I'm trying to find a HTIB under $500 CDN that delivers the bast bang for my buck...
AudoERA help. I've never owned true surround sound, I want to realize my dream!
AudoERA help. I've never owned true surround sound, I want to realize my dream!
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Best Budget Home Theater?
- Thread starter Deleted member 7777
- Start date
Probably some combination of the receivers here: https://www.lifewire.com/best-home-theater-receivers-400-or-less-1846333
And these: https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Premium-Channel-Theater-Subwoofer/dp/B00EOZFUYI
And these: https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Premium-Channel-Theater-Subwoofer/dp/B00EOZFUYI
I agree 100%
Get the best receiver you can afford, and add two decent speakers (can be second hand). Worst comes to worst, they can act as rear satellites later.
There's an audio thread on the gaming side: https://www.resetera.com/threads/audio-era-because-sound-matters.7045/
How do you guys recommend wiring rear speakers?
I just bought a new house and it's gonna be difficult to hide wires.
Are the cheap wireless solutions (rocketfish-$100) worth a crap?
I just bought a new house and it's gonna be difficult to hide wires.
Are the cheap wireless solutions (rocketfish-$100) worth a crap?
A Yamaha Amp RX-V385 is an amazing home cinema receiver for the money. It retails for $400 ish but I regularly see it on sale for $200.
You can get some good bookshelf speakers as your front L and front R for around $100.
Rear speakers L and R you can get good ones for $50-100
A good centre speaker is $100-150
A good subwoofer is about $200
All in you're looking at $650-$750 for a very good but cheapest possible for that quality system.
My prices are converted from the UK/France markets where I bought all my stuff but it should translate pretty well. I just bought most of the stuff above in the last 6 months so it's still very fresh.
Edit: Sorry, I just saw you're in Canada. My prices are US dollars.
You can get some good bookshelf speakers as your front L and front R for around $100.
Rear speakers L and R you can get good ones for $50-100
A good centre speaker is $100-150
A good subwoofer is about $200
All in you're looking at $650-$750 for a very good but cheapest possible for that quality system.
My prices are converted from the UK/France markets where I bought all my stuff but it should translate pretty well. I just bought most of the stuff above in the last 6 months so it's still very fresh.
Edit: Sorry, I just saw you're in Canada. My prices are US dollars.
I'd really like feedback for these questions as well. My living room is not designed well for speaker systems and hidden wiring but it's our social hub and where my wife and I spend most of our time. We have a 2.1 setup right now, but have been wanting to upgrade our sound system for some time.
I just wired my ceiling speakers last week, I can't tell you exactly what I did because I had the luxury of taking the ceiling down first. Obviously that's the best thing you can do.
I think wireless is starting to catch up but only the high end stuff.
Are either of you decorating or remodelling the rooms where you want the systems?
It really depends on your layout and what you have to work with. Generally, if you can, run them inside the walls. There are a lot of guides on how to run wires within the walls from point A to point B. If you can't do that, the next best thing is run them along the baseboards and even inside them if you can. Baseboards tend to be white, so use white speaker cable too.
For me, the left rear speaker I ran along underneath the couch so that was easy since the couch is L shaped. For the right rear speaker, there's a sliding door on that wall, and there's this thin molding that transitions the wood floor to the sliding door base and I wedged the wire in between them so it doesn't stand out at all.
BB clearance/open box is your best bet to put together a good affordable setup.
Alternatively, the Andrew Jones Pioneer speakers are somewhat old now but still very good and can be had for around $300-$400 including sub for a 5.1 setup. I recommend setting a pricealert on slickdeals. Note that it does not include a receiver which will set you back a a couple of hundred bucks ($250-$400).
Alternatively, the Andrew Jones Pioneer speakers are somewhat old now but still very good and can be had for around $300-$400 including sub for a 5.1 setup. I recommend setting a pricealert on slickdeals. Note that it does not include a receiver which will set you back a a couple of hundred bucks ($250-$400).
No and my situation is complicated as I have plaster and lath walls and ceiling. We live in a house built in 1949. Built like a tank but nearly impossible to do anything high-tech with it. Even installing hooks for picture frames is a nightmare.
