Home Theater System Pictures
Last updated on 8/18/2005
We moved to a new house in January 2004, which has (among other things) given me a reason to clean up the home theater pictures. Specifically, I've collected the various pictures from the last few years of upgrades and additions and moved them all here, to the "system history" page. Since we moved, there have been a few upgrades, which are not included in the pictures below. The speaker system changed from a 6.1 to a 7.1 layout with the addition of a pair of Axiom M3ti's. There's a new entertainment center, which gave us room for a larger TV set (a 32" Zenith HDTV), and a new LFM-1 subwoofer. I also added a universal DVD player (a Yamaha DVD-S1500) and a pair of Model 200 monoblocks late in 2004, followed in 2005 by a new surround processor (Outlaw Model 990) and upsampling DVD player (OPPO Digital OPDV971H).
The system has worked out very well in the new space. Surround speaker wiring is routed through the attic, allowing for a much cleaner installation, and the speakers (particularly the new Axiom surrounds) blend in very nicely, as shown by the nearly invisible left surround in the pictures above (mounted directly to the left of the fireplace, over the desk). The side walls in our new den were not conducive to mounting large dipole speakers like the Paradigm Reference Studio/ADP's, so we re-arranged the surround speakers once we were moved in. The lone Studio/ADP surround back was removed, the pair of Studio/ADP surrounds moved to surround back, and a pair of Axiom M3Ti's were added for side surrounds. For multichannel music, this arrangement is a nice improvement over the dipole surrounds; my experience with the Axioms as surrounds confirms the common advise that all five speakers in a multichannel music system be direct radiating speakers. For movies, the nearly ideal speaker symmetry provides better imaging and soundstage than the staggered surround arrangement our old house forced on us. While I have been very satisfied with the Axiom bookshelves as surrounds and will happily leave them in the system for many years to come, I do think that good dipole surrounds, located properly, are probably still the best approach for movie watching in most cases. Contrary to typical recommendations (and possibly due to our very wide back wall), the dipoles have turned out great as surround back speakers, particularly after the speakers were moved over to the Model 750 amp instead of being driven by an ailing Parasound HCA-800 Mk. II.
System History (Old Pictures):
[an error occurred while processing this directive] hits since August 12, 2002
