Hey, been looking at your polls and reading threads for a while and didn't join because I genuinely couldn't come up with a good username. Finally decided to just throw caution to the wind.
Around November, after over a decade of wanting to get into this, after hearing a *snippet* of the matrix'd version of Parsons' DSotM quad mix through a 7.1 system off of the "Works" compilation thru imperfect DPL decoding, I finally got the finished half of my basement set up as a home theater/listening space. It's a complete mashup of Craigslist and thrift store components: Onkyo receiver, old Synergistics mains, Optimus (Radio Shack) surrounds, a Paradigm center, and a massive Henry Kloss-designed Cambridge sub that cost almost as much itself as the rest of the components combined. Plus a scrounged 720p projector. The 110" screen was the only thing we bought new. My girlfriend has not only put up with this, but embraced it. I won the lotto on that. She even let me run signal cables from the AV cabinet to the projector mount for 1 side and 2 rear speakers, ethernet, HDMI, 5x RCA, TOSLINK (which in hindsight was pointless), and install a ceiling power outlet for the projector. Got everything set up really cleanly using keystone jacks, I'm quite proud.
And once I had it set up, the addiction set in. Because Yes and Pink Floyd and even Jim Croce or Bela Fleck's bluegrass album in surround just tickles my brain in the absolute best ways and I adore it. So back to Craigslist I went, because this needed to be shared!
So now my hippie boomer parents, who already had four speakers wired in their living room, are getting the surround treatment with a scrounged Pioneer receiver and a meh but good enough Creative-era Cambridge center. I need to replace their surrounds, though... big ol' Sanyo party speakers that just boom lots of bass. Their mains are these wonderful Akai SW-155 ported 4-ways that I grew up with. Probably going to upgrade my mains and give them the Synergistics to use as surrounds. Private label speakers no one's heard of (not white van, there is advertising material), but they're surprisingly good for a cheap 1970s 2-way. Put the Sanyos in my garage, where boomy party speakers belong... And I need to get all their speakers elevated because there's furniture in the way. Then I'll figure if they need a sub to augment the 12.5" woofers on those Akais. But even with their setup currently being a mess acoustically, I cranked some Yes, and some Allman Brothers, and some Moody Blues for them and they got onboard immediately with the idea.
Oh, but it doesn't end there! I had four little Paradigm satellites, and a Kenwood from 1998 with 6-channel inputs, and a Soundblaster card with 6-channel out, all left over... I do IT for a living and tend to hoard stuff, if that wasn't becoming apparent from just having electronic gear all over the place that's not actually worth selling... so now my home office/guest bedroom has a little twin bed with 5.0 sound around it using those Paradigms and the other Cambridge center I scrounged.
The master bedroom is next once the parents' living room is set up right. It never ends. The nice YouTube man said to live life in surround and I'm taking that entirely too literally.
So, yeah... that's pretty much where I am, and I'm kind of frantically building up a library of surround music ripped to FLAC PCM files that I keep on my Plex server (which is hooked directly to the receiver in the basement, and was the project from 12 months ago that seemed completely insane but turned out great), and I'm kind of hoping I keep enough of my mind together after it being blown by hearing all my favorite music again for the first time, that I don't end up outside Tom Scholtz's house yelling "TOM! TOM!!! I HAVE NOTES ON HOW A 5.1 MIX OF "DON'T LOOK BACK" COULD SOUND!!!"
Around November, after over a decade of wanting to get into this, after hearing a *snippet* of the matrix'd version of Parsons' DSotM quad mix through a 7.1 system off of the "Works" compilation thru imperfect DPL decoding, I finally got the finished half of my basement set up as a home theater/listening space. It's a complete mashup of Craigslist and thrift store components: Onkyo receiver, old Synergistics mains, Optimus (Radio Shack) surrounds, a Paradigm center, and a massive Henry Kloss-designed Cambridge sub that cost almost as much itself as the rest of the components combined. Plus a scrounged 720p projector. The 110" screen was the only thing we bought new. My girlfriend has not only put up with this, but embraced it. I won the lotto on that. She even let me run signal cables from the AV cabinet to the projector mount for 1 side and 2 rear speakers, ethernet, HDMI, 5x RCA, TOSLINK (which in hindsight was pointless), and install a ceiling power outlet for the projector. Got everything set up really cleanly using keystone jacks, I'm quite proud.
And once I had it set up, the addiction set in. Because Yes and Pink Floyd and even Jim Croce or Bela Fleck's bluegrass album in surround just tickles my brain in the absolute best ways and I adore it. So back to Craigslist I went, because this needed to be shared!
So now my hippie boomer parents, who already had four speakers wired in their living room, are getting the surround treatment with a scrounged Pioneer receiver and a meh but good enough Creative-era Cambridge center. I need to replace their surrounds, though... big ol' Sanyo party speakers that just boom lots of bass. Their mains are these wonderful Akai SW-155 ported 4-ways that I grew up with. Probably going to upgrade my mains and give them the Synergistics to use as surrounds. Private label speakers no one's heard of (not white van, there is advertising material), but they're surprisingly good for a cheap 1970s 2-way. Put the Sanyos in my garage, where boomy party speakers belong... And I need to get all their speakers elevated because there's furniture in the way. Then I'll figure if they need a sub to augment the 12.5" woofers on those Akais. But even with their setup currently being a mess acoustically, I cranked some Yes, and some Allman Brothers, and some Moody Blues for them and they got onboard immediately with the idea.
Oh, but it doesn't end there! I had four little Paradigm satellites, and a Kenwood from 1998 with 6-channel inputs, and a Soundblaster card with 6-channel out, all left over... I do IT for a living and tend to hoard stuff, if that wasn't becoming apparent from just having electronic gear all over the place that's not actually worth selling... so now my home office/guest bedroom has a little twin bed with 5.0 sound around it using those Paradigms and the other Cambridge center I scrounged.
The master bedroom is next once the parents' living room is set up right. It never ends. The nice YouTube man said to live life in surround and I'm taking that entirely too literally.
So, yeah... that's pretty much where I am, and I'm kind of frantically building up a library of surround music ripped to FLAC PCM files that I keep on my Plex server (which is hooked directly to the receiver in the basement, and was the project from 12 months ago that seemed completely insane but turned out great), and I'm kind of hoping I keep enough of my mind together after it being blown by hearing all my favorite music again for the first time, that I don't end up outside Tom Scholtz's house yelling "TOM! TOM!!! I HAVE NOTES ON HOW A 5.1 MIX OF "DON'T LOOK BACK" COULD SOUND!!!"
