holtrp

I have owned three different Emo XPA series amps and never had a problem with them. Sure, you can spend 3, 4 even 5 times as much money for a Classe, Mark Levinson or Mcintosh amp, but dollar for dollar, Emotiva are the best amps on the market. Period. With my current setup, my ears will bleed and my head will explode before the amps give up.

XBMC Crystalbuntu up and running on my external. Still lots of work to do.

I scooped up a WD 2TB external for $130 yesterday at Best Buy and right now I am handbrak'ing my last DVD. The external should work for quite a while as I am not going to start ripping my BD discs just yet. The 2TB drive will hook into the airport extreme for time machine backup and also work as the external storage for XBMC. I installed a Crystal HD card in the ATV1 this week and have been playing around with it. The ATV1 really seemed to stutter when playing back HD MKV containers, but is now working great. I will probably install Crystalbuntu as it sounds like it will speed up XBMC performance on ATV1, even though I am really not looking forward to dealing with Linux. It will be nice having all my movies and lossless music on XBMC.

Check out http://www.russound.com/ We had speakers in the garage, master bedroom, master bath and back deck at our last house, all with independent volume controls run off the second zone of the Denon in our last home. Apple TV with an iPhone for a remote made this set up a lot of fun.

If you have a big room, do yourself a favor and do not skimp on the center channel. It's one of the most important speakers for HT. The RC-52 has never impressed me. The RC-62 is a much better speaker IMO. With that said, I did a lot of side by side testing between the RS-62 and RS-52 when I bought and could not notice any difference in sound quality in the surrounds. IMHO, you can certainly save some money in the surround department as these speakers just don't get much of a workout.

Does anyone have any experience with whole home power conditioners? We moved into a new house about 1 year ago. I have cheap surge protection on all of my HT equipment, but recently the motherboard on our refrigerator burned up. The repair guy said it was likely from a power surge. He said this area has a lot of problems with power surges and overall power quality. Some of the stuff on the internet seems to make some pretty fantastic and questionable claims (Save 25% off your monthly electric bill!!! Wow Wow WOW!!!). However, my refrigerator repair guy seems pretty intelligent and has installed some of this stuff in his home to corral some of his electrical problems. Just wondering if anyone has any experience in this area. We are in a fairly remote subdivision, but we haven't had any serious problems with our power outside of a few outages and now the refrigerator.

Definitely check out the used market on Audiogon / Craigslist / Ebay / Emotiva forums / Klipsch forum Garage Sale section. Klipsch speakers have a very robust secondary market and it doesn't make sense to pay full price most of the time. If you are patient, you can build an amazing system for half price or better. If you do decide to buy new, never pay full price. Find the lowest internet price and haggle with your dealer. Also, make sure you keep the original boxes / owners manuals / receipts as this will help with resale if / when you want to upgrade.

I am with Youthman. I upgraded from Paradigm monitors to RF-83's and RC-64 centers in a similar sized room. If you really want that deep, rumbling HT experience, make sure to budget ~$1500 - $2000 for a sub or two.

NP. Forgot to mention. Black Hawk Down - BluRay

Sub is crossed over at 80Hz. I have found this to be the best all around setting for my tastes. Seems like I can go +/- 10Hz either direction with very subtle changes in performance, but generally if I go higher, the bass gets muddy and if I go lower there is a gap.

I like Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds Live at Radio City Music Hall on BD using the Dolby True HD. The mix is absolutely phenomenal and I think the set list is the best Dave & Tim show you could hope for. As for video, this disc also has some pretty fantastic black levels and is worth checking out. It gets rave reviews over at blu-ray.com. I ended up using this disc when checking out TV's a few years ago before I bought. Honorable mention goes to Star Wars Blu-Ray, Saving Private Ryan Blu-Ray and War Of The Worlds Blu-Ray.

