Advice on a new AV setup?

Posted by: David Smith on 02 November 2012

Anyone care to offer some advice?

It’s been a long time since I dabbled with AV (I had one of the original AV1’s linked to Linn Sekrits in the 90’s). We’ve decided to build a dedicated AV room in the loft (room will be 7m by 4m) and i’m wondering about what to do from a speaker/processor perspective.

Current system is 555/552/135’s and SBL’s (plus a sondek/superline/supercap for vinyl), and i’ve ‘collected’ 3x145’s along the way. Will be looking for new front speakers, processor, 2 more channels of amplification, new DVD and a 60”+ flatscreen.

Budget is about 10-15k, and wifey would like to go for in wall speakers if possible. I’d like to go for a 7.1 system as this is my chance to go to town. Anyone tried the B&W or similar in wall speakers, or what else would you suggest given budget and WAF constraints? Is an AV/2 still viable or should I look elsewhere? What DVD players would you recommend given the budget constraints above?

All comments gratefully received (and sensible ones considered!)

Dave

Posted on: 03 November 2012 by pjl2

Dave,

I Had a full A/V set-up a few years back, integrated with my Naim system (CDS3/XPS2 for music) fronted with a DVD5/AV2, though I've now disposed of it. I can't advise much on what's available today because I haven't really kept up, but in your position I would be buying a few magazines and chatting to dealers to get some preliminary ideas.

Just a few observations from my own experience which I hope may be useful -

I would avoid the AV2. It did sound excellent with Naim amplification (as you would expect) but it was "buggy" and is in any case discontinued and well out of date. For those that already own one and are happy that's fine, but IMO to buy one now just doesn't make any sense at all, unless maybe you can pick one up at a give-away price - but I still wouldn't bother.

In my experience you don't need to spend mega-bucks on a DVD/Blu ray player and processor/surround amplification in order to get excellent results that would easily satisfy most people. It is a much less demanding and critical application than a music system. After the DVD5/AV2 I bought a Pioneer DVD player (which I still use) and a Sony surround receiver, total cost around £400, and they gave superb results at less than a tenth of the cost of the Naim solution.

I really would go for a projector rather than a large screen TV. In a dedicated room this is more feasable as obviously the room needs to be blacked-out. If you intend watching a lot of TV then you may want a TV as well, but for movies a projector and cinema screen are IMO on a different level completely. The experience is just so much more like being at a commercial cinema - it is fantastic. This is easily the most important factor that will make or break the whole experience in my view. If you have the luxury of a dedicated room to play with then it seems a crying shame not to go for a projector.

Hope these observations may help - food for thought at least.

Best of luck,

Peter

Posted on: 03 November 2012 by Mr Underhill

Hi David,

In a dedicated room I would agree with Peter and think in terms of projection, I would see what you can borrow to get a feel. When I was looking at this a number of years ago the split was between DLP and LCD - and some people had real issues with DLP.

Is the AV2 a possible purchase, I would say yes, as it is still the most musical processor I have heard ...and will be supported by Naim.

That said it must be worth listening to the likes of Onkyo et al.

I have almost changed from the AV2 over the last couple of years to get HDMI switching, HD codecs and DLNA.

The big issue you face is the centre channel - and I suppose this comes down to budget. Perhaps a 135 for the centre and 250 for the rears?

But what centre channel speaker? A lone SBL?? But then that may not handle vocals well.

Trying to get a matching non-dedicated centre channel speaker for an existing pair can be a real bugger.

My automatic suggesting is always to start out by trying a simple phantom. This is unlikely to float your boat, but if it does great.

If you are unhappy with that solution at least you then have a baseline against which to shoot.

In my case I use Living Voice Auditorium IIs, and my centre is a Skibo centre - and they match really well, but I went through a number of speakers before I lucked onto this solution. A non-matching centre can REALLY pull you out of a film.

Before you go for the 7.1 I'd go have a decent demo. I have to say that I watch 85% of my movies in glorious 1.1; yep, mono + sub, and it works really well. I only pull out the stops for movies that really benefit from the muscle - Lucas Films; James Cameron; Marvel; ...etc.

I know, I have fallen from the true faith!

At the least this should be a fun process.

As an aside I have now ripped all my DVD which are available to stream around the house, which thy are.

If you haven't considered it I would use this opportunity to put a LAN into the house and wire up the AV suite, even if you don't want to use this now you probably will within the next three years.