Mashie's home cinema

I'm nearing the completion of my home cinema system so it's time to post some pics:







Screen
Pioneer KRP-600A

Speakers
Monitor Audio GSLCR - center
Monitor Audio GS20 - front
Monitor Audio GSFX - surround
Monitor Audio GS10 - rear
SVS PB-13 Ultra Subwoofer

Receiver
NAD T775

Sources
Panasonic DMP-BD60 with multiregion chip
ViginMedia cable box

Miscellanous
50m of BJC Ten White speaker cable
Atacama Equinox AC stand in graphite/piano black

Thanks, I'm thinking about the SVS PB13 Ultra.



Soo far it's working really well to have all the speakers aimed at the center of the couch. I might tweak it over time as I only started to use this new system properly in the past 24h.



I must admit the system wasn't designed to have a lot of people watching at the same time, the room is too small for that. I might replace the couch though if I find a good 3 seater that wont put the surround speakers to danger by people walking past.

I must say I'm really satisified with the result considering A I didn't audition any of the audio kit, B didn't actually have the TV demoed in the store. I have however used a NAD receiver for the past four years and metal drive speakers for the past nine. Then extrapolating that experience with the massive threads full of feedback on this forum I made my decision. Not to mention it is very easy to get a good deal when you step in to the local dealer, state you intend to buy that and that piece of hardware and want their best price.

The NAD T775 is a beast and I totally love using HDMI for all interconnects, no more messing about with lots of wires, just one and then the power lead. Ok so it will be a second wire to most kit as they have ethernet ports but that's it.

The first HD content I tested on this setup was Rambo with all it's gore and glory in 7.1. The black levels are just insane and after using a DLP rear projector screen for years with a whopping 2000:1 contrast ratio I can't get enough of it. The sound is also a completely different matter compared to the previous setup, it's the sonical equivalent of going from SD to HD TV, all of a sudden there are soo much more detail to be heard.

As for playing music I have multiple options:
On demand music videos on the Cable Box.
USB direct to TV
USB/CD to BD60
HTPC


I don't plan to replace this system anytime soon.



Yeah Serenity is one of my long time favourites and the second film I watched on this system, I did notice something odd though. The Serenity box and the menu system say DTS-HD MA 5.1, however the receiver did see 7.1 coming in from the Blu-ray player and I got sound going to the rear speakers as well. I'm not entierly sure why this happened as all the player did was decoding the audio stream to LPCM. It's no setting enabled anywhere to "upscale" the sound from 5.1 to 7.1.



The Piano Black option was one of the reasons I did go with the GS series.
I know the HTPC is a bit big, however none of the usual small ones would fit in the rack so I simply went for one of the best looking towers cases made.

The sub will come but for now the GS20's do a decent job reproducing most explosions in films. I was really let down by Transformers from a sound point of view, it simply seems the director don't want to feel nor hear things explode. I mean trowing a car around and all you hear is a ploink. I'm soo glad Rambo was the first film I watched or I would have thought the system was broken tbh. I must admit, a life size Megan Fox did almost make up for the lack of rumbles.

I found out why it wasn't as spectacular as intended the first time, the player was set to "Dynamic Range Compression" for all Dolby formats. The films I watched before were all DTS based and unaffected by that setting.

The sub is coming just not yet as I had to use that budget to upgrade from a Samsung PS58B850 to the Kuro (which wasn't the original plan but with Samsung constantly pushing the UK release of the 2009 models I simply got fed up so here I am without sub but with a much better TV).

I have just ordered a piano black SVS PB13-Ultra subwoofer. Unfortunately it might take up to 8 weeks for it to be delivered as it was out of stock here in the UK.

It took over 11 weeks but finally a new toy has arrived.



The first challenge was to get the box through the door, had like 1" to spare.




Next it was peeling it like an onion, one layer at a time.




The towel was used to drag it into position.




My god it's huge as the jewel case looks tiny.




A quick setup in Audyssey and off we go...




To the biggest letdown ever. I'm not sure if either the Transformers disk is broken or that my player can't handle the LFE channel on TrueHD decoded disks. It's simply no bass what so ever in that film. Pretty explosions but the expected rumble just isn't there...

Ok, so next up was a film that I knew had a proper bass, Serenity, and my goodness did the room shake during the atmosphere re-entry scene.

When I did the post above I had only watched the first 10 minutes of Serenity, during the fleet fight at the end I was giggling like a girl as the whole room was shaking. I didn't even push the system (-20dB on the receiver) but still I had to straighten the pictures on the walls afterwards.

The upgradeitis is nearly cured, I will upgrade the cards in the receiver to fix the Dolby True HD LFE issue at some stage and then probably add a mediatank but that's it.

Well it is more a case of additis than upgradeitis I'm suffering from (ok when I replace the sofa it will be an upgrade) but the rest is more about adding stuff like a media tank to stream content and one of those Logitech universal remotes. Any suggestion what remote to pick btw?

Why does it seem to be 3 months delivery time for everything I want in this system? A new electrical recliner 2 seater sofa was ordered a few weeks ago. Expected delivery mid January...

Technically it's just over half a season of Firefly, 14 out of 22 episodes, and yes it is great on blu-ray.

I will get a remote by the time the new sofa arrives in January as I will be one sofa table short by then.