Home theater noob. questions (1 Viewer)

[Brad_c_g]

I just bought a house and it has a family room in the basement that is going to be my TV room.

The room is about 14'x 12' Has white walls, and pergo floors.

My current system:

TV: Toshiba 32" flat screen
PS2: with Monster s-video cable
Reciever: Denon AVR-1802
Speakers: 5.1 Denon system with 4 bookshelf speakers 1 center and a 8" sub woofer.

I will probably be either buying a seperate DVD player or buying monster component cable for my PS2. At the moment I use my ps2 as my dvd player and for what I want it seems to work just fine. I am using Optic sound from my ps2 to my reciever. The reciever can run DTS or Dolby D. Also its pro logic II.

How bad is the pergo floor going to hurt my sound? I am going to put down a throw rug but don't really want to carpet the whole room. Also I plan to paint this room a Dark blue, Dark grey color. Is there any special paint out there that helps acoustics?

What is the best budget speaker wire? Monster cable? Given the dimensions of the room what guage do you think I should use? my recierver is 100wx5

Last question is speaker placement. Should I do wall mounts or should I buy stands to put the speakers on so there almost eye level?

Thanks for any help or advice for this noob!

edit: one last question. I noticed lately that I have had to turn my reciever up higher then usualy to achieve the same sound level, is this due to heat? Do people mount fans in there home entertainment centers to keep there components cool? It has been in the high 80's low 90's lately and I don't think I noticed that before. Maybe my hearing is getting bad lol.

 

[MikeTrotter]

Brad,personally I would use stands for my front main speakers.Stands can help the speakers out more than wall mounting them.The rears would probably sound good on the wall for surround sound.You might want to measure your speakers and then hold them up to ear level from your listening position to get the height for the stands you will need(24in,27in etc).Last I would get a spl meter from radio shack(35.00,I think) and calibrate your speakers for superb sound.Which we all could guide you through the steps once you have the meter,which is one of the best tweaks you could do for your system.Sorry but I have no ideas about the paint.Hope this helps.

 

[Scott McVicker]

As far as speaker wire goes, I think the general consensus is that you can good speaker wire at Home Depot for resonable prices. I've read where if you have runs over 20ft long you should use a 12 gauge, but for shorter distances 14 or 16 work well. I know a several people who just buy a big roll of 12 and use it everywhere.

 

[Brad_c_g]

Thank you both ! I thought monster cable was pretty rediculously priced. I will check out the Depot!

Also I didn't even think about a tuning tool for the speakers. Where can I learn more info on this? what should I search for on these forums? I am guessing in the tweaking section? or if you want to give me a brief overview that would be great.

I think I recently noticed that the higher end Pioneer recievers have this built in?

 

[Bill Kane]

Brad, welcome to the Forum.

Even tho you've been enjoying yr system for a while, I am certain you'll benefit from reading thru the Beginner's Primer & FAQ.

It was put together last year by the members themselves.

Look for the link atop this Basics Area Forum.

bill