new System questions - again....

[myrlin]

Back again since I still haven't pulled the trigger on a new system. (Thanks economy and credit cards and everyone else responsible!!!!)

So now I am looking at 2 possible options.

1)Cheaper Option to start
Making due with bleh surround speakers, either old or no subwoofer and buying
Receiver - Yamaha v565
Speakers - EMP E5Ti Tower Speakers (2), EMP E5Ci Center Channel

2)Second preferred option
Buying the Yamaha v565 AND the emp impression 5.1 tower system which includes subwoofer.

My main questions are
a) Can I use a ps3 as the bluray / dvd player
b) is the 565 a good choice with enough kick to last me a while and run the EMPS
c) Confirm it does make sense to hold off on the surround and sub until I can afford it (meaning im not gonna hate the sound hehe)
d) is the 10-ft velocity 12 awg speaker interconnect fine to use for the fronts and center? (im not a wiring type person)

 

[fightinkraut]

Back again since I still haven't pulled the trigger on a new system. (Thanks economy and credit cards and everyone else responsible!!!!)

So now I am looking at 2 possible options.

1)Cheaper Option to start
Making due with bleh surround speakers, either old or no subwoofer and buying
Receiver - Yamaha v565
Speakers - EMP E5Ti Tower Speakers (2), EMP E5Ci Center Channel

2)Second preferred option
Buying the Yamaha v565 AND the emp impression 5.1 tower system which includes subwoofer.

My main questions are
a) Can I use a ps3 as the bluray / dvd player
b) is the 565 a good choice with enough kick to last me a while and run the EMPS
c) Confirm it does make sense to hold off on the surround and sub until I can afford it (meaning im not gonna hate the sound hehe)
d) is the 10-ft velocity 12 awg speaker interconnect fine to use for the fronts and center? (im not a wiring type person)

Both options look good, I've leave the debate about the EMP subs worth to others.

Your questions:
a. Yes, it's a very good bluray player and if you have it then by all means use it.
b. Yes, you should be ok for a while. Spend your money on the speakers/sub first, eventually you can upgrade your receiver.
c. Spending a chunk of money on the front 3 speakers makes perfect sense, then save up for surround speakers or sub next, depending on your preference. Don't skimp on the sub, you will appreciate a good sub in many ways.
d. the velocity 12 awg will be great, you don't need anything better.

Once I manage to sell some polk speakers I am purchasing the EMP E5ti's, they seem to be a great bargin right now. Still a little torn between those and the TSC TST2.

Have fun planning!
Seth

 

[FirstReflection]

Well, I'm not a fan of Yamaha's lower-priced receivers right now. Yamaha has skimped on their amp quality the past couple of years and it is actually audible. For a lower-priced receiver, I would really point you towards Onkyo or Pioneer. My personal preference is Onkyo, strictly because I prefer the Audyssey room correction over any other type. So I would swap out the Yamaha RX-V565 for the Onkyo TX-SR607 or even the 507 since it sounds like you're aiming for a 5.1 speaker setup anyway.

If money is tight, the surround speakers are the best place to "skimp". It is far less important for the surround speakers to be a perfect sonic match to the other speakers. Most of the surround channel sound is ambience, so the surround speakers are far less vital.

Do not skimp on your subwoofer! Also, decouple your subwoofer. SVSound's PB12-NSD is absolutely my top choice for a relatively inexpensive subwoofer. If you need lower cost or physically smaller size, the SVSound PB10-NSD is good, as are the HSU VTF2-MK3 or even the HSU STF-2 (although you definitely sacrifice extension and output a bit with the STF-2).

No matter what subwoofer you get, decouple it from the floor with an Auralex SubDude/GRAMMA. I've talked a lot already about the SubDude/GRAMMA, so just poke around some of the other threads here on the front page of this forum and you'll see why

You can also get away with no center speaker if you really need to. You can set your receiver to "phantom" center. The center channel will simply be equally split between the front L/R speakers and you will rely upon their stereo image to create a "phantom" center speaker. with good front speakers that have wide dispersion and good imaging, the illusion of a center speaker can be very convincing and totally diminish the need for an actual center speaker.

So my advice?

Swap out the Yamaha RX-V565 for an Onkyo TX-SR607 or even the TX-SR507.

Get your front L/R speakers. Don't worry about the center or the surrounds for now.

Do NOT throw some spare speaker into the center position. Just set the center channel to "phantom" (the setting might just be "off" or "none") in the receiver and let your new front L/R speakers handle things.

Feel free to throw some spare speakers into the surround positions.

Do NOT skimp on the subwoofer! Get the SVSound PB12-NSD if you can. Get one of the other subs that I mentioned if you can't.

