Help me choose home theater system from Costco - Page 2

^^^^^ thanks for taking the time to write such a long response Our family room is carpeted with a big curtain (sliding glass door) on one wall with leather furniture etc all around. Mostly two, sometimes three or four sitting where ever they want to. So audio positions change. The sound, at least to me, sounds good, even with the occasional Pandora station playing my settings are probably sufficient. I was just wondering what you used being as we have the same receiver but you are correct about type of speakers, placement, and listening environment etc for ultimately deciding on settings.

My sub cutoff is 80Hz at about 50% but it's only an 8" side ported (28Hz - 200Hz).
Edited by Otto Pylot - 8/5/12 at 3:39pm

With 4" mids on your sats, and the total attached room space you have, I'd go with an 8" sub that has a good amount of power and clarity to it's amp. You want to be able to have a sub cutoff that somewhat matches what your front sats can come down to. Klipsch makes a SW8 sub, but it's a bit high THD. You might want take a look at the Audioengine S8, it's $350 though. Some high powered affordable 8" subs are the Jamo SUB 210 and Acoustic Audio RWSUB-8.

Nice set of sats and center btw, but I hope you're used to or at least have demoed horn loaded Ti tweets in a local listening room. They can tend to sound overly bright for some ears. That can diminish somewhat in setting them up in a carpeted room with upholstered furniture though, esp if the listening room you demo them in has a lot of hard surfaces.

Yeah 80Hz is too low for what my 8" sub's range is and the depth of my fronts. HT guys like at Fry's and such will try to tell you 120Hz is the optimal HT sub cutoff, but it's more dependent on your sub's freq range, the front speakers you have, what you use your system for. There's no one setting that's right for everyone and everything really, you just have to adjust by ear.

If your setup sounds good to you, I wouldn't worry about it. In fact one of the cool things about personalized environments is they all have subtleties that are unique. It would be a bit boring if everyone's house you watched a movie at sounded exactly the same. Those little differences are part of what give's each house it's character and makes it feel alive vs plain.
Edited by Hi Def Fan - 8/5/12 at 4:36pm

Funny you should mention Fry's. I trust them about as much as I do the salespeople at Best Buy. But I get your point. I'm sort of stuck on the Polk 6750s because of cost, size, and the WAF. I do think my sub is a bit better than the one that comes with the Polks though but it doesn't hurt to have two

I agree about the subtleties of personalized environments, even though the purists would disagree

Hey Otto, if you can afford $300, you might want to take a look at the Martin Logan MLT-2 set at Newegg. They just cut the price in half from $600. Full retail is $1000. This set is highly praised and has 4.5" mids on the fronts. Price is good on promo code through 8/13, but they'll probably sell out soon at that price. If you're looking for something with better sound that fits on small speaker stands, this may be it.

^^^ thanks for the heads-up. They should fit on my existing stands but at 7" high, they may be top heavy because the stands are on a carpeted floor. It appears that the Polks are just about gone so I may have to start looking at Energy Take Classics and go from there. They seem to be about the mid-point between the Polks and the ML-2s.

The MLT-2 sats are 7" high, but only 3.4 lb each, and most of that weight is going to be near the bottom of the cabinet. What stands do you have? Most decent stands have heavy bases.

The stands that I have are the Atlantic stands from Amazon. They have a fairly heavy triangle-shaped base on a telescoping rod that the wires snake up into. The platform has an adjustable back that can probably fit any speaker with screw hole in the back.

Yeah it says the weight rating is only 2 lbs per speaker on those. One way you could make them more stable is to put a 5 lb cast iron weight plate on the base of each one though. They can usually be had pretty cheap per plate at places that sell weights. It would change the look of course though.

Yeah, that would never pass the WAF and if I had to buy 4 new speaker stands as well..........

Yeah unfortunately that is a big tradeoff of committing to buying speaker stands that are only made for small speakers. The weight rating might be a bit conservative, meaning tested at max height, which is 50". A lot of floor standing speakers (including mine) are only 36" tall. You could set the stands at about 30" and test them with something small that weighs about 3.5 lbs. For instance a half gallon carton of milk about 3/4 full would weigh close to that.

My speakers are 42" from ground to the bottom of the current speaker. The height was determined by the height of the couch where the sats are. We don't listen at window-shaking volumes so vibrations should be at a minimum. Certainly something to think about.

Speaker height should be determined by the most axis dependent driver matching the height of your ears while seated. That would typically be the tweeters since they reflect sound the most and more noticeable when off axis. Measuring them to furniture height is more aesthetic than functional, and can compromise sound quality.

