Doing an awkward room on the cheap

souter

Hi,
Home entertainment noob here, I'm trying my maximise my decent I believe yamaha rx-v2700 amp in the front room, so WAF is important.
Room is 4m * 5m with a lot of soft furnishning and the TV in a corner.
So far I have got 2 ancient but alledgedly good speakers connected and have rocked out in glorious old skool stereo.
Now I want to add surround sound. I used to have a cheapo sony unit with tiny speakers that i really enjoyed, so my expectations are pretty low.
My questions are;
1) any recommendations for rear speakers?Was looking at wharfedale loud panel for the WAF, they don't seem to be available anymore so an alternative would be something like http://www.google.com/search?q=Jamo+A510+Speaker&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8.
Something wall mounted and unobtrusive.
2) center speaker. Again, looking for something cheap, cheerful and small - jamo have some, can find similar products ok. Will something like this suffice?
3) Subwoofer. Now here is the problem. I object to powering up yet another yoke when I have a 1Kw amp. And I'm running out of sockets. And WAF.
a) any way to run a passive (?) subwoofer from the amp?
b) Would my main speakers (8" woofers) give a reasonable low bass effect for watching films?

Ta

M00lers

souter wrote: »

Hi,
Home entertainment noob here, I'm trying my maximise my decent I believe yamaha rx-v2700 amp in the front room, so WAF is important.
Room is 4m * 5m with a lot of soft furnishning and the TV in a corner.
So far I have got 2 ancient but alledgedly good speakers connected and have rocked out in glorious old skool stereo.
Now I want to add surround sound. I used to have a cheapo sony unit with tiny speakers that i really enjoyed, so my expectations are pretty low.
My questions are;
1) any recommendations for rear speakers?Was looking at wharfedale loud panel for the WAF, they don't seem to be available anymore so an alternative would be something like http://www.google.com/search?q=Jamo+A510+Speaker&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8.
Something wall mounted and unobtrusive.
2) center speaker. Again, looking for something cheap, cheerful and small - jamo have some, can find similar products ok. Will something like this suffice?
3) Subwoofer. Now here is the problem. I object to powering up yet another yoke when I have a 1Kw amp. And I'm running out of sockets. And WAF.
a) any way to run a passive (?) subwoofer from the amp?
b) Would my main speakers (8" woofers) give a reasonable low bass effect for watching films?

Ta

Hi Souter,
Have you a bugdet and what type of speakers have you?

souter

Budget is 400 quid +/-discretionary. The speakers are pioneer prologue 4, 10+ years old but have a certain sentimental value (and are damn good for vinyl music IMHO) .

M00lers

Not familar with the speakers but thats a nice amp you have there.

It might be a problem getting a centre speaker that matches (sound wise) the Pioneer speakers. By that I mean that if you put a small center with them it wouldn't sound right and your front sound stage would be all over the place. The center speaker is very important in an AV setup as the center channel can be up to 60percent (ish) of the sound track.
I'd spend my money on a good center and sub and worry about the rears when funds allow.

The rears would be less of a problem in my opinion as they are only used for effects etc.

Regarding the subwoofer, your speakers would probably struggle to reach the depths of a movie sound track so you'll not be hearing everything on the soundtrack. A decent sub should go a lot lower than your Pioneers are capable off.

souter

Cheers Moller. I'd neglected the centre speaker ( because it will be < 1m the main speakers) but will look at getting something decent.
I guess I'll see if the amp can do low frequency w/o a dedicated unit.
If not I'll be looking for a flat panel woofer.Which brings me baCK TO ONE of my origininal queries:
flat panel speakers.
Do they work, are they acceptable for Joe Public
and where can you get them in Irelanadnd?

btw, my obsession with rear speakers is due to watching Das Boot. Hearing the water drips behind me is my gold standard, albeit a relatively low bar

M00lers

souter wrote: »

Cheers Moller. I'd neglected the centre speaker ( because it will be < 1m the main speakers) but will look at getting something decent.
I guess I'll see if the amp can do low frequency w/o a dedicated unit.
If not I'll be looking for a flat panel woofer.Which brings me baCK TO ONE of my origininal queries:
flat panel speakers.
Do they work, are they acceptable for Joe Public
and where can you get them in Irelanadnd?

btw, my obsession with rear speakers is due to watching Das Boot. Hearing the water drips behind me is my gold standard, albeit a relatively low bar

Your amp in a very capable one it can do pretty much whatever you need it to. It can even do HD audio via LPCM.
You can send the full range of freq. to your speakers but whether or not they can output that freq. is a different matter. A sub would do a far better job of it. Set crossover on sub to approx 80Hz and it will take over at that freq and below.
Regarding flat panel speakers for the rears, I take it you just need something small and discrete, have a look at the Monitor Audio Radius HD range of speakers, very tidy and very good.
Consider a sub and center at some stage though you're wasting that amp!!!:)

Idleater

One piece of advice for you is to think about not using a dedicated centre speaker. Your amp should be able to do a "phantom" centre (mix in the centre to the L + R speakers), which is good for WAF, because you don't need any "extra" speakers.

I have done this on my system, but the extra work that the L+R have to do, means that you really have to have some decent speakers.

If you are not going for a sub, then this is another extra demand on said speakers. You can get some very good subs now that are quite small, I'm looking at svs ones at the moment (obviously this would blow your budget, but something to keep in mind as an upgrade.

