289FIACobra
Agent
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2012
- Messages
- 26
- Real Name
- Herman Hong
This weekend I finally corralled my wife and went to Fry's Electronics so she can listen to the various speakers I was going to choose, and other items to make up a HT system. Oh, btw, the left channel of my Bose was not working. I just happen to notice something during a movie where there was suppose to be a left and right speaking scene and the left was kinda more toward the 'center'. Sure enough all that was coming out of the left was a soft white noise. Back to Fry's, we spent a good 40-45 minutes listening to the Klipsch RC-42,62,82, Martin Logans, Polk Audios and Infinity's. Since all systems in the room were using a NR-1050; I set the treble and bass to 0-db and used the same demo DVD with a mix of vocals, guitar, and mixed instruments, for all 4 receivers. She narrowed her likes to the Martin Logans and Klipsch. The mylar towers were $1100 each; the smaller towers just didn't cut it for her. The looks of the smaller towers also didn't match the living room theme as they were glossy black. The Klipsch match perfectly with the entertainment stand (an Ethan Allen furniture piece with no hutch) as it's a stressed black, so some of the brown comes through; the Klipsch black is a woodgrain veneer but not stressed but it was closer in looks. Most of the 30 minutes was listening between the ML mylar towers, RC-62II and RC-82II. The RC-52II I had listened to before were gone and the RC-42II in both our opinion was just too small. In the end, she really liked the RC-62II. Then I showed her the various AVR's but Fry's did not have the NR-809 but that's to be expected since that model is 2 years old. The NR-717 was available and I probably would have been fine with that, however, when me and the Mrs. were in the speaker room, she asked about the NR-1050 and I told her those were probably over $1,000 and with the RC-62II being $499 ea. we'd be over my $2,000 and still needed a sub and center... this is when she surprised the hell out of me... "if we're going to get a good HT system, why are we limiting this to just $2,000... I was thinking $5,000... " DAMN, I LOVE MY WIFE. I'll cut through the chase; this thread is long enough... I ended up with: 2 x Klipsch RF-82II 1 x Klipsch RC-52II 1 x SW-110 1 x Onkyo TX-NR818 100 ft. speaker cable, 14ga., 24 banana plugs and for the Onkyo, we decided on Fry's 4 year warranty; this is a $180 option, however, I don't have to send the NR818 back to an Onkyo repair center; I just drive it down to Fry's; they'll do the leg work on the first fix, and if something else crops up, they'll just give me a new one. My wife fully supported that idea. I spent the entire afternoon uninstalling the Bose and slowly just began the process of unboxing and installing everything. The only big hiccup was the HDMI-Out/Main... we were getting audio from the Cable (Comcast), BD-DVD player, but no video. After an hour of going through the setup and swapping known-good HDMI cables, I decided on a whim to use the HDMI-Out/SUB and bam, I got video. I later found out your can assign "monitor" output to one or both and apparently it was set to the 'sub' HDMI. So far, I've got about 5-6 hours on the AVR. This entire setup rocks... LITERALLY, the room was shaking on the opening sequence of Avengers when Loki enters S.H.I.E.L.D. though the portal. But then again, NOTHING was calibrated and I forgot to get the USB wireless (I don't have a long enough LAN cable to reach.) We can finally hear people very clearly now, thanks to the center speakers, but this thing is a bit tall ( 6") and if we put it on the same plane as the Plasma, it would block 2"-3" of the bottom of the screen. For now, we put it on top of the Bose's sub-woofer and it brings it just above our coffee table. 
I'm in the process of designing a solid shelf behind the plasma so it will sit just above the top of the Plasma. Off to Fry's again for the USB wireless transceiver and will begin the long task of updating firmware and such. I do want to thank everyone again. Had I known my wife would be so generous, I would have expanded my research a lot further. The timing was good as the RF-82II were normally $599 but they happened to be on sale for 20% off so we saved $240 on the speakers so that savings went right into the Onkyo TX-NR818, over the NR717, to gain the Audyssy MultiEq capability as schan had mentioned on another thread. I did take a couple of pictures so I'll post them when I get a chance. *EDIT* some pics added
I'm in the process of designing a solid shelf behind the plasma so it will sit just above the top of the Plasma. Off to Fry's again for the USB wireless transceiver and will begin the long task of updating firmware and such. I do want to thank everyone again. Had I known my wife would be so generous, I would have expanded my research a lot further. The timing was good as the RF-82II were normally $599 but they happened to be on sale for 20% off so we saved $240 on the speakers so that savings went right into the Onkyo TX-NR818, over the NR717, to gain the Audyssy MultiEq capability as schan had mentioned on another thread. I did take a couple of pictures so I'll post them when I get a chance. *EDIT* some pics added
. I don't use them myself but again, those with families swear by them. And I didn't notice anything about surround speakers. Maybe I missed it. If not, are they in your future or are you satisfied with a 3.1 system?
