Home Audio

Well I finally installed home theater sound (Bose's Acoustimass 10) in the new house. In the old house I had my receiver plugged into my old speakers, some old Sony model that were pretty good. I had tried out a Bose VCS-10 center channel speaker but didn't really like the quality so I had returned it. Scott Hayden of Hayden's Harangues is very anti-Bose so I wasn't sure if I could risk his ire and purchase. I had been waffling on whether or not to hire someone to go fully built-in or try running some cabling myself, or try for wireless rear speakers, which are just starting to come around for installations under 100w/channel. I had been looking at orbaudio.com, and their speakers looked cool, but I really wanted to hear something before purchasing. After thinking and searching and calling people for a while we decided to take a jaunt out to see/hear some stuff. We went to Circuit City, which is now another chain I will likely NOT go to much any longer, and spent about 30 minutes or so playing in their speaker room. They had a really cool digital system that lets you switch between various setups. The problem was that it took a few minutes to switch between setups so it was hard to get a full swap completed in a timely fashion to really compare speakers. I looked at some taller Sony speakers, as they were a bit cheaper and I thought I may be able to get away without a subwoofer, as I didn't have one before and it seemed fine to me. I was flipping between Sony and Polk and Infinity, avoiding the Bose due to bias from Hayden. I asked someone to find me a sales rep and they paged to no avail, so I went back to testing on my own. At one juncture I hit a setting that put the rear Bose speakers on and they sounded much better. I tried to flip between Infinity and Bose as I had then decided on smaller rather than larger. A few more minutes of playing around with the speakers and finally some young kid arrived and I explained to him what I wanted to test. He put on all of the Bose equipment and cranked the thing up to -15db. I walked over and lowered it as I wanted to hear fidelity now loudness. I tried to switch to the Infinity speakers and completed the setup and he once again cranked it up. I once again walked over and lowered it. I explained to him that I wanted to quickly flip back and forth as the machine was designed to do. I showed him that Setup A was close to what I wanted and I wanted Setup B and A to flip back and forth. He said: "I don't know how to do that." What he didn't say was: "All I know how to do is make it loud!". I decided I had had enough tomfoolery and walked out of the store. I was somewhat please with the sound of the Bose and since there was a factory outlet close to our new house we went there. I played with the Acoustimass 6, 10, and 15 for a little while, then summoned a sales rep. I explained my setup at home and he suggested the 10. The 15 supports 6.1 as does my receiver but I don't have anyplace for the center back, so I just skipped it. Much nicer service - no attempted upcharging for "MONSTER CABLES - OH YOU GOTTA HAVE MONSTER CABLES THEY ARE JUST THE GREATEST THING EVER, OHHH, OOOOOH" - sorry I slipped into my Sam Kinison voice for a minute there. No upcharging on service programs, just gave me the stuff I wanted, offered factory renewed instead of brand new and in less than 15 minutes in a very casual way I had what I wanted. Hooking them up was a little different than I had anticipated - receiver hooks to the Acoustimaass thing, then the speakers hook to that. Kind of interesting, but generates good sound quality and I can't go above -30db without being told to turn it down. I also managed to run the cables into the basement and back up the back so I can have it on whenever I want - no more dragging cables around like I had to do back in Pittsburgh.