Relocate to Canada - need advice

[Seppelrator]

Hi audioholics. Like the title says I´m moving to Canada (Ontario) and I leave all my stuff in Germany so I need some advice regarding new home theatre equipment.

My budget is 10.000$ and I want a very nice 5.1 Set a new TV and maybe a projector.

So here are some thoughts:

- I´m thinking of buying a Panasonic Plasma (65GT50 or 65VT50) and use it for HT and daily watching
or
- a Panasonic 60ST50 for daily use and a projector for HT (maybe Sony HT30 or HT50)

-Regarding the loudspeakers I use them 80% for HT (Bluray) and 20% for Music (nothing special Country/HipHop...)
I prefer Floor-standing-speaker.
It was impossible for me to have a subwoofer because of the neighbours but now I´m looking for a detached house and deep and "brutal" bass would be awesome. Thinking of SVS

-Thinking about getting a AVR with pre-outs and a external power amplifier (Emotiva XPA-5?),
because I plan to keep the sound equipment for a long time.

So what do you think what is the best way to split the budget and do you have any tips and recommendations for me?

Thanks in advance.

 

[FirstReflection]

Hello! Welcome to the forum

I also live in Canada (BC). We do not have quite as large a selection of brands and products compared to the USA. And many products are sold in the USA with free shipping. We almost always have to pay for shipping up here in Canada. But we still have several good places to buy home theater equipment. And most USA brands will ship up here, it just costs extra

I actually have very similar plans to what you were describing with a flat panel television for daytime viewing, plus a front projector with a motorized screen for movie viewing at night with the room totally dark.

A $10,000 budget is pretty good. But if you want to have both a flat panel and a front projector + screen, you will have to sacrifice quite a bit on the audio side. You must also carefully consider the screen sizes that you want to use, and how high those displays will be on the wall. Let me give you some examples from my own plans.

In my case, I have a small theatre room, and the distance from my eyes to the flat panel television mounted on the wall is 9 feet. I use a 70" (actual screen size is 69.5") Sharp LC-70LE735U LED backlit 3D LCD for "lights on" daytime viewing and for playing videogames. 69.5" from 9 feet away gives me a nice 31.33 degree field of view. This means the screen is just slightly larger than what SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) says is "ideal" for HD content. SMPTE recommends a 30 degree field of view. So I happen to like a very slightly larger image

The motorized projection screen comes down from the ceiling 3 inches in front of the television. So the distance from my eyes to the motorized projection screen is 8 feet 9 inches. My goal with the projection screen was to have 2.35:1 aspect ratio movies be very close to the same height as my 70" Sharp, but for them to be wider than the flat panel LCD. I also wanted IMAX content (like the IMAX segments in The Dark Knight, TRON: Legacy, and Mission Impossible 4) to really look huge - just like an IMAX theatre So the motorized projection screen is a 92" 16:9 aspect screen.

So, I can watch HDTV or play videogames during the day on the 70" Sharp. Then have the 92" projection screen come down in front of it - with the room totally dark - for movies. But you also have to consider how high off the ground you will put the flat panel TV, and how low from the ceiling you will allow the motorized projection screen to extend. You have to remember to leave room for the Center speaker. But you do not want to have the screen up so high that you need to tilt your head backwards and look way up!

So that might mean that you have to put the Center speaker behind the projection screen. Which would mean that you would need an acoustically transparent screen. And those are more expensive. If you do this, you also have to leave room for the depth of the Center speaker from front to back. In my case, that means using speaker that can mount on the wall. So I'd have the 70" Sharp LCD mounted with the very bottom of its frame about 33" above the floor. Directly below the Sharp TV would be the on-wall Center speaker. The 92" motorized projection screen will extend from the ceiling so that the very bottom is about 20" above the floor. And now the Center speaker is directly behind the 92" projection screen, so an acoustically transparent screen is the only way to make this work

So, this can start to get expensive. There is no question that the Panasonic plasmas are the best looking flat panel TVs right now. But the largest size is 65". I went with the 70" Sharp LED-LCD simply because I wanted the larger size. With the lights on, or during the day with sunlight coming into the room, the 70" Sharp looks very good. It retains its black levels very well, it is very bright, and it has a semi-matte screen that really helps to reduce any glare or reflections. With all the lights off, there is no question that the Sharp does not look as good as a Panasonic plasma. But that is what I have the 92" projection system for

A lot is going to depend on how far away you are sitting. Like I say, I am only 9 feet away from a 69.5" screen, and to me, that looks just right. With a 65" screen, I would want to be slightly closer.

