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Spent a bit of time with initial setup of my audio gear and TV audio in the basement today. TV audio is totally separate using the simple "Easy Button" Sonos ARC soundbar + sub. Turn ON the TV and it just works with no fiddling around - for the wife, but I'm liking it too.The setup as of March 2021.
Rogue & Yamaha Int. amps. PS Audio NuWave DSD DAC. Sonore microRendu streamer. Tannoy Definition D500 speakers.
Music & Roon Core reside on my Synology NAS in the utility room. Roon Remote on my iPad is mirrored to big screen.
The microRendu streamer & small cableTV box are hidden behind the blu-ray player to the bottom left under the PS Audio DAC.
The small square device with silver trim on the bottom right shelf is a wireless doorbell chime from Honeywell. It rings LOUD
and flashes lights to alert me if anyone is at the front door. Decorating and room treatment? We'll get to that eventually.
Edits: 03/29/21Follow Ups:
.... multi-subwoofer system. One of the best "acoustic treatments" you could invest in, IMO.Audiokinesis' "The Swarm" is the model for such...
Edits: 03/30/21
Looks like a great start. Take some time and enjoy some music. The tweaking and fussing will happen. I just got the mid driver on my old monitors fixed after a long downtime and am throughly enjoying the sound again.Maybe a dose of a little too loud Stevie Ray to light them and you up today.
Gsquared
Edits: 03/30/21 03/30/21
Xcite is a solid company and does good work, I had a friend that worked there for a bit.
How did you know that I used Xcite? Did I mention them or post a photo of their van at some point ??I thought they were good but not great. They knew how to pull cable for what they probably consider to be "standard installs" but I had some specific instructions that they didn't seem to understand and didn't execute. I had to "work around" some of their mistakes later. Fortunately they weren't show stoppers.
Edits: 03/29/21 03/29/21
Don't worry Abe, I wasn't stalking you, jk. In an earlier post you had a photo showing the AV guy coming to the house and his van was clear as day in the photo, being local I recognized them.
With most low volt companies they are not going to be audiophiles. Having previously worked in the industry I know they can get pretty bad with some installs. Xcite at least does a clean job, and comes back to finish, but I understand not doing exactly what you want is frustrating. Also the industry doesn't pay to well so most who are top of their field leave and do their own thing at some point. Xcite once tried to bring me on, but wouldn't even match what I was making at the time doing Comcast head end gigabit upgrades for Arris. The residential just doesn't pay too well. I could go on, but I won't.
nt
That Right Speaker is almost in a corner, the other free-standing.
Not ideal but Tannoys do nicely in corners and not far from walls. I can always put some treatment in that corner. More toe-in may help as well but it's not sounding bad right now.
Or not.
There should be a lot of "Presence" for you in that room.
Wife is into quilting so we'll probably hang some large quilts on the walls. Not sure how they perform as room treatment but at least the walls won't be bare.
Edits: 03/29/21
Almost any "quilt" will absorb some HF reflection.But (assuming that the quilt is stuffed with fibrous insulation, as most quilts are) a quilt cover made from loosely woven material like burlap will allow for significantly more absorption than a cover made from
I highly recommend ATS Acoustics cloth covered absorption panels. They are easy to mount, are not too expensive, and are available in a wide array of shapes and colors.ATS provides an online calculator for the absorption needs of "typical" rooms. For instance, a typical 10' x 15' x 8' room made from drywall might typically require about ten 2' x 4' x 2" absorption panels to bring room reverb down to an optimal level. (That would be in an mostly empty room devoid of much stuffed furniture or fabrics)
Edits: 03/29/21 03/29/21
Thanks for the tip on ATS Acoustics. I found their website and bookmarked it.
+1 for ATS absorbing panels. I've used their 2x2x2" or 2x3x2" absorbing panels for years. A simple place to start is to place a panel on the wall behind each speaker. I simply hang them like a large print or painting.(eyelet screws and light cabling) Easy to reposition if need be. In regard to quilting, my friend had a quilt custom made to cover his flat screen when he listens to music.
