

Yup, what little I've learned is how much I don't know about proper acoustics and baffles and drivers and such. It's going to be a long process, but I think I will start with reboxing those old Fischer cabinets and go from there.