Agreed. Buy the best receiver you can get, L/R speakers and then upgrade over time. I've followed this approach; currently at 5.1 but plan to add top middles in the next year.
Tell me about it. Our house is around 150 years old. It took us a day to make a small hole in the outside walls for some new pipes.
It's difficult to say without knowing the room. Your best bet is probably to run the wires in an out of the way area such as the corner of the ceiling or where the floor meets the wall. You should only need to do it for the rear speakers though so it isn't actually that big of a deal. The subwoofer can really go almost anywhere, the front L and R speakers are by your TV, centre speaker should be under the screen ideally so all of those wires are fine.
Thinking outside the box; you could maybe run them under your carpet? Assuming you have carpet. It's easy to pull up and put back down without damaging it.
Depending on your attic setup you can run wires down the wall from the attic but if you have plaster walls I would avoid mounting speakers and maybe just opting for a fancy soundbar like a Sonos Playbar.
You know your houses! Yes we do have carpet in the living room. If it had to be out of wall wiring, which I assume it'd have to be given the alternative of destroying our walls, I can run wiring underneath the carpet but here's my next problem...I can't run them flush with the baseboard because we have baseboard heating!
And you're right it's just the rear speakers that would be the issue. How high would you recommend rear speakers sit?
We have a ceiling crawl space and 2 small attic spaces that actually sit behind the walls near where the roof slants. It's a funky house honestly.
Even a basic receiver would cost you around $250. That's not alot of wiggle room. I'd probably get the Monoprice premium 5.1 system as a decent starter system.
Already covered, but a good receiver with a couple of budget bookshelf speakers is your best investment at that price point. Who knows? You may prefer it to proper 5.1/surround. (as I do)
Re: Rocketfish wireless kit, it does the job. As in, you will get audio. For a little while at least. Just don't expect it to do a good job of actually driving the speakers (volume/distortion) or the amplifier to last. It's also a pain in the ass to get your levels set properly. But one thing it can be good for is to easily set up a 2 channel zone in a separate room. Say you're running two channels in the living room and want to be able to listen to the news in your kitchen. Connect the transmitter box to the surrounds on the receiver, change to all-channel stereo, and you're good to go.
Re: wiring rear speakers, if you have open space to work with under (basement) or over (attic) you have ideal options. Otherwise, depending on the layout you may be able to get away with just tucking your runs under/behind the baseboard. If the room is carpeted, you can fish wire underneath it without a ton of hassle. (although, if the carpet/padding isn't plush you could see/feel the runs) Plastic cord concealer tubes running between the floor and baseboard can sometimes be employed without grabbing attention as well.
Otherwise, you're opening your wall/ceiling/floor unless you have a special circumstance. My workshop is right next to my media room and has a drop ceiling. I was able to wire my media room rear in-ceilings by fishing over from the workshop.
Re: Rocketfish wireless kit, it does the job. As in, you will get audio. For a little while at least. Just don't expect it to do a good job of actually driving the speakers (volume/distortion) or the amplifier to last. It's also a pain in the ass to get your levels set properly. But one thing it can be good for is to easily set up a 2 channel zone in a separate room. Say you're running two channels in the living room and want to be able to listen to the news in your kitchen. Connect the transmitter box to the surrounds on the receiver, change to all-channel stereo, and you're good to go.
Re: wiring rear speakers, if you have open space to work with under (basement) or over (attic) you have ideal options. Otherwise, depending on the layout you may be able to get away with just tucking your runs under/behind the baseboard. If the room is carpeted, you can fish wire underneath it without a ton of hassle. (although, if the carpet/padding isn't plush you could see/feel the runs) Plastic cord concealer tubes running between the floor and baseboard can sometimes be employed without grabbing attention as well.
Otherwise, you're opening your wall/ceiling/floor unless you have a special circumstance. My workshop is right next to my media room and has a drop ceiling. I was able to wire my media room rear in-ceilings by fishing over from the workshop.
Are shelves a possibility? Even small ones that can hide the wire behind them and provide a surface to place the speakers on them.
