Lets talk car/home audio..

Alright, with Kg's and Dusty's audio threads, seems that, with the crappy weather around a goodly part of the US, we all seem to have time to chat about their installs (where's the pics guys:D ), so I thought it's time to see if the audio bug carries over into other parts of your lives :)

post up whether you just enjoy audio on the lake or have a passion in all parts of your life and what you do to satisfy it.....


Me:
Car: have a small system in the '00 ford f150. goal was to keep the install at $500 or less. kind of a personal challenge as I've had many multiple sub/amp setups in the past. consists of a kenwood deck, infinity kappa 4x6 front/rear door speakers, kicker 8" sub and an old-school soundstream reference 405 amp. came in just shy of the $500 mark and didn't have enough cash left to carpet the box at the time. haven't done so yet as it's kind of my testament to how you can build a cheap system for not a lot of $$. entirely off ebay :)

Home: had some sweet setups in the past, but have really lost interest in home audio over the years. current setup is just a monster power center, old onkyo txds838 receiver (powerful and super clean), paradygm 5ch speaker setup, not the inwalls or small ones-floor standing fronts, and a velodyne va1210 powered sub.

I kind of lost interest in real serious car audio years ago, I've never got around to doing anything with the truck. Did do a small system in the wife's car recently though.

My home theater consists of Sony 46" XBR4 LCD, Sony STG-810 HT reciever, Sony BPS-300 Blu-ray, Polk RM series HT 5.1 surround system w/ powered sub.

And a shameless plug for Logitech Harmony remote controls while i'm at it :p These things are awesome, runs everything without a hassle setup at all!

Best reciever I've ever owned and still have btw, Marantz 2238B bought new in 1975 and it still works.

I have an older Denon 5.1 receiver and a Polk 12" powered sub at home that shakes the whole house when watching action movies. I used to have all Polk speakers in the old house including rear in-wall surrounds but when we moved to this house, the previous owner left his 5 speaker Bose Acoustimass (sp) system and crappy sub. My wife will not let me set up the Polk speakers as she likes the stealth look of the Bose and to her ears, sounds just fine. So I have a Polk center channel and pair of front speakers just sitting in boxes in my closet.

I have a "high end" ELS 5.1 system in my Acura and have not done anything with it. It sounds okay but needs a lot more volume and a proper sub. I guess I just don't spend enough time in my car to warrant upgrading (I have an 8 minute commute).

Al

Home stereo, specifically two channel...still enjoy it today.
Those Marantz receivers and integrated amplifiers/tuners are classics. The tuning mechanism was awesome. And, great amplifier sections in those vintage models.
Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Rick Wakeman (from Yes) with 'Journey to the Center of the Earth', rock with classical roots. Good stuff. Early Genesis like 'Selling England by the Pound' and all the theatrical rock.
But, the music industry has gone through some changes. Recordings are typically engineered for compressed formats like MP3 players and personal stereos, FM broadcast and satellite radio for example so you may only have 10 dB or less of dynamic range. It used to be that you had access to more recordings with 18 dB or greater dynamic range. Oh what a difference! And video soundtracks just don't compare. Even most of the premier surround sound systems and speakers are a major disappointment musically speaking. While they may sound impressive on explosions, screeching tires, clashing blades and other sound effects you are definitely left flat on real music. Its a lost art. Here's hoping for a comeback.
Btw, I've also owned the Large Advents, ESS AMT-1 Air Motion Transformers and a ton of my own creations including four 8-foot folded transmission line subs. Designed and built my own passive crossovers. I enjoyed both the music and the technology as a hobbiest. Also had a German made Thorens table. Check out the price on a euro table today. Wow! They've done better than the stock market over the last couple of decades.
Later I'll post some links to some of the more unique and ground breaking speaker products.
The two-channel industry really began to flourish as vets returned home from NAM in the 60s with incredible stereos. Most of the real HIFI innovators unfortuneately have passed on. While materials have improved speaker technology has not changed much in recent years.
Hope that Phil from Kicker chimes in as he has alot of perspective on this subject.
David
Earmark Marine

I was a home audio freak long before car and boat audio.

I have a Yamaha RXV870 from back in 92 when it was like 1500
Still plays super nice it was one of the first high end digital surround amp

I run Polk audio towers and surrounds right now. 6 years old

Sony 12inch 600 watt powered sub. 8 years old

System sounds great and i love it.

Truck now has the polk speakers from the boat that i replaced wiht Exile. I am running 2 exile amps 1 400.4 for the cabin and a 500.1 for my sub which is Rockford Fosgate 12 shallow sub with enclosure. I have to say i need more boom for my truck. Been looking into getting a 12 enclosure for between the front seats.