L.

M00lers

Hi nereid,
What SVS subs are you thinking about getting? Box or cyclinder?

Idleater

moolers2000 wrote: »

Hi nereid,
What SVS subs are you thinking about getting? Box or cyclinder?

I'd love a cylinder, but space is at a premium unfortunately.

I like the look of the SB12plus. Might get 2 :pac:

M00lers

nereid wrote: »

I'd love a cylinder, but space is at a premium unfortunately.

I like the look of the SB12plus. Might get 2 :pac:

The footprint of a cyclinder is fairly small actually (well compared to the PB boxes anyway), might even be smaller than the SB12+.

As far as I know and my knowledge is limited, a better single sub will out perform 2 lesser subs. You gain an extra 6db approx by running two.

If it were me I'd go for the best single sub my budget would stretch to.

The SB12+ is a lovely sub though.

Edit: I've just seen that there is no more stock available for the SB12plus (at subsonicsounds) as it's being replaced by a new model. Will be very interesting to see what SVS come up with.

souter

Ok, you guys are over my head by a long way. Will try the monitors hd45 as rears for starters, centre and woofer some other day.
I'd already noted those at richer sounds and they are nice and compact.

The WAF thing can be overplayed - I showed her the wharfedale loud panels (which actively promote putting a picture in front) and her emminently sensible response was "But that's a stupid place to put a picture"

M00lers

Sorry bout that we went on a bit off on a tangent there.

Good choice with the HD45s.
Take your time getting your setup, every step you take will yield improvements. I'm curious though, why the nice amp and not using it as it was designed to do?. It was a nice few quid in its day and deserves nice speaker/sub combo.

Have a look at BK Elec subwoofers, they are excellent subs and great value for money. Look at the Gemini II it would suit your setup.

souter

No worries. Yes the amp is a bit of a long story. I bought it principally for playing my music on, with the possibility of one day using it for home cinema. It was also a bit of an impulse buy - I was in Peats and explained the above requirement, the sales guy was a bit snooty i.e. "well this would do but you obviously can't afford it" was the impression so I more or less bought it out of perversity. Dumb I know.

So it has been doing service as a 2 channel audio amp in the attic, bypassing all the fancy electronics and using a small fraction of the inputs.

Recently we changed our broad band to cable, which put network access by the TV, which reawoke my plans for a media server, which in turn meant dusting off the home cinema idea. Also got a bunch of ikea furniture that just happened to be the right size for LPs.
Then I was left in the house by myself for a weekend so a bit of sawing of furniture enabled me to sneak the amp into the living room (I had to open up the back of the TV cabinet to fit it in).

So here I am, all that audio goodness dying to be used. So far the only input is the cable box, David Attenborough in 2 channel stereo has been about the only use to date. Plan is to get a PS3 for the kid's (yeah right) Christmas and use that as a media server/ bluray player.

It may take me a while, but I will get there - currently trying to figure out where I can stash a sub woofer.

M00lers

Cool, like I said take your time and if you need any help setting up any thing give us a shout. The Gemini II is nice and small. Stick a lamp or vase on it and hey presto a side table.

souter

Hi, got the monitor speakers, cabled up nicely (or will be when I reattach the coving), but I still haven't heard them in action!

Did the auto setup with the amp and they are physically there, but yet to hear anything out of them. At the moment my only source is the ntl cable box. I *assume* it supports some form of surround sound, but I can't hear anything at the back. I'm using an optical digital connection to the amp, I can hear stereo, but nothing ever behind me. Haven't watched that much with it (David Attenborough on bbc1, Cliffhanger on c4), but expected something at the back.

Am I deluding myself, will I have to wait till I get a dvd to hear behind me?

The amp has a "make up surround sound" processor as well, tried that briefly but still nothing to hear.

Any suggestions?

btw, this is the less than ideal positioning when I did the setup:

Front(low)

---

Mic--Rear(High)

is it possible the rear (sorry, right and left would be more accurate - i.e. 4.0 setup) is dialed downed to nothing?

Idleater

souter wrote: »

Am I deluding myself, will I have to wait till I get a dvd to hear behind me?

You should be able to choose an option such as DTS Neo6 Music, or Dolby Prologic Cinema to create a surround effect from a stereo source. Some programmes come encoded in Dolby prologic (L+R+Surround) eg the simpsons.

But the most obvious question is there not a "speaker setup test" that outputs pink or white noise over each channel (speaker) individually?

souter

Cheers nereid, yes there is a test transmission and the speakers showed up loud and clear with it. I'll play about with it when I get the chance, good excuse to watch the Simpsons for the first time in a while.

souter

ok, manually configured the rear speaker level and yes they do come out to play. Not going to spend too much time tweaking this till I get my dvd source up and running.
Meantime, before covering up the cabling, aha! I've run some speaker cables into the adjacent room (where the turntable resides). AFAIK the amp supports extra room or something i.e. it could play records at the same time as the other room broadcasts entirely different source.
Which is a bit academic, but would be very handy to have independent speakers in adjacent room. Would be entirely 2ch audio, at low volume, so looking at bookshelf speakers.
Any recommendations < 200e? ( < 100 would be even better)
(other thing, mounting speakers at ceiling height would be very convenient, not sure if this would be significant consideration)

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