Home Theater Evolution

If you ask anyone, my absolute favorite hobby is tweaking audio equipment and my home theater is no exception. What started with me blowing up a pair of my dad’s old Klipsch speakers, I’ve always bargain hunted for deals, sold what I had, and upgraded for a marginal “upgrade cost.” What started as creating the ultimate high school basement hangout quickly graduated into a dorm room and into where it stands now. I’ll outline some of the progressions below as well as how I utilized bargain hunting to maximize my bang:buck ratio.

I can’t say too many good things about Best Buy but one area where they’re amazing is Black Friday for Klipsch Tower sales. You can get a pair of towers that are normally $550 for $275 each. I don’t care what you say, you can’t beat that.

These quickly replaced previous Sony and KLH towers that I had around from garage sales and HH Greg deals. However, my amplifier at the time wasn’t cutting it.

Enter the Onkyo TX-SR805. This thing was and, honestly, still is a BEAST. Weighing in at 72 pounds this seven channel receiver is THX Ultra certified and put out a real 110w RMS per channel.

Side note: Most receivers will say they’re 100w but in reality the measurement is when only the front two channels are being powered and not all 5, 7, 9, or 11 channels.

I specifically remember saving up an entire semester’s worth of lifeguarding wages at Ball State to afford this. As with most receivers, they depreciate incredibly quickly and are prone to breaking. For this reason I used www.accessories4less.com/ and scored a refurbished unit for $500 or more than half off with a 3 year extended warranty (a capacitor blew after a year so this was a great move on my part. Warranty covered all of it plus updated the software which could only be done at the shop).

I had to chase down the FedEx truck all over Muncie to get the unit before Christmas break but once I had it, it was time to wire.

Above you can see the inputs of the Onkyo 805. At the time it had 3 HDMI inputs which was unheard of when most HDTVs were lucky to have 2. Also, you can see the size comparison to my latest Yamaha 1060 unit. Although the Yamaha has a leg up in audio decoding, the Onkyo still handily beat it in regards to power. You simply couldn’t beat the clean power from the Onkyo which is why I purchased a second for $200 via eBay when I moved out of college.

Also above is the first appearance of “Butt Shakers” in my set up. These awesome dimension extenders share the same signal as subwoofers and instead of putting out sound, they shake. So when a gunshot or explosion happens in a movie you literally feel it underneath you vs a loud boom. They simply need daisy chained to an amplifier which I used an Onkyo 802 stereo amplifier for ~50w RMS to 4 mounted under couches.

These were kept in at my house until my sophomore year of college when I installed them again due to being in a small apartment. We couldn’t have a loud subwoofer so I made due with shaking couches while we watched movies instead. Picture of that setup below.

Speaking of college, I saved some snaps (thanks, Google Photos) of the various set ups.

First off, yes, I was that guy bringing a 55″ TV to the freshman dorms. I found the TV on Craigslist for a whopping $600 that my lifeguarding money gladly went to. Next up was outfitting the dorm with the receiver, Xbox 360 and ever important Gamecube for Super Smash and Mario Kart. Notably, I did have a subwoofer in this 5.1 setup. I only got written up twice for having it up too loud throughout the year.

Next came the aforementioned sophomore apartment where I ditched the sub. Polk R50’s were carried over as rears and we got a stand for the TV and same gaming setup.

Finally, you can check out what we did in our house junior and senior years. Because we’d host parties, we needed to have speakers out of reach as well as the other electronics. For the TV we mounted it on the wall and only had a single HDMI and power cord to deal with when we moved it for weekends. Additionally, I moved my Polk towers to my room and bought TSi100’s for the 5.1 set up next to the ceilings. Paired with a 300w 12″ subwoofer this place absolutely shook! Most people go the route of getting two giant speakers but it’s much better for confined spaces to stick with higher amounts of smaller speakers to immerse yourself.

We then built a wood covering so that the electronics wouldn’t get spilled on or messed with during parties. Thanks to a direct connection to my Google Music playlist and Moto 360 I was able to control parties from my wrist!