For the rear speakers? We have a 2 built-ins on either side of our fire place. One of the built-ins corners the rear wall so one of the speakers could sit on a shelf. How far apart could two rear speakers theoretically sit from the viewers ear? I say that because the shelf speaker would sit 7-8 feet from our furniture whereas the other speaker would sit nearly double that due to our large living room window.
You can calibrate this on the receiver side by setting the distance for each speaker there.
There are probably some people here that it will be down on this but I got a Vizio 5.1.2 soundbar system and it's absolutely fantastic. Way better than my Sony/Harmon Kardon 5.1 system. The audio in no way feels small, it feels like it totally fills up the room.
That's too far for rear/surround speakers. Your system will likely have a auto calibration feature to compensate but that is a lot of distance for surround speakers.
Haha I've been on a crash course since buying our house. It's a top to bottom renovation project.
Our rears are in the ceiling right now but that's because the room our home cinema is in right now is not the permanent one. So I'm using the ceiling speakers that will eventually be the audio system for my wife's office as the rear speakers in our current cinema set up.
Ideally, they should be level with around where your head is when watching the movie. The distance apart isn't a huge issue because of the amp speaker distance calibration. You have a lot of wiggle room with the rears, they're essentially just glorified weather speakers for most movies. For example, in Jurassic Park you hear the rain through them. It adds a new level of depth to the movie but it isn't groundbreaking like the subwoofer or centre speaker. Therefore it isn't the end of the world if they're further apart than ideal or higher or lower than ideal. I'd say higher is better than lower though.
OP
OP
I was considering this. Costco sells it at a good price when it's on sale.
I'm either going that route, or as others suggested, getting a good reciever and 2 speakers and building the system out over time.
Go with a reciever and upgrade over time. A little more expensive, but a good set of speakers can last a lifetime!
Best advice in the thread.
Have bought the pioneers 5 years ago for $600 and I could not be happier. I bought a bigger $450 subwoofer 3 years ago but you're not there yet. I also recently started buying ELAC speakers which are a bit more expensive to slowly replace my pioneers.
Warning: I would not spend money on ANYTHING cheaper than the pioneers. It would be a big downgrade. Watch this for more info on why they are such good value:
Despite many replies in this thread, there ARE some decent HTIB that allow you to upgrade. I got a great Yamaha set up a couple years ago that gave me 5.1 audio on day one, with 4k passthru. Upgraded a few of the speakers over time and it's been great. It was around 400 bucks for the whole thing. Subwoofer needed an upgrade, and I got some nice floor standing front speakers, but the center and rears are fine. If your goal is to go spend a few hundred dollars and have a full set-up that you can upgrade at your leisure, look into Yamaha imo.
OP
OP
So I ended up taking some of the advice in this thread and bought:
-Onkyo TX-NR575 ($329 new)
-Pioneer SP-C22 and SW-8MK2 ("Andrew Jones" center and sub, $250 together new)
and borrowed two old towers (not sure of the brand) for my front left and rights, and two older Polk bookshelves for my rears which I'll replace with the other Andrew Jones components as I can afford them.
So far so good. I'm about $600 CDN in but feel like I have the beginnings of a really good expandable/up-gradable setup.
I realize I've got a bit of timber mismatch situation going with my front speakers, but ignoring that, what's the best way to tweak the audio and get things sounding nice? I used the receivers microphone set up and got pretty good results, but my sub sounds a little "farty".
-Onkyo TX-NR575 ($329 new)
-Pioneer SP-C22 and SW-8MK2 ("Andrew Jones" center and sub, $250 together new)
and borrowed two old towers (not sure of the brand) for my front left and rights, and two older Polk bookshelves for my rears which I'll replace with the other Andrew Jones components as I can afford them.
So far so good. I'm about $600 CDN in but feel like I have the beginnings of a really good expandable/up-gradable setup.
I realize I've got a bit of timber mismatch situation going with my front speakers, but ignoring that, what's the best way to tweak the audio and get things sounding nice? I used the receivers microphone set up and got pretty good results, but my sub sounds a little "farty".