1st theater system (1 Viewer)

[BrandonJ]

i have been reading for several months and will start purchasing soon. i was hoping some body here could reveiw my equipmnet choices and let me know if they sound like a good combo
sony xbr40 inch vega..already own
sony progressives scan dvd player ...already own
outlaw 950 preamp or used rotel if i can find soon
parasound hcca2205 amp..used
rocket rs750ss
the big rocket center
and the larger rocket book shelf for rears
and the smallest svs cylinder sub
the room is a large bedroom about 16 by 27 or 28 not sure but only half will be hometheater what economical cables speaker and interconect do you recomend (i can get the monster cable avail at tweeter cc, best buy etc for a bought 50-60 % off) any help will be very helpfull
thanks in advance

 

[Ed Moxley]

The system you've chose sounds great. Sounds kinda strong, for a bedroom system............

For cables........
If you can get the Monster at a real good price..........go for it. Otherwise, I'd go for AR (Acoustic Research) cables.

 

[Dan Hitchman]

I'd probably go with a new Outlaw 950 over a used Rotel. Outlaw customer service is great and the 950 performs very closely to the Rotel 1066 pre-amp (except for the downloadable software upgrades). They both have a few quirks, though. Looking at the 950, $799 for a 7.1 pre-amp is a steal! I own one myself and have been happy with the little bugger for the most part for many months. Not a single playback glitch yet (including recognizing DTS-ES and DD EX flagged titles)!

The 950 just won Stereophile Guide To Home Theater's Budget Component of the Year award.

How much can you find the used Parasound amp for? If it's anywhere close to Outlaw's own big, 770 seven-channel amp (well regarded for its price/performance ratio-- it's supposedly OEM'd by ATI Amps to Outlaw's specs and built in the U.S.A.), then you might consider getting the Outlaw 950/770 package deal where you can save an additional couple hundred bucks. Their analog audio interconnects are well built too, and again you might get a package price.

$2398 for the 950 and 770 combo (the amp is rated at 200 watts x 7 @ 8 ohms), and $104.95 for seven .5 meter analog cables, plus shipping.

All you'd need then is a 12 volt mono mini-plug cord you can get at any Radio Shack so you can trigger the amp's power on sequence via the 950's event trigger.

The only thing about the Rockets is that you can't really demo them in your home without buying them. If you don't like them then you will have to pay a bundle to ship them back. Do you know of anyone who has the Rockets you are thinking about so you could get an audition of some sort? Sometimes people on the Forum can help out.

Similar priced speakers are the B&W DM series. I've auditioned their 602 Series 3 bookshelves and 604 Series 3 three-way towers (they're also built to the right size and much more stable without having to pay for speaker extenders like with the Rocket towers, which are both too short and slightly wobbly) and they have quite refined sound for the money (using Nautilus tweeters and Kevlar drivers), and more easily demoed at a B&W retailer. I listened to them on Rotel, Bryston, Parasound Halo amps, and Denon receivers. Pretty balanced sounding speakers, especially the 604's with good bass extension as is (I listened to some pipe organ music too). Matching amps with speakers is as much a science as an art form as they need to blend well with each other's strengths and weaknesses. B&W's need about 150 or more watts per channel of clean amp power to really open up.

About speakers: I don't recommend dipolars at all, especially if you are going to pump multichannel, high rez. music through the system as well.

Dan