In terms of gaming, I was able to snag a Wii U before Mario Kart came out so it was only $100 on Craigslist. Many hours were put on it.

Alright, now to my current set up. When I first moved in I had found a 55″ 4k TV for only $800 in 2015. Although this was a fantastic TV and deal I found a buyer for $600 and was able to nab a 65″ 4k HDR set for $1,200 thanks to a refurbished Amazon deal. Paired with the Craigslist TV stand I found for $100 it’s about as big as I can go without straining the support.

When I moved in I had some older RTi10 speakers that were great when paired with the Onkyo 805. However, I had the itch to upgrade and found a buyer who bought my whole set for $600. Taking advantage of Polk’s yearly half off sale I got my full front channel RTiA setup for under $1,500. Thanks to the cherry mahogany these have always and will continue to be my favorite speakers for some time. True dream speakers.

However, the Onkyo 805’s massive power still couldn’t let these guys shine.

A big misconception is that power only equates to volume. Although this is true, having more power at low volumes allows speakers to reach their designed outputs more effectively. You will actually never blow a speaker by giving it “too much” power. You will blow a speaker when you don’t give it enough power and have a bad source (a la an aux cable).

This is when I set out to find an amplifier, again, a dream piece of equipment I’ve always wanted. If you head over to the admittedly great Polk Audio Forums and AVR forums you’ll find people love to pair Parasound amplifiers with the RTiA9 series for the warm sound. Thanks to another local Cincinnati audiophile I was able to test out a 200w/ch Parasound but it just didn’t meet my needs so I looked elsewhere.

Enter Emotiva. They’re an American brand built down in Tennessee and have been known for years as one of the leading manufacturers in the space with each piece of equipment being hand made based on demand. Plus they just look downright sexy. With over 300w RMS to each of my front speakers I can finally say I’m continually blown away when watching movies on Blu Ray.

Another fun fact: Blu Ray’s even at 4k often yield more noticeable improvements to sound than picture. Even with my TV I’m hardly impressed by video anymore. However, with the right codec and lossless audio I’m blown away.

I’ll refrain from jumping into my gaming specifics but I will hit on the power of the Yamaha receiver. Not only does it convert all non Dolby Atmos sources to take advantage of my ceiling speakers but it beautifully upconverts all non-4K HDR content to a much better quality.

Side note: Dolby Atmos is a newer codec that enables “height” in theaters. If you go to a newer theater you may notice speakers in the ceilings. This receiver supports this as well. It’s useful when there’s effects such as rain or a helicopter flying over you. In these cases, sound would only come from above vs your other speakers for a more immersive effect.

So my Xbox One X being 4k capable is set to have post processing disabled so I get the purest signal. No point in processing pure 4k. However, the Nintendo Switch and it’s mobile chip can’t quite look as good. Therefore I’ll enable the chip to make 1080p Breath of the Wild look sharp as ever with the additional benefit of upconverting the audio to boot. (Still not as good as the 8k Wii U emulated versions, I digress).

Enter the Ambiance

You have butt kickers below your couch and a 300w 12″ subwoofer keeping everything moving, what else can you ask for? Enter my lights!

I’m a huge Phillips Hue proponent. I have my TV and speakers backlit with standard USB strips set to when the TV turns on which are always blue. However, my other light bulbs are Hue enabled and depending on the crowd I can change them to blue or other more subdued colors to better blend with movies and games. Additionally, I didn’t want to pay $160 for 20′ of Hue strips so I purchased a WiFi enabled Zigbee controller that acts as a Hue controller in disguise paired with $20 of LED strips. This allows me full control on the set up.

I’ll save my IoT integrations for another post but a future Rasberry Pi project will be connecting all my lights to an Adafruit RGB sensor aimed at the TV. By doing this, I can have all my Hue lights dynamically change color with whatever the primary color of the TV is. Paired with Android Things this could even be activated by asking Google Home to “activate movie mode.”

Excessive? Absolutely. Fun and Incredibly Entertaining? YES!

Please reach out with any thoughts and if you’re in the market for your own killer set up, let me know! I love talking over elements and finding the best bang for your dollar.