But a lot of people sit 12 feet or more away. At that distance, I would find a 65" screen to be too small for movies. It would probably be ok for casual TV viewing. But for movies, if I were 12 feet away, I would want at least a 90" screen!

So you need to do some planning. But you will have to consider the prices, and how much they will take out of your budget, and away from how much money you will have left to spend on the audio.

What will probably be helpful to you is a list of some of the better online retailers for Canada

BestBuy.ca
Futureshop.ca
Visions.ca
avu.ca (Audio Video Unlimited)

Those are the largest electronics retailers in Canada that sell both online and in big box retail locations.

electronicsforless.ca
hd.ca
eastporters.com
quebecacoustic.com

Those are some of the best Canadian online retailers. hd.ca (Higher Definition) also has a retail showroom in Ontario.

Amazon.ca - the selection of products available in Canada is MUCH less than Amazon.com in the USA

bhphotovideo.com - B&H Photo is in the USA, but they have good shipping to Canada using Purolator where they will show you the FULL price - all shipping, border fees and tax included - before you buy.

ebay.ca - I've actually purchased a fair number of products off of ebay.ca. But you have to be aware that you will usually have to pay additional border fees, brokerage fees, and tax when the product arrives, unless the auction is from a Canadian seller.

sonicboomaudio.com - this is the Canadian reseller for SVSound. They're actually the same company as electronicsforless.ca

And if you know the exact product you're looking for, just typing the model number and "+Canada" into Google will usually bring up decent results. shopbot.ca is also a decent price matching engine for Canada.

The dual screen setup could be quite expensive. For example, the 65" Panasonic TC-P65ST50 goes for about $2300-$2500 in Canada. An Elite Screens 100" acoustically transparent motorized screen would be a bit over $1500 . And then a nice 1080p projector might cost about $2500 for something like the Epson 5020. You might be able to go a little cheaper on the projector, or you could save about $1000 by choosing a lower end projector with significantly worse black levels.

But the bottom line is that a really nice dual screen setup might easily cost around $6000-$6500. If you're ok with having much less to spend on audio, then this is ok. It's certainly possible. And you can still get a good 5.1 audio setup for $3500. If the video is more important to you than the audio, then this makes sense. You just need to be aware

 

[Seppelrator]

Wow thank you very much for your help.
The list of the onlineshops are great. Now I have to think about some things.
A budget of 3500 is maybe not enough for a nice 5.1 or 5.2 Set like I imagine it but the picture is very important too. Tough decision.
More opinions are very welcome.

 

[FirstReflection]

You're most welcome!

Yes, in many ways, having a $10,000 budget can make it more difficult to decide on specific products than a $1,000 budget. With $10,000 you really want and deserve excellence. But the price can quickly get very high and go over that $10,000 mark.

Personally, I would probably spend closer to $6,000 on audio, $2500 on the display, and $1500 on acoustic treatments and other items like a battery backup, remote, and cables/wires etc. For example, the Aperion Audio Verus Grand speakers are excellent and gorgeous. Aperion actually ships to Canada for free, but there's a hefty 14% border fee for duty, brokerage, etc. I'm also not sure if tax is extra on top of that. BC and Ontario both get hit hard on tax because of the HST (Harmonized Sales Tax). Regardless, the 5 Verus Grand speakers would come to $3100 in the USA, but the Canadian price is about $3525.

To those 5 speakers, you could add an SVSound PB or PC12-Plus subwoofer, or maybe consider one of the Canadian-made Funk Audio subwoofers. Either way, you'd be looking at about $1350 after shipping.

You could power it all with the extremely capable Onkyo TX-NR818 from electronicsforless.ca for about $900.

You add Ontario's insane 13% HST sales tax on top of all of that and you're already up to $6500!

So the money goes very quickly. Another great US speaker company is Ascend Acoustics. In fact, Ascend makes many of my favourite speakers, including the Sierra Towers and Sierra Horizon, which are just spectacular sounding speakers, but they're about $1000 each, and then there'd be shipping to Canada on top of that, plus tax.

But Canada is home to many very good speaker companies. So it actually often makes more sense to just buy locally. Paradigm and PSB are both great Canadian speaker manufacturers. I actually really like the newest Paradigm Monitor 7 series speakers. They're nice and neutral and accurate and efficient and easy to power. Audio Video Unlimited carries Paradigm and Monitor Audio speakers, and they will definitely make deals and come down on the price if you just go to one of their stores.

The other thing is that you don't have to go as expensive and high end as the Aperion Verus Grand or the Ascend Sierra series speakers to still get good sound! While I fully believe speakers like the Ascend Sierra series are superb and worth every penny of their price, we're still talking about a fairly small upgrade in sound quality in the grand scheme of things. I think it's a noticeable upgrade. I think it's still a worthwhile upgrade. But it is not "night and day". It is not the same huge gap in performance as going from, say, built in TV speakers to a set of the Andrew Jones Pioneer speakers with a nice Denon AVR-1712 AV Receiver. That is a HUGE upgrade.

