Hmm, it appears the pic of mine isn't current...

Video:

Sharp Aquos 42", 1080p goodness

Oppo DV-981HD

Audio:

Magnepan MG-IIB

QSC CX902

QSC Powerlight 1.0HV

DCX2496

Behringer T1953 preamp (needs to be replaced)

MAQ 15, sealed

i love the magnepans...i was actually looking at some today...not looking to buy just looking at them...too broke to buy anything now

lol

Okay, so I got a pretty interesting setup. Heres me on my bicycle (its got a 40cc brushcutter engine on it!) crusin around my 'hood, when I spot a stack of stuff on the curb. Pull up to the curb... "Hey, this is audio equipment!" "Hmm..."

Grab the Harman Kardon TU911 FM tuner, cruise back to my garage, plug it it.... and.... it works! Motor on back to the pile of stuff, grab one of the Harman Kardon PM645Vxi Amps. That worked too! So I ran back, grabbed the other PM645Vxi (with power cord lopped off o.O), and made another trip for the half working Sony tape deck. (I could only carry one component under my arm at at time, and still ride my bike)

So, I get everything cleaned up, and rip the speakers off my old sony boombox. Everything works, so I set it up in a corner of my room with the speakers. "Sounds pretty good to me..."

So, one day, I find my self at Goodwill Thrift Store. Looking though the stack of electronics... I spot a CD changer. 100 disc Sony model. Test it out in-store... doesn't work. Head over to the stack of speakers and I find a pair of Kenwood JL-505 3-Way, 8 Ohm, 140W Speakers. $30! Okay, price sounds good, so I buy them, throw em in the trunk of our Minivan, and head to RadioShack for some RCA interconnects and 16 Gauge Speaker Wire. I ended up spending $50 on all of that.

My stack of junk is still looking a little empty, so I go to the best place to shop for budget electronics... Goodwill!

This time, I leave with a 5 Disc Kenwood CD changer. Nothing fancy, but something to play CDs on. A second trip would net me a JVC 2 Deck Cassette Player. I had to do a little soldering trickery to the tape detection microswitch on the 1st deck, because it wouldn't detect a tape present, and wouldn't play. Soldering the contacts to short makes it think theres always a tape, good enough for my purposes.

Then came a Audio Technica ATPL120 turntable. Not a real Hi-Fi model, but good price, and plays 78's too!

I've always loved bass.... so I broke the bank and bought the 90 pound beast, the 15" Dayton Audio Titanic MkIII 1000W Subwoofer from Parts Express. Got that hooked up to the "Tape Output B" on my amp. This left me with MASSIVE, FLOOR SHAKING, WINDOW RATTLEING, PARENT ANNOYING bass, but subwoofer levels had to be controlled on the sub, because the Tape Out is constant level, as you probably know. (Note: The Dayton Audio sub is very good, and I love it!)

Cruising down the aisles of WalMart one day brings me to an interesting block of translucent plastic that apparently allows you to add a amplifier to your stock car system! Now me, being the self proclaimed "King of Ghetto", I had to get this. This would allow me to use my awesome H/K amp with my awesome sub, and all would work harmoniously, achieving nirvana. Or my amp would melt. Either way, it was worth a shot.

15 minutes and some ghettoness later, I reveled in the glory of being able to blend bass and... the other stuff... all with one knob! But of course this meant that I would not be able to crank the bass as I wanted to, as turning the BASS knob on the amp would boost the bass to the 3-ways, which being of unknown age, with paper surrounds, might cause some severe damage to my... $30 speakers. So... while cruising the aisles of Best Buy, I recalled that "Bass Blockers" or "Speaker Savers" were designed just for the purpose of blocking bass, and would do exactly as I wanted! So I picked up a set of those, and went home. 30 minutes, some solder, heatshrink, and bathroom break later, I had the Bass Blockers nicely soldered and heatshrunk into my system, looking quite professional.

The first thing to do was to test it out. I set the amp to Speaker A and played some of my favorite bass tunes. Hm... No bass here! Excellent. Turn the knob to Speaker A+B, and what do we get? BASS! Sweet.

So I probably droned on there... But thats the story of my low budget home audio install. All together, its cost me around maybe $950 USD. Not bad for a system of this magnitude.

Component List:

2 x Harman Kardon PM645Vxi, 60w/ch, 4 ohm stable (The other one, which I used an old microwave's power cord to replace lopped off cord, I use it to take places to crank the tunes and as a backup, if the first one should die)

1 x Harman Kardon TU911 AM/FM Tuner, 16 Presets, Digital Tuner, makes a loud popping noise when changing frequencys (Also has an interesting ribbon cable coming out of the rear soldered to the preset buttons, looks like someone retrofitted a remote of some sort.