BTW, the MLT-2 set comes with wall mountable brackets if that's applicable to your setup. Ideally, if you ever entertain guests in a party situation, it's nice to have mounts that can be swiveled to aim the speakers to an upward, downward or horizontal angle, That way they can sound on axis whether people are sitting or standing.

As far as I can tell from the mounting diagram though, with the MLT-2 brackets you have to choose the angle when you mount them, vs being the swivel type.
Edited by Hi Def Fan - 8/9/12 at 4:25pm

Not too clear on my part. I used the couch height as the minimum height to ensure that the side speakers cleared the top of the couch and didn't project into them. I then adjusted up a bit so that the bottom of the speakers are just about even with my head. I then set the fronts to the same height. Certainly not ideal but they sound fine. Of course my hearing isn't as astute as it used to be (too many loud concerts in small venues growing up) so I guess that could be a blessing (or curse). Wall mounted are definitely out. Given the existing stands, I think the MLT-2s are out so now I'm watching the prices on the Energy Take Classics.

Ah, I see, that is one tall couch. Even the back of mine is only 36", and just at the middle. The armrest parts at the sides are about 25". If it's doable, maybe you could place the rears at the side vs behind, like many do.

I just caught up with my neighbor barely in time last night to demo my speakers for him and he decided he wanted to get them. He's got CP and is wheelchair bound so he needs help with this stuff. He had ordered these from Newegg, and they're still in box, so he decided to give Newegg a call today and arrange to pay to ship them back for store credit.

I called Fry's and they had two of the subs in stock, but only the demos they had set up for me on the 5-pack. They said I could get a rain check for the sale price though. His brother came over so we could use the carpool lane, we hopped in my truck, and got there 3 min before they closed last night, and it was the last day of the sale. I was pondering when we got home if we should set his place up like mine with the TV at the end of the living room near the picture window to keep the surround speaker wires along the wall. (We have smallish, long narrow living rooms)

When I got home I realized that arrangement won't be ideal for him since he is used to having his TV on his entertainment center (vs a small table behind his desk), and small monitor for use with his desk/PC off to the side. I did some more checking and in measuring my apt, which is similar to his, I think the best route will be to get a 100' spool of double jacket in wall speaker wire, in which case we can just cut one surround wire extra long and run both surround wires around the end of his living room. That way he can keep his existing layout.

I was tempted to get wire like that myself when I set up my system, but I have brown carpet and the white wire would have stuck out like a sore thumb. He doesn't have carpet or rugs though, and the floor tile is mostly white anyway. I think it's best he has tougher wire that's double jacketed in case he ever runs over it with his wheelchair. Only thing is, with all those hard surfaces, there's going to be more sound reflections. His Pioneer receiver has MCAAC though, so hopefully that will help with setting the EQ.

Hmmm, I just used 2-wire, ribbed, 16AWG heater cord wire (that's how it was labeled) for my speakers. $0.16/ft. Got it at our local hardware store. I didn't want to run wires around the family room (one side has a big sliding glass door) and crawling around the attic to drop wires down the wall is something I don't do. I just used the same hole in the wall where the antenna rotor cable comes in, made it look nice with a wall plate, ran the wires (for the sides) outside underneath along the wooden part of the outside door frame, and back into the family room where the original cable came in behind the couch, and used another wall plate. No visible wires at all in the family room. I bunched the wires outside all nice and pretty. You can see them if you're on the patio looking at the sliding glass door but so what, they just look like one long, black wire running at the bottom of the frame. The grommet for the outside wall is painted the same color as the wall so it blends in quite nicely.

The couch is against the wall and the speakers are slightly behind the plane of the couch because there is a table on one side and the wet bar on the other side. The speakers are angled slightly in towards the couch.

Hadn't seen those Polks before.

On a side note, I was up at my other neighbor's place last night whom has the same Atlantic speakers stands. He has his probably close to the same height you have yours. They seem fairly stable, but his are on a bare tile floor. He has light weight speakers (under 2 lbs ea) from an Onkyo HtIB set on them, the fronts are fairly tall though.

The platform to rest the speakers on are fairly smallish though. The wires once pulled snug down through the stands might keep light weight speakers from falling to the floor if they were ever knocked off, but he wants to get some Velcro to stick them to the stands. I recommended some 2" wide outdoor grade Velcro I've used before that came with a hide-a-key kit I got once.

^^^^ I believe velcro "attachments" came with my Atlantics. Haven't needed to use them yet. The likelihood of my speakers being knocked over are very small so I'm hoping they can handle a little extra weight.