The System

System Philosophy

This system is optimized for stereo 2 channel hi-fi audio reproduction. It also performs a secondary duty as a home-theater setup, although it is not optimized for this. I enjoy watching movies, and the sound should be accurate, though not the center piece of the movie experience. For hi-fi stereo I enjoy my vinyl albums on the Gyro SE (See this page for information on turntable setup), and CD's through the Sony as a transport and the Yamaha's DAC via optical TOS-link interconnect. I also have my computer hooked up so I can listen to MP-3's and record albums to CD for car listening. I have a Soundblaster Live! sound card that records amazingly well (no audible noise at all) for being so cheap ($99). The output of the Soundblaster is connected to the Yamaha via a coaxial SPDIF connector, so I use the Yamaha's DAC and not the cheap and noisy one in the soundcard.

Electronics and Sources:

Audio-Visual Transducers:

  • Klipsch corner horns, 3-way hornloaded speaker system (Notice behind the right main speaker the window has been "modified" to accomodate the corner horn.)
  • Realistic Optimus PRO-C3 center speaker
  • Realistic Minimus-7 surround speakers (The ones shown are for the front surround channels that the Yamaha amp provides. There are two identical ones behind the seating area for the rear.)
  • Toshiba TW40H80 40-inch 16:9 rear-projection TV

Interconnects:

The back of the cabinet was designed to hold the interconnects so there would be no "spaghetti" mess visible from the front.

I don't adhere to the trend of using exotic interconnects. All of these cables are either from Radio Shack or Home Depot. There are 4 cables that are home-spliced: the component video cables from the DVD palyer to the TV are made of 3 30' lengths of RG-6 75 ohm cable connectorized at each end to RCA plugs, and 1 30' length of S-video cable connectorized at each end with S-video DIN-style connectors is used to connect the Yamaha's video output to the TV. The main speaker cables are 12 guage zip-cord and the surround