1 x Kenwood DPR895 5 Disc Changer, nothing really special about it, except the output voltage is extremely high, compared to the other equipment.

1 x Audio Technica AT-PL120 Pro Turntable, has the AT DJ needle, +/- 10/20% Pitch, Forward/Reverse, Direct Drive, 33/45/78

1 x Parts Express Dayon Audio Titanic MkIII 15" Sub, 1000W @ 4 ohms

1 x TrippLite 10 Outlet Home Theater Surge Suppressor/Noise Filter, 5700 Joules, lots of LEDs to show line voltage, amperage use, and some other stuff. Mmm, LEDs.

2 x Kenwood JL-505 3-way. 140W, 8-ohm speakers

1 x JVC Two Deck Cassette Player. Normal/High speed dub, soft touch controls, selectable NR, nothing real special

If you know anything about my equipment that I might not know, like when it was made, how much it cost, if it was high/mid/low end equipment at it's time, let me know, because most of this stuff came from unknown sources. I have the manuals for the amp, radio, and CD changer though.

Any questions, let me know too!

Thanks for taking the time to read all of this! Heres a picture of the stuff. Don't mind all the toys n bits on the stereo. Its just there to liven up the set. Also, notice I have everything above the amp propped on bottle caps to promote ventilation.

The Dayton has a high level input on the plate amp, yes?

Just use that instead of a tape loop...

The lower models Titanics have a High level input, however on the 15" model, only a RCA L/R or LFE input are there.

I'm not as cool. I didn't DIY anything yet.... wait yes the heck I did!!!

I made my own HI-Fi- speaker wire by braiding cat 6 cable. Copper is copper is copper, but it blocks some noise from other power cords that are running close to them compaired to the regular wire.

It's 6 wires braided 2x2x2

It was more so I could save some cash, I got the box for 60 bucks on sale at a hardware store and i still have some left over.

I have an integra receiver

I have a FP from Epson. It's an older powerlite, but it's awesome to me. I'm still in the awe factor.

I also have Energy RC 50's (may upgrade to the 70's but i'm happy now) for Land R the LCR and RC10's for the rear.

My sub is a velodyne 12". I paid 250 for it floor model and it does the trick ATM when i move into what ever home I get into next I will change it up and do a huge DIY set up.

I'm thinking maybe 4 HF dayton 15"s or a pair of SDX 15s from CSS

I have also been thinking about dual 18" q's but...

It will depend on the room size I guess. I just want it to go looooow and lethal.

Those, along with a relatively loud KLH 12" Powered sub, and a generic Pioneer 5.1 receiver.

Mmm, KEFs...hope they get better treatment than the Ipod

Mmm, KEFs...hope they get better treatment than the Ipod

They're mint condition, which is surprising since i bought them at good will for $9.98.

Nice KEF monitors. A steal at $9.98.

Denon AVR-3808

Paradigm CC-350

Paradigm Monitor 7's front / 3's rear

Homemade DD sub with Marantz MA700 monoblock amp

Mitsubishi 52" DLP

Pictures didn't turn out too great.

This thread makes me jealous.

How do you post images on this site? Like right off my HD?

Edited April 21, 200817 yr by MikeS

Here is my setup last spring, I added a 26" Widescreen LCD HDTV instead of the chitty computer monitor.

[img=http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e24/xazax632/OBRSD65baffle001.jpg]

This is what it looked like 3 months ago. Since this, I have replaced the old rockford Fosgate 8" woofer with 2 10" interfire IFB, I have yet to enclose and power them. When I do power them, I will be using 2x 12, or 15" Passive radiators, in 4cu".

The PG RSD's have gone into my car, and I am doing away with the OB alingment, in favor for simple sealed.

After our 3rd roommate moved out I finally got to realize my dream and have a dedicated HT room. Unfortunately only a couple months later another guy moved in, so I had to move all my stuff back downstairs to the living room. Then less than 2 months later that guy moved out, but I have yet to move it back into that room because it's had to be used for furniture storage and plus we may be moving out of this townhouse sometime soon so it would just be extra effort to move it all up and down the stairs again. and my sub box is very unlight.

Equipment:

Pioneer Receiver, forget the model number and too lazy to go look.

LCR- 8" Dayton Reference, 6" Dayton reference, I think 1" Dayton classic tweet. The 8" is in 1 cube tuned to I think 50 hz, 6" is sealed, maybe .25 cubes, I forget.