... with the couch close to (or up against) the left side wall. But perhaps it's to late for that ?Long wall placement might provide better + more even tonal balance for both speakers. But in that scenario, you might also have to treat the wall behind the seating position in order to absorb room reflections behind your head.
But hey. You never asked for my permission, did you?
Have fun, whatever you do !
Edits: 03/29/21
The ideal -overall- orientation is how the room is set up now due to flow of traffic to other rooms, window on that 'long' wall, and of course WAF ;-)
The wall behind the sofa is a good 5 or 6 feet behind it.
? walls and corners?
Do the "Clap hands" test for reverb ??
More work to do. I just set up the audio and TV this past weekend.
Now the fun part of optimizing speaker and couch placement and using some room treatments.edit: Switching on the processor also wakes up the monitor (via ARC) and power amp via 12V trigger for simplicity. Roku stick always on.
Edits: 03/29/21
room to dance!
Good for you Abe!
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
Very plain walls?
In my sound room I have at least some food on them!
If art interprets our dreams, the computer executes them in the guise of programs!
Beautiful pics! Abe
where are the CS 2.4 loudspeakers?
The Tannoys actually sound better here as I need more power for the Thiels. I know that with the right amount of power the Thiels are better sounding overall especially in their transparency and imaging but they sound "thin" in this setup due to lack of power.
Edits: 03/29/21
I see. Any plans for different gear to drive the CS 2.4 ?
Lots of plans but not a lot of available cash ;-) Still recovering from the basement finishing costs.
I'm thinking of trying a couple reasonably priced Class D amps again for the Thiels.
And how do you do surround sound? I assume that you prewired for 5.1 or 7.1.
My wife only needs to turn one dial, from TV to CD and back on the preamp. Of course, it's solid state so it's on all the time and the receiver is HDMI triggered and runs the surrounds. That Sonus wold be a great center channel mounted under the way bigger TV.
Great job Abe!
One thing I've learned is that the finish work can be 80% of the job. I'll be curious it looks in 6 months. Who is the decorator?
-Rod
Thanks Rod.There are 2 sets of speaker cable pulled to the wall behind the sofa so we can eventually do true 5.1 but I don't have an AV receiver, maybe later.
The Sonos ARC soundbar has 11 speaker drivers and produces the center and left / right channels and decent bass. DSP decodes surround modes like 5.1 and Dolby Atmos. There's a separate (over Wifi or Ethernet) sub that pairs with the Sonos ARC soundbar to help mainly with deep bass effects. I can optionally purchase a set of rear surrounds for the setup that also pair over Wifi or Ethernet.
While not a full blown HT surround system, the soundbar setup is a significant improvement over the TV speakers and it does decode and produce some level of surround effects.
The gory details or TMI:
The Sonos ARC is named "ARC" because the soundbar features HDMI Audio Return Channel (eARC actually) which means I connect one HDMI cable from the Sonos to the TV's HDMI eARC port and that's it for TV audio. There are other brands that do this as well.
Audio from any other HDMI device attached to the TV like the blu-ray player and cableTV box are automatically routed down from the TV to the Sonos ARC. No need for a separate Toslink, SPDIF, or Aux analog connection to each device with a separate remote for the soundbar. The audio output from the soundbar is controlled with the TV's remote natively (no altering remote codes).
And because the TV also supports HDMI-CEC the attached HDMI devices are recognized by the TV and show up as named source devices. For example, the TV recognized that I attached the cableTV box on HDMI 1. HDMI 1 is now automatically labeled as "Xfinity Comcast HDMI 1". HDMI 2 is labeled as "Sony UBP-X700 HDMI 2". The TV remote will also control the cableTV box w/o altering remote codes. Same for the blu-ray player including basic functions like play, pause, fast forward, back, etc.