No matter what subwoofer you get, put that sucker on top of an Auralex SubDude/GRAMMA! This is a MUST

Speaker wire and cables do not have to be expensive in order to be good. Check out bluejeanscable.com, monoprice.com and tartancable.com for all of your wire and cable needs!

The PS3 is a GREAT Blu-ray player and a pretty darn good DVD player. No worries at all in using a PS3 as your source!

Best of luck!

 

[fightinkraut]

If you have the cash I agree with FR's suggestion to upgrade to an Onkyo. Comparing my onkyo 805, a buddy's onkyo 606, and another friends yamaha 665 was interesting, turns out nobody really liked the yammy. They used to make better amps, but FR is right on declining amp quality.

I agree with everything FR said...phantom mode should work well if you don't have the cash for a center channel, but if you're planning on the emp set up it's only $175, which is a nice price. Would be helpful to know if you have a rough budget in mind, as the options in front of you range all over the place.

I use monoprice for all my cables and highly recommend them. tartan and BJC are both excellent, I chose monoprice for their pricing because I'm cheap.

 

[FirstReflection]

Yamaha does still make good receivers and good amps - it's just that their lower-priced receivers have suffered. It seems as though Yamaha has simply tried to keep pace in terms of features and inputs and price and some corners had to be cut somewhere It's mostly the power supply and - by extension - the amps that have suffered. Get into their higher-priced stuff and Yamaha is still very good though

Onkyo has just pushed really really hard in the lower-price ranges. Onkyo has mostly cut corners on their video processing. Their analogue to HDMI conversion isn't very good and the de-interlacing and scaling are nothing special either. Again, go to their higher-priced stuff and the video processing gets a whole lot better! But in the lower-priced models, Onkyo decided to sacrifice a bit on the video quality side of things. The 507, for example, doesn't even do any sort of analogue to HDMI conversion, so that could be a real sticking point for some people.

Personally, I don't mind the decision to skimp on the video if it means that the audio remains great - which is why I prefer Onkyo for lower-priced models. I figure you can run the video directly to the display or just use the receiver purely as a switch. There are other ways to take care of the video, but if your receiver doesn't have great sound coming from its amps, there's no alternative!

For the speakers themselves, you certainly won't find nicer-looking speakers than the EMP Impression Series for that sort of price point! And the sound quality is reportedly good, so they certainly seem like a very good choice.

If you don't mind very plain, black boxes in terms of looks, I certainly recommend SVSound's S-Series speakers, Emotiva's speakers and Ascend Acoustics speakers as well. But none of those look as nice as the EMP speakers

 

[myrlin]

My question regarding the video since I "want" to run everything through the receiver nice and neat.

My inputs would be Comcast HD box (Digital on non hd channels) , Playstation 3 for Dvd/Blueray, HDMI PC hookup. Does analog conversion hurt me in that respect?

 

[FirstReflection]

My question regarding the video since I "want" to run everything through the receiver nice and neat.

My inputs would be Comcast HD box (Digital on non hd channels) , Playstation 3 for Dvd/Blueray, HDMI PC hookup. Does analog conversion hurt me in that respect?

All you would need is HDMI switching for all of those sources, plus the ability to pull audio from the HDMI connection, of course

The Comcast HD box, PS3 and HDMI PC would all use an HDMI connection and you can set all of them to output 1920 x 1080 resolution to your display. So there is no need for your receiver to do any video processing! The receiver just has to be able to switch between HDMI sources - so that is no problem at all.

The Onkyo TX-SR507 could handle that with no problems.

The only time you need analogue-to-HDMI conversion is if you want to only run a single HDMI cable from your receiver to your TV, but you want to run component video or composite (yellow cable) video from your source to your receiver. So, a Wii, for example, can only output analogue video - either component or composite. If you wanted to only have one HDMI cable from your receiver to your TV, you would need analogue-to-HDMI conversion. And if you wanted to take the Wii's 480p or 480i video and scale it to 1080i or 1080p inside the receiver, you would also need de-interlacing and scaling inside the receiver.

The TX-SR507 doesn't do any processing of the video signal - whatever comes into the TX-SR507 is exactly what comes out of the TX-SR507.

The TX-SR607 can do all of the conversion - analogue to HDMI or 480i converted all the way up to 1080i - but it doesn't do it particularly well

In your case though, everything is HDMI already and your sources can do any sort of 480 to 1080 conversion necessary. So the TX-SR507 is fine because it can just pass the signal along

 

[myrlin]

Fantastic FReflect. So many helpful folks here for us every now and then newbies.

I think that pretty much sums up most of my concerns. It's hard to pinpoint when looking over so many different pieces of information but it sounds like if I got with the EMP fronts, the Onkyo receiver and jsut wait on surrounds and a sub, I ll have a system that should need to upgrades for a while.

Main reason i started looking at more expensive speakers was the fact, I would like not to have to upgrade every 2 years :0