Surrounds- 2x 7" Vifa MG and Peerless soft dome tweet (they used to be my mains in 2 channel, which is why they're kinda overbuilt). Each box is 1 cube tuned to 65 or something like that

Subs- 2x Crossfire BMF 12's powered by 500 watt plate amp. I think they're in 5 cubes tuned to 25 hz.

Sorry for the grainy pics. the LR have an aeroport on the bottom and the surrounds use a slot port on the bottom. The sub box is underneath the TV.

Nevermind the couch, my grandma was getting new furniture and being the poor college student I was decided to pick it up. It's probably 30 years old. Beats the old and worn out loveseat I had. Maybe I should get a cover for it someday........

These were all really my first ventures into HT and I decided to just dive right in. I'm sure I made some mistakes to stay cheap (like buying premade crossovers) or for whatever reason I was thinking that day (buying 6" for the mids up front instead of something smaller, but I went by the frequency response graphs and for some reason the 6" looked better), but I think it sounds spectacular and can get loud as hell. Sometimes my roommate likes to come home drunk and blast it, waking me up. My room is upstairs from the setup and even with the door closed it sounds like there is a concert in my room. and my body can still feel the bass. Now I just need a room worthy of it again. Our living room has a nice tv, 50" LCD, but I'm not about to hang my 50+ lb center channel above it. So unfortunately we only have 4.1 in there right now, and not having the center channel really messes it up for movies. It just sounds so much better and images so much better. That room is very oddly shaped, so the left surround actually has to be in front of the listener, amongst other things. Ugh. I need a basement.

Edited May 18, 200817 yr by KU40

Never saw this thread but I guess I will contribute.

This first pic is of my bedroom. Some things have changed around a bit, new computer and I have a denon Avr-587 isntead of that antique thing that sound better than the denon.

Denon AVr 587

Insignia speakers from BB

AKG K701 w/ corda headfive

42" sony grand Wega

Cheapy Pioneer DVD player before all included progressive scan

and this is the very plain home theater. All of this stuff minus the tv used to be in my old bedroom and it sounded a lot better than in this big room.

B&W 805

B&W HTM2

B&W 601s3

SVS 20-39 PC+

Denon AvR 3803

Denon DVD 1600

Monster power thing (can't remember the number but probably money not so well spent)

Samsung 50" dlp (don't know number)

Dish network box is gone now

Here is mine

no pics yet but my setup consist of

samsung hpt5054 plasma

denon avr-987

athena ws100 front lr

infinity tss750 5.1 system

htpc w/ hddvd&bluray

I posted a pic, but didn't list the gear.

1989 LaScala's, with Crites tweeters and K33E replacement woofers. K55V midhorn drivers, with K401 horns. Modified crossover networks, using a combination of Jantzen and Bennic caps.

I need to finish them....

Homebrew 2A3 SET stereo amp.

Modified Magnavox single-ended 6BQ5 console amp.

Harmon Kardon 330B receiver.

Two SVS 16/46 CS series passive subwoofers, with a Audio Control PCA with two-way active crossover, and powered by a ol' wore out NAD power envelope amplifier.

A older Pioneer CDP. It actually was a higher end unit back in the day.

And a Lambda DC tube power supply.....every stereo needs one of those.....

Well, that was the configuration that week.....I've been using a 50 year old Japanese transcription turntable the last few weeks.

this weekend I'm listening to "Corntecs". Klipsch Cornwalls flipped over with the midhorn and tweeter disabled. And Altec 415A Biflex woofers mounted in them.

The 415A doesn't sound too bad at all. Deep strong bass and midbass, with excellent midrange. A little rolled-off on top, but not that bad. A helper tweeter capped off high adds some extra "air".

I dunno...I still favor my B&C 12CXB's I think.....I need to compare.....

B&C 12CXB coaxial in a 3.98 foot cabinet tuned to 46Hz, with 2.75-3 pounds of polyfil.

Edited June 17, 200817 yr by MikeS

Don't think i ever posted in here.

Yamaha HTR-5890

Windows Vista Ultimate HTPC

Cheap RCA DVD player

Dayton 1000 watt plate amp

Front mains are home built line arrays. 16 NSB mids and 12 dayton .75" tweeters in each.

Center is home built using 4 TB W4-616SA and a Dayton PT2C-8 Planar Tweeter

Rears are cheap Sonys I have had for years.

Sub(kind of pictured in first pic, top right) is 8x 15" RF HE in an attic IB manifold.

Philips 42" Ambilight Plasma

Those, along with a relatively loud KLH 12" Powered sub, and a generic Pioneer 5.1 receiver.

do i spy a C mafakin B on that desk

heres an older pic b4 i got a martin logan fresca center... and the sub is a rsw-12 klipsch sounds awesome for movies... lots of power and gets loud/low