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Post by GeddyLeePierce on May 18, 2019 5:19:22 GMT
I have a pretty heavy Yamaha avr and I like it a lot. It replaced an even heavier (and more expensive) Sunfire unit in a 5.1 theater setup and it sounds just as good, if not better.
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bradman
Better than Steve
Posts: 5,140
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Post by bradman on May 18, 2019 6:46:43 GMT
I had a mid-fi Yammy for years, it was a workhorse. Finally replaced it for 4K/HDR capabilities.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2019 13:38:32 GMT
Realistic was good stuff back in the day. My grandparents first VCR was a Realistic, bought maybe in 1981 or 1982? They only upgraded later when they needed a small one as this original was a monster in size. I ended up with it and last time I tried it a few years ago just for the heck of it it still worked. I finally had to rid of it because of space and storage but damn, that thing was a tank!
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Post by sₚⲁᵣₖydₒg on May 18, 2019 14:07:07 GMT
Yeah, the stores with Magnolia sections have a good selection of all the major brands. Prices suck though. Go there, listen to them, whatever then go buy one on sale at Fry's. We bought a Samsung Q6F TV from their Magnolia section last month. They price-matched Amazon without us even asking and saved us a few hundred dollars. Now I just need to buy a few of them there $3000 HDMI cables.
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bradman
Better than Steve
Posts: 5,140
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Post by bradman on May 18, 2019 15:27:13 GMT
Yeah, they're aggressive on price, now. Got my Sony 900e and X800 there for as cheap as online.
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Post by essayceedee on May 18, 2019 19:12:14 GMT
Pioneer, especially the Elite line, was the bee's knees. Pioneer and the original Adcom (not the crap they stamp the Adcom name on today) were the best bang for the buck, bar none. Every piece of Pioneer equipment I ever owned was rock solid. The stuff just never stopped working. I am talking of course about the original Pioneer company. Then it was sadly sold off piecemeal to Sharp and then eventually onto Onkyo. I had terrible experiences with both Sony ES and Denon. Stuff that cost that much shouldn't fizzle out in two years or less, which they both did. It was a nightmare dealing with warranty repair service, and the replacements I finally forced out of them also broke down within a year or two. After that I was through with Sony and Denon/Marantz forever. Weight can still *maybe* be a possible indication of build quality of Class A and AB amps, but much less so today than in the past. I have seen components branded Sony and Pioneer (the shitty post-Pioneer, Onkyo Pioneer, that is) with metal plates inserted into the bottom solely to add weight to the thing in order to make it seem more solid than it actually is, so buyer beware. And with the increasingly more common Class D amps and switching mode power supplies, weight doesn't mean a damn thing any longer. Don't discount Pioneer's class D amps. They've done an amazing job with them. The receiver I have (SC-LX701) has 9 channels of class D amplification. It's powerful as hell and even at high volume the chassis is cool to the touch. The Onkyo takeover didn't change the quality of the top end Elite products.
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Post by essayceedee on May 18, 2019 21:10:54 GMT
Hell yeah, overkill is where it's at if you're going to do surround sound. I love it.
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Post by essayceedee on May 18, 2019 21:59:08 GMT
So you really have a 9 speaker set up?? Atmos or whatever they call it? What does a 2 channel source sound like on that? It probably sounds like shit. I haven't tried. I have two Atmos height speakers and two rear surrounds, so I can switch between Atmos and 7.1 or just run all of them. It's insane but fun.
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bradman
Better than Steve
Posts: 5,140
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Post by bradman on May 18, 2019 23:24:24 GMT
7.2 here, not gonna do Atmos, but yeah, for TV, movies and games it's the shiz.