The next step would be something like the Ascend SE series speakers. The CMT-340SE, for example, are wonderful, neutral, accurate speakers that I often recommend very highly. You could match those with an Onkyo TX-NR709 AV Receiver and have very very good sound quality. The upgrade from the Pioneer speakers to the Ascend SE speakers is noticeable, but not nearly the kind of jump in quality as going from the TV speakers to the Pioneers. And then the upgrade from the Ascend SE speakers to the Ascend Sierra speakers is slightly smaller than that. Again, still noticeable and worth the money, IMO. But it is certainly starting to become diminishing returns. You're spending double the money each time, but I wouldn't say you're getting double the performance.

So with a $10,000 budget, it's a balancing act. How crazy do you want to go on the video vs. how crazy do you want to go on the audio.

To bring the Pioneer speakers into Canada costs about $700 total. The Ascend CMT-340SE with HTM-200 SE surrounds ends up being about $1350. The Aperion Verus Grand are around $3500. The Ascend Sierra Towers with Sierra Horizon and Sierra-1 surrounds will set you back a good $4500 or more.

For subwoofers, I tend to like HSU's offerings for value, but shipping them into Canada definitely ups the cost. To the point that the comparable SVSound models - shipped within Canada from sonicboomaudio - end up being only a tiny bit more expensive. And the SVSound subs tend to play a bit lower and louder than the HSU subs at each price bracket.

For example: around $500 for the HSU STF-2 vs around $550 for the SVSound PB-1000. $760 for the HSU VTF-2MK4 vs. $810 for the SVSound PB12-NSD, and so on. The one exception might be the HSU VTF-3MK4, which sort of falls in between the SVSound PB12-NSD and PB12-Plus in both performance and price.

If I were in your position, with your budget, I'd probably go for the best audio I could afford, get a nice flat panel, and wait on the front projector and screen for now. I'd definitely go and listen to some Paradigm, PSB and other speakers at local stores. But I'd certainly keep the Aperion Verus Grand in mind. They're very good, reasonably priced for your budget, and they look fantastic. I'd probably stick with an SVSound subwoofer. And I'd likely splurge a little on the AV Receiver and go for the Onkyo TX-NR818.

I hope that's of some help

 

[Hostility]

Where abouts in ontario are you moving to? Check out this website, Canuck Audio Mart Canada's Largest Online Hifi, Audio & Home Theater Classifieds, tons of great deals on used gear, that could help you get where you want to be in that budget.

 

[avnetguy]

If you're moving to Canada before xmas wait for the boxing day (or week) sales, that could save you a fair bit of money. I think you'll like either the GT or VT series Panny plasmas, very nice picture IMO.

Steve

 

[Seppelrator]

FirstReflection WOW again. Thank you so much, I think you gave me a good direction.
I don´t want to settle down with the sound now and upgrade later again. Good speaker last for a long time, electronics not. And maybe I have some money left after the whole moving thing and can get myself a nice projector.
Right now I´m collecting information regarding the ascend, aperion and salk speaker.

I´m moving in january so I probably miss boxing day sales or I have to send the stuff to my relatives in Barrie.
I´m going to work in Burlington and will live somewhere around this town and the USA are not far away for crossborder shopping.

 

[FirstReflection]

If you can drive across the border and pick up products in the USA, you can definitely save a lot of money on shipping. You will still have to pay the border fees and HST tax, but it still saves you quite a lot. Speakers and subwoofers tend to be fairly heavy and large, so shipping is quite expensive!

I would definitely recommend that you listen to some speaker brands that are available to you locally in Canada before committing to any of the American brands though. We do make some very good speakers in Canada, too

I completely agree with you that it makes the most sense to get the speakers that you really want first. You can still enjoy movies on a nice, big flat panel! And you can always add a projector and screen later. Projectors always get better and less expensive every year, so there's really no harm in waiting. The best flat panels are disappearing though. It looks as though Panasonic plans to exit the plasma manufacturing game, which will be a huge loss to the industry! Sadly, crappy edge-lit LED-LCDs are taking over the market, and any of us who really care about picture quality will be left with nothing but inaccurate displays. I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Panasonic plasma right now. It might be our last chance to get an accurate flat panel with great black levels for the next several years!

In any case, I think you are on a good path now. Enjoy. And have fun!

 

[brianedm]

Best advice I can give: prepare yourself for an addiction to Tim Hortons.