chit chat thread

[Earl]

My home audio comes out of the back of my television

[SteelBlue]

straight6pwr said:

my home audio comes out of a pair of sony bluetooth battery powered speakers. sounds great to me. 

*flamesuit on* 

Earl said:

My home audio comes out of the back of my television

I would strongly recommend look into getting a a receiver and two front speakers. The difference between a bluetooth or TV speakers and dedicated speakers is staggering.

There are a ton of options for speakers in the $100-$200 range that perform extremely well for their price point.

[straight6pwr]

If i decided to spend $200 on a receiver and some speakers for a small basement game room TV, what brand would you point me to?

[GunMetalGrey]

Earl said:

My home audio comes out of the back of my television

This is a real travesty, even most cost effective sound bars these days blow stock tv speakers out of the water.
My old 5.1 channel stuff bit the dust so I grabbed an ATS-1080 bar and have been quite pleased with it. Compact and very clear audio. 

@HipMF that rega looks sweet, I enjoy the simplicity of it.

[SteelBlue]

straight6pwr said:

If i decided to spend $200 on a receiver and some speakers for a small basement game room TV, what brand would you point me to?

You'd be hard pressed to find both for that combined price.

Your receiver will handle both your audio and video. If you want to go budget, you could go with this receiver and these speakers.

If you wanted a little more oompf and better sound, these speakers would be a good upgrade.

Just like with cars, there is a ton of manufactures that all have their different spin on things. I would just search Amazon for "bookshelf speakers" and see what fits your price and read reviews. Also doing google searches of "best bookshelf speaker for $XXX" is a good way to get an idea of whats out there.

Receivers that handle audio and video you won't find a ton of wiggle room in the price. Differences will be number out video inputs and outputs, power to each speaker(not really that big of a concern for smaller speakers), and other features like bluetooth, wifi, Chromecast, etc.

But you can get into something that will be significant step up from your current setup for ~$300-$400. Feel free to PM with any other questions.

[P_Roloff]

I’d agree with @SteelBlue that the Denon is a good choice, we have an older version and it’s been great, lots of features and pretty easy to use and set up. I personally went used when buying my receiver, but I did a lot of looking before I found one that I liked. HDMI comparability was the biggest thing for me, along with some sort of wireless connectivity to my phone (AirPlay in the case of the receiver I picked up, a Harman Kardon AVR-1700). While it’s not the best money can buy, for $100 I’ve been pleased with it and it allowed me to spend the extra money on better speakers where I feel that money is better spent, at least for now. 

TL;DR: Don’t be afraid to buy used, just do your research first and make sure it’s actually what you want and isn’t going to stop working within a month.

SteelBlue said:

Wharfedale Diamonds? I bought a $90 Yamaha center channel that has worked pretty well for what I wanted out of it. Definitely plan to upgrade in the future based on how much audio is pushed out of it.

Yeah, the Wharfedale Diamond 10.1’s. For what it’s worth, I way prefer the Chane’s. The mids in the Wharfedale’s seem to be more recessed and veiled, and they just don’t sound as fun/aren’t as enjoyable to listen to. They’ve been excellent surrounds though, especially for the $125 I paid for them.

[GunMetalGrey]

It's amusing to think that all end users can have different takeaways when it comes to audio equipment.

[ChrisO]

I knew it was cold this morning because the screen on the cluster in my Passat was frozen. Never seen anything like it. Took about 30mins of heat for it to come back from the dead.

[P_Roloff]

@straight6pwr also had some interesting experiences with his gauge cluster this morning per his Instagram. I for one have not set foot outside my building and don't plan to until 3:00 tomorrow when I have class.

[Rekpoint]

Yeah no class from Monday till Friday for me. Woot Woot

[ChrisO]

P_Roloff said:

@straight6pwr also had some interesting experiences with his gauge cluster this morning per his Instagram. I for one have not set foot outside my building and don't plan to until 3:00 tomorrow when I have class.

Damn they didn’t cancel class? uwec was canceled today and tomorrow. Where do ya go?

[straight6pwr]

LOL, yeah my cluster was freakin. but the car started, so that was a miracle. 

gas gauge = non op

temp gauge = non op

OBC display = said "Code?"

tach = pinging back and forth like it had ripped some coke

also, my 5 speed refused to stay in 2nd or 4th gear until it got warmed up. i had to hold the lever until i shifted to the next gear.

power steering was struggling, too. the load it put on the car when i backed out from my parking spot dipped the rpms so much it killed the motor 

coldest day I have ever experienced.

[jc43089]

I didn't try starting my e36 today.  I did start my Sienna and it puked a bunch of oil out around the oil filter for about 30 seconds and sounded really angry that I woke it up.  It wouldn't shift into gear until I let it warm up for several minutes. 

I like this being a teacher thing, cancelled Monday, Wednesday, Thursday this week.  I was super helpful because one of our gilts had piglets on Sunday afternoon so I have been able to care for the animals better with the frigid temps.  She is doing great and the piglets seem to be doing good buried in the straw bedding.

Tomorrow I will see how the BMW does when I have to go do some work for my father in law.

[HipMF]

straight6pwr said:

If i decided to spend $200 on a receiver and some speakers for a small basement game room TV, what brand would you point me to?

Find the best hand-me-down receiver/amp that you can get for $20 or less and spend the rest of your budget on speakers.

A decent sounding amplifier can be built at just about any price range. My old bookshelf speakers are connected to my computer with a $30 plastic amplifier that's designed to run on AAs (og Tripath T-Amp) and it sounds almost as good to my ears as my Brio which retailed for $595 back in the 90s. You just need to find something that was designed by someone who cared enough to put in an off-the-shelf amplifier circuit and follow the recommendations in the application note. I'm not trying to say it's easy to build amps, just that a good one can be built cheaply if you don't need a lot of power. If you're powering bookshelf speakers at any reasonable volume level, you don't need a lot of power, so a cheap amp will work as long as it's reasonably well designed.

Speakers on the other hand require a large material and labor cost to build, and are probably more difficult to engineer. Choosing/designing multiple drivers that, together, can get you a reasonably flat frequency response curve, designing a box that doesn't vibrate, but also doesn't cost a lot to manufacture... probably a fair amount of testing and revisions on the engineering side to get something that actually sounds good. It's pretty rare that I'm pleasenty surprised by the sound of cheap speakers...

[patsbimmer1]

My wife got me a Yamaha rx-v377 receiver and speaker combo package for Christmas a few years ago and it's served my video game/movie purposes very well.  I don't know anything about it other than I plug things in, noise comes out.

[HipMF]

As far as on-topic updates go, my OBC temp read-out was more accurate today than it's ever been, because it's said -40F as long as I've had the car (no sensor hooked up)

[P_Roloff]

ChrisO said:

Damn they didn’t cancel class? uwec was canceled today and tomorrow. Where do ya go?

Milwaukee School of Engineering. We had class cancelled Monday, today, and tomorrow until noon. They almost never cancel here, so even this was a big deal. I’ll only have 9 class periods this week though, and a test got pushed back a full week so I’m pretty okay with it.

[Jdesign]

anyone run into brake issues with the cold?

[SteelBlue]

Worked a half day Monday at our Appleton location and then went home to finish due to the snow. Went to Fond du Lac office Tuesday to work. Worked from home yesterday and today. I work a half day tomorrow that I usually work out of the Appleton office, but with the soft phone on my computer, I'll probably just finish the week off from home.

[straight6pwr]

Jdesign said:

anyone run into brake issues with the cold?

nope!