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Post by sₚⲁᵣₖydₒg on May 18, 2019 23:43:43 GMT
Speaking of Yamaha, I have a 12 year old Yamaha RX-V1800 7-channel 130 W RMS/channel that I got used on eBay from some firefighter who was a great guy to deal with. It IS built like a tank, sounds wonderful and is heavy as fuck - 38 lbs. He threw in a bluetooth transmitter and 2 extra remotes. I really love it but it had a steep learning curve. I have a 7 speaker Polk setup. It replaces my 20 year old still-functioning huge Yamaha RX-V995 which has no HDMI capability. Anybody wanna buy it CHEAP? It kicks ass, very powerful and clean. Check out that remote!!
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Post by essayceedee on May 19, 2019 0:13:58 GMT
Nice! All of my speakers are Polk too, except for the SVS sub. I think I paid less than $500 total for 9 of them over the last few years.
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Post by essayceedee on May 19, 2019 0:38:49 GMT
Unless I'm reading the specs wrong, it looks like it only goes down to 50 Hz. To me, if it can't go down to at least 30 Hz, it's not really worth the effort.
I know their Monolith subs are very highly regarded.
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Post by sₚⲁᵣₖydₒg on May 19, 2019 15:21:05 GMT
Nice! All of my speakers are Polk too, except for the SVS sub. I think I paid less than $500 total for 9 of them over the last few years. Polk Audio Direct is the authorized eBay store where I got most of my speakers which looked and performed like new. Mainly refurbished, often at least 50% off and always free shipping. I had one arrive damaged and they took care of it immediately with no hassle.
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Post by essayceedee on May 19, 2019 17:01:37 GMT
Absolutely. Newegg is worth checking now and then too. I have Monitors all the way around: 60’s in front, CS1 center, 40’s for surrounds, 30’s for height and a pair of 35B for rear surrounds. All have the exact same tweeters and woofers so the timbral matching is perfect.
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Post by krabapple on May 20, 2019 21:59:59 GMT
I know that krabapple has a set up like that. He has spent a lot of time and effort to come up with a method of running 2 channel through all 9 (or is it more?) speakers that he says yields great results. I have no idea how he does it with the DSP and such, but you may want to confer with him if you want to try something like that. I trust his judgment. I certainly am not the one to ask. I guess I have circled back to where I started, more or less. It gradually, inescapably dawned on me that the most engaging set ups I ever had were the simplest, unabashedly "incorrect" methods — things like the ghetto blaster I had when I was 14 or when the receiver fizzled out and the only recourse I had was to run everything through a guitar/keyboard amp. It seems like the more I invested my time and money into "high end" stuff, the less fun and more tedious it all became for me. I don't know why that is the case. For whatever reason, the "better" and more complicated the set up became, the less I even felt like listening to music. And so I didn't. It doesn't really make sense to me if I think about it objectively, but that's what it was. Nah, I stopped at 5.2 (5 speakers, 2 subs). It's 99.9% for music listening , I don't need 'height channels' for that. I do 'audiophile' surround on the cheap. Speakers are 5 Behringer 'Truth' passive monitors on stands. You used to be able to get them at big discounts, like $200/pair. Nowadays, I don't know. I recently saw a great sale going at Guitar Center for JBL monitors, so I'm thinking about those. (JBL is the kind of innovative manufacturer that Behringer gets accused of ripping off. ;> ) The subs are recent swap-ins to replace a single kit-built 15" Dayton sub from Parts Express (no longer available -- subwoofer kits seems to have vanished almost completely). They are that same Monoprice 12" powered box mentioned above that are another huge fucking bargain at $99 per. They go out of stock regularly, so just wait for them to reappear at Monoprice.com if you want to get one. Or even better (for room acoustic reasons), two. There's no super-fancy DSP in play. Just good old Dolby Pro Logic II (Music mode). It upmixes stereo to 5.1, or 7.1 if that's what you have. DPLII used to be a standard feature on AVRs, but newer ones have dropped it for the 'Dolby Surround Upmixer', which isn't as good to my ears, though it can handle Atmos if that's your setup. DTS Neo / Neural / whatever, a common rival upmixer, sounds boring to me, but some prefer it.
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