But it gets even better. I thought I would need to attach our Amazon Fire Stick over HDMI for Amazon Prime streaming and the AppleTV box over another HDMI for our AppleTV purchases and rentals. I was pleased to learn that the TV has these capabilities built-in in the form of Apps for Amazon Prime and AppleTV.... so I don't need to attach external devices to receive these streaming services. Of course there are several more included Apps like Neflix, Hulu, YouTube, Disney+, HBO Max, etc and many more to be downloaded.
The TV also handles different forms of screen mirroring for Android devices as well a AirPlay2 for Apple devices. Anything on my iPad or Mac can be mirrored to the TV including Roon. [When I mirror Roon to the TV screen, I can have audio from the soundbar system but I direct audio to my DAC in a traditional way instead, and use my 2-ch tube amp and Tannoy speakers].
This is our first "smart TV" as our previous TV is about 10 years old with no "smarts".
Edits: 03/30/21
My earlier Sonos soundbar lacks an HDMI input, which is totally ridiculous. The only way to get a signal from the TV into the Sonos was via optical, which would be fine, except my tv at the time, like many, would only output stereo over the optical! I had to go through all sorts of nonsense with an HDMI deimbedder/adapter to get it to work, all because of their idiotic design decision. This was complained about for years, so I guess they finally decided to fix it in the new model.
I can see why you are delighted with the current setup.
Part of the problem is the evolution of HDMI and its capabilities over the years.... and compatibility among the various HDMI devices on the market for the various HDMI enhancements over time.I am hardly an expert but I did some reading on HDMI and read some soundbar reviews prior to buying the Sonos ARC. If soundbars are the "easy button" of surround sound, the ARC is the "easy button" of soundbars.
The Sonos ARC lacks multiple inputs and sophisticated manual EQ adjustment but setup and basic functionality appear to be rock solid reliable compared to some others I've read about. Speech and bass are clear and the overall sound is excellent. It's a set and forget soundbar - and the TruPlay iPhone App from Sonos does a good job of automating surround tuning during initial setup.
I wanted simple and reliable with excellent sound (for a soundbar anyway) and I'm happy with the Sonos ARC + Sub.
Edits: 03/31/21 03/31/21
Sonos is perfect for its intended purpose. Beautiful design, intuitive software, dead simple to setup and use, no glitches, no hassles (except for the HDMI input in the earlier model).
If only Bluesound could hire Sonos' software designers!!
The older I get, the more I think that "simple is best". Mine is just a Marantz SACD player, Pass Labs INT-250, and Magnepan 3.6s. Sounds as good as it ever has, but a lot simpler than it used to be.
I cannot take my eyes off that Tannoy. Thats how a speaker should look like. Are you planning some indoor plants? Any acoustic wall treatments? All the best.
Bill
I'm not really a room "treatments" kind of guy but we'll clutter it up with something ;-)
I knew you would get there. Project management and execution looks flawless from here.
nt
Ah, the Tannoy D500s. I loved those. They were an important part of my audio journey.
The larger Tannoy D900's would be even better for this room ;-)
I love my Thiel speakers but I don't have the power to drive them right now. The Tannoys require much less power and still sound wonderful.
2nd Note Abe,
it could be a matter of room acoustics resulting in the CS 2.4s sounding "thin"?
I know that you will figure it out. Have fun in the process!
Very nice. Great job. About the size of my whole apartment. All it needs is a rubber plant or two and some Miles and Chet disks. Enjoy it to the max.
"It was zero threat, right from the start, it was zero threat" Alfred E. Neuman
Abe, your room looks great. I envy you.
I dream of an America where a chicken can cross the road without having it's motives questioned.
Probably sounds great for your setup!
But I'm not seeing a Streamer in that rack?
The tiny microRendu and slightly larger cableTV box are hidden behind the Sony blu-ray player. The blu-ray player is barely visible in the lower left of the rack below the DAC.I put the larger Thiel speakers away for now as they require more power than I have at the moment to properly fill the room. The Tannoys are doing a great job.
The little square box to the lower right is a Honeywell wireless doorbell. The chime from the front door is set to sound differently than the remote button in the kitchen. When my wife presses the button, I know there's food upstairs! I'm trained like a dog ;-)
Edits: 03/28/21
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