Maybe one of the audio heads < Brian, Phil, Dave > has something for the 06 F350 crewcab humm... LOL

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sandm

Alright, with Kg's and Dusty's audio threads, seems that, with the crappy weather around a goodly part of the US, we all seem to have time to chat about their installs (where's the pics guys:D ),

---

In due time sandm. Lets make sure it works first. Ha!!

During the boat install i have pulled the sub out and put it back in the truck for the time being. That and double din head unit is all the upgrades there, though. I'd love to do a full in wall surround setup in the living room but we aren't certain how long we will be in the house. Plus, i gotta pick my battles one at a time. Right now is the boat. ;)

I picked up a soundbar for the bedroom. Philips HTS8100. I would HIGHLY recommend it. It works great for the bedroom bc it has a built in dvd player with 1080 upconvert. I've always enjoyed having some type of speaker i can carry somewhere and setup quickly and this fits the bill. You can ask Dusty, i take it off the wall and where ever im going all the time. (camping, tailgating, etc.) It is loud, clear, powered sub. Sales pitch over.

Onkyo Tuner, Klipsch mix and match home theatre based around Heresy speakers i've had for years . Sound awesome and take a beating as we used to crank these speakers up and play the drums along to music. These speakers have outlasted 2 tuners/amps that obviously were not up to the task
My latest quest is listening to the SWEET computer speaker set up along with Ipod. Surprising thing is Same BRAND Klipsch 2.1 computer speakers. These thing Rock and for the money sound as good or better than quite a most other set ups i looked into and quite literally blow away most of the crap they push in most computer stores.
I now have the drums in the same room as the computer,basement bedroom and use these speakers to keep up when playing the drums. I believe my neighbors HATE me LOL.

The old home audio .

I used to have a mix of NAD technics and B&O all seperate components with a home made oak stereo rack. integraded amp, tuner, EQ, bose 301's from 1984 , turntable. i still have them in the basement thaey all made it through college life and i just retired them a few months ago. out of sight meant bad sound and too much room.

in kids media room i have a yamaha amp with some mission speakers

In the truck the bose system in the burb just fine.

i have bose headphones from the ipod for the gym.

check out the Beats by Dr. Dre headphones at Best buy.. WOW those sound great.


anyone looking for older equipment pm me, still works and i will get rid of it cheap.

technics tuner
technics timer
nad Integraded amp
B&O turntable
pioneer 100 disc cd changer

A fun thread....

First al all let me point out, the Supras are really doing it up this off season. I know of a certain blue one that's headed into visit us for a Xmas 2500W sub upgrade.

As for audio, well... It's with great distaste in my mouth that I report to you that my M3 demo vehicle was broke into last week and the thieves took it upon themselves to smash the glass and pry the 2,000 Kenwood head unit from the dash while smashing the custom dash panel into bits. The officer pointed out that with budget cuts, it's about 9months before the serial numbers get entered into the police database and typically the Thieves fence it in less than 24 hours. Real nice eh? They opted to leave the other 16 exile speakers in tact and the three amplifiers and big15. The whole thing bums me out.... Oh well. Excuse my rant.

I don't remember if it was this board or another that I spoke about the goodies I have stashed up in the attic.some of thehightlights include my past projects. I've got a serial number 001 frankampinstein, 006 son of frankampnstein, 0012 Route66, 001 Outlaw, 090 Reactor. Think I still have a couple Macintosh amps up there as well. And some where I've a very cool tube amp kit that I built way back when.

Home theater wise, I dissembled it all and stored in my home office because I have twin 2.5 year old boys that just love to destroy things. But it consists of some QSC pro power, Carver pro power, stewart 100" screen and home built speakers with scanspeak 1" high end tweeters, And dipolito mounted 8" Seas mid bass drivers. The cabinets are about 100lbs ea. Sub wise I've something really unique. IT's called "Cyclone", and it never went into full production as a product but it so cool it warrants an explanation for ya all. (I bet David remembers this thing)... the woofer has no spiders and no surrounds. It's basically a 10" plexi tube, with a vain attached to a piston that runs the 14 or so inches of the cylinder. The xmax (linear excursion) is about 6"s in each direction. Ya, that's no typo. And ironically it's power handling is about 400 watts. This speaker plays sub freqs, down to 11hz. Crazy! The one down side to this mad science project is that if you over power it, and the vans bottom out onto the stops, it blows them apart in a fraction of a second. The engineers couldn't fully develop a process to govern the output and as such deemed it inappropriate for full production in car. I always thought someone would come along and develop it for home use as part of a powered controlled sub system... As for my home system, I'm extremely careful with it.....but wow what transparent bassss!

Brian