We had a tray ceiling in our living room / HT room in our last home. Luckily we had some pretty serious carpet and the room was open to a kitchen and entry way on two sides, so the reflections were not that bad. The listening position was slightly behind and outside the tray and it seemed to work out alright. I remember it seemed like when you listened directly under the tray or towards the front of the room facing the rear, you could really hear some strange reflections which I attributed to the tray ceiling. You are on the right track, keep experimenting with speaker placement, listening position and different source material for a while. IMO, I would only recommend getting into bass traps / absorption panels / QRD diffusion panels and other acoustic treatments after you have done some serious testing and fully understand exactly what you are trying to fix in your room.

I was never a huge fan of Audyssey. Lots of people on the web made it sound like Audyssey made a night / day difference, but I never thought it was all that great of an improvement. I always went back in and adjusted everything manually to my liking. My RS-52 I's are set at 80 Hz and I think they sound just fine. What sort of listening do you do? I think most media that has a surround sound source is inherently mixed with small speakers in mind, thus I don't think you would be missing out on much below ~80hz unless you were listening to lots of 5 channel stereo or something. Also, keep in mind the 62ii have a rated frequency response from 50Hz - 24KHz, which I assume is handled by an internal passive crossover, so anything 'full range' below 50Hz is lost anyway. Play around with it and see what you think. I have found speak placement for surrounds is the biggest factor affecting performance. Anywhere from 90° - 110° to the sides of the listening position and 1'-2' above ear level is my preferred location. If it does anything, I would think Audyssey would really help you smooth out the peaks and troughs in your room and help it sound more natural. I have always had pretty good luck with neutral sounding rooms that don' need much help, but if you think you are really getting some strange reflections / standing waves that are affecting performance, check out http://www.realtraps.com/ I have never bought from them but they have some good information about room acoustics on there site. Good luck

Fan noise sucks. At our new house, I am actual getting 65 db out of my furnace cold air return vent that drives me insane. I get that powerful vacuum sound out of that register and it is plumbed right into my listening area. Cutting a hole in the wall directly out of the utility room and moving it won't be such a chore but it will likely have a negative affect on our basement heating. I wonder if anyone has ever done anything about that sort of fan noise? Your story reminds me why I am no longer a PC guy. LOL!

Some would say "You pay for what you get". I for one would never pay full retail for one, as you can generally pick them up on the used market for 1/2 price or better. Assuming you did buy a JL amp / sub and built a cabinet, you still wouldn't be 'there'. The fathoms are packed with features that you can't put together in your garage. I have never heard the SVS, but have also heard very good things about them. For my money, JL or Velodyne is the only place I will invest in subs. A good sub should play much louder than you ever would want to listen. Every sub I have owned or listened to, I ended up turning up the gain or volume, generally to the point that it would sometimes distort at dynamic peaks. The JL fathom 113 is the only sub I have ever had where 95% of the time the volume of the sub itself and the E.L.F. boost isn't turned up AT ALL. And then when you do turn it up, it is incredibly loud but still doesn't distort. The sub is amazingly accurate for both music and HT applications, something that can't be said for under powered, ported (tuned) cabinet subs. However, all of this is pure personal preference. To me, bass and a good sub is far and away the most important feature to any HT or stereo system, but I am sure that isn't the case for everyone. ousig is absolutely right, for $1500, you should have no problem getting a good sub to suit your needs.

$1500??? If your listening area isn't huge, here is your sub!!! http://app.audiogon.com/listings/jl-audio-f110-gloss-black--14 http://www.jlaudio.com/f110-gloss-home-audio-fathom-powered-subwoofers-96107 One reviewer writes of his JL f110s "I will live with these until the end of time" - LOL! Outside of Velodyne, I don't think you'll find a better sub on the market than JL. Or even better, if you could scratch together another $350, Audiogon has a f113 for sale for $1850, which is an absolute steal.

I hate fan noise, that is what doomed my PS3. I even tucked it away in a media closet and it was still too loud, plus it would turn into a fire hazard. Found an interesting thread over at XBMC talking about unRaid servers vs Synology http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=119851. Sounds like the write speed for some unRaid users is a tad slower, but you get much more unRaid for your money. I am still not sure what I want to do yet. We need back up for an all OS X / iOS household, plus a place to store / stream media. I am thinking a Raid 1 or 5 Synology 12TB setup would suit our needs.

