Zam15 Equipment Into - Past, Present and Future Advice, Thoughts and Discussions
Howdy! I’m new to the forum but have been dabbling in home theater for a while now, all the way back to setting up my room as a kid with my 13” TV and my first stereo receiver an OPTIMUS STA-3760 (100 Watt x2) . As a kid I was fascinated by speakers.
One note, I love Bass and have almost always had full range floor standing speakers, even if they were garage sale buys…
I first paired my receiver with bookshelf speakers, not much but coming form boom boxes and TV speakers it was like entering a whole new world! Tried Optimus XTS-10 (60 Watt), these were garbage. Also messed around with (Optimus XTS 40W 5" Cube) and RCA 40-5000 (2 Way, 3", 15w), but
Believe I also had some Vintage Kenwood JL-660s (3-Wau, 12” 140W, 40hz-20,000hz) for a time… remember having to glue the back panel due to vibrations
I’ve had Pioneer CS-G105 Floor Standing (2-Way, 10”, 100Watt 48-20,000Hz) Purchase from Circuit City
Eventually settled on a set off KLH 970A (3-Way 4”, 40 Watt, 90hz-20,khz), used these for the stereo rears… 5.1 wasn’t a thing yet..
The 5.1 Dolby/DTS Surround era!
I picked up my first surround sound system after working a summer job. Went with a l 5.1 Cambridge Soundworks Movieworks setup.
Center Channel II
Ensemble III
Surround IV
Base Cube 8 (8", 50 watt, 39 Hz)
Sony STR-DE685 (100 watts x 5, 20-20,000 Hz)
Eventually upgraded the front bookshelf to some Technics SB-2580 Floor Standing (4-Way, 12” 200 Watt) garage sale find but amazing upgrade for a kid, one woofer died so brought a replacement 12” from RadioShack and ran them until I handed it off to my cousin.
Took some vintage JVC Vintage JVC SK-S44 (3-Way, 120W, 12”, 35-20,000 hz) off my Dads hand and ran those for a while. Could have been a slightly better model? But this one looks close.
When my Sony Receiver died I worked my way into my current system a 7.2 Setup with:
Pioneer VSX-1124 7.2 (90 Watts per channel)
Emotiva XPA-2 Gen2 (300 WPC)
RTI-12s (500w)
CSi5 x6 (200w)
FXI A6 (150w)
PSW-505 x2 (12” 300 Watt RMS (460 Watt)
ATMOS Future:
Recently I’ve had my 2 PSW-505 subwoofers die from faulty AMPs (note I will not buy Polk subs again due to quality… ) so I’ve been looking into another upgrade phase to include a future ATMOS implementation. I’ve order a new 16U equipment rack, rack ears for my XPA-2, and an AC Infinity CLOUDPLATE T6 PRO. Just dropped it on my current stack and dropped temps by 30°F from 115° to 85° as measured on top of the XPA-2! So I’m looking at a future stack of Emotiva equipment now that they’re kicking out processors. Looking at an XMC-2 once they have HDMI 2.1 and an XPA-7 for the surrounds. Eventually picking up another XPA-7 and Polk V80s once I get to a permanent residence in the future. Any thoughts on this potential setup? Also recommendations on a subwoofer? Looking at SB-3000s due to size restrictions.