How big is your listening area? Looking at the rest of your system, I think you might be a little disappointed with this SVS setup. I have a Velodyne SPL 1200R that is similar to that SVS. From the SVS website: "Perfect for college dorms, apartments and small home theaters, the SB12-NSD will satisfy your craving" which is pretty much it. I think my Velo has more amp, but it sounds pretty darn good, especially in a smaller room. But you don't really have a small home theater. you have a full RF set up. Have you looked at the Klipsch RT-12D? I got to demo one in my house after I got my RF-83s and was pretty impressed. I have read good things about Epik also.

I am very impressed with XBMC also. I really enjoy all the skins and features - plus, you can't beat the price! I think anyone that likes to tinker would love XBMC. I am considering getting the 70015 Broadcom Crystal HD card and switching to Crystalbuntu on my ATV1 as it sounds like it runs well at the XBMC forums. I can wait a while before I need to build a dedicated linux machine. As long as I can hook up an external 2TB drive, I think I am going to take the plunge.

That is awesome. I get around 12Mbs for transfers on my network. I am a real novice when it come to networking, but if you get a gig router, do you need to replace network cards in your computers?

I think you should try it both ways and decide. Even if you have to go somewhat behind the listening position near ear level, I still prefer the surround at this position rather than from above. Speakers mounted near the ceiling in a home theater always sound off balance to me. Then if it gets too far behind, like on a rear wall for a 5.X system, the surround just seems to disappear altogether. http://www.thx.com/consumer/home-entertainment/home-theater/surround-sound-speaker-set-up/ http://www.soundoctor.com/surround.htm

From a function-over-form perspective, as long as the voice coil isn't damaged and there is no noticeable difference in sound quality, save your money. The grill can hide it anyway. Since you are going to replace it, I don't know for sure what you'll find when you get into the cabinet. Be very careful with the screws, use a properly sized philips head as you don't want to strip anything. I don't know if the speaker wires are connected to the speaker with slip on terminals or solder. If they are soldered, make sure to use a heat sink and alligator clips when soldering them back on.

Nice Youthman, All this time I thought that curtain was just for ambiance! Consider mounting on the sides, islander. I had some in ceiling speakers at our old house and the surround from that height was certainly a weak link. I think ear level or up to two feet above on the 90° or slightly behind listening position is optimal for 5.X surround. To my ears, even with dipoles, I prefer the sound on the sides opposed to mounted on the back wall.

Interesting thread. We recently picked up a new ATV3 for the 1080p and Airplay / iTunes match compatibility. We also recently got rid of our digital television service so I went ahead and jailbroke the ATV1 and installed ATV flash "firecore" software on it to take advantage of our empty HDMI port. I have been playing around with XBMC and have to say for $40 worth of software it makes for quite a impressive media server. The customization features are almost limitless and it is well worth a look for anyone building a network media server IMHO. Obviously, running on a ATV1, it is extremely limited by the processing power, storage capacity and cumbersome interface, but it certainly has breathed new life into my ATV1 for a lossless music player, DVD / 'shared' media player. I think the obvious next step to realize XBMC''s full potential is to get a custom Linux machine. Anyone else have experience with XBMC?

I purchased a used JL f113 fathom for $2200 off Audiogon a few years back and it has been without a doubt the best home theater money I have ever spent. Just the other day, my mother was visiting from out of state and mistakenly turned on the HT downstairs with the volume cranked. I don't know what was playing, but for a second I was sure we were in the middle of an earthquake. It continues to impress me every time I use it. Having enough woofer for your tastes is the cornerstone to a good HT in my opinion and you'll get way more woof for your buck on the used market. That being said, nowadays, there are excellent subs on the market in just about every price point. The best advice I can offer is to take your time and demo as many subs in your home with your equipment, your movies and your settings as possible before buying. Some subs get great reviews, but won't sound good in your room or to your ear. Try a ported sub, a sub with a passive radiator and a sealed sub for starters. I used to have a 15 year old KSW-200 from high school that I thought ran circles around many of the mid-tier subs on the market today, I should have never gotten rid of it. I can't stress enough how much personal preference come into picking a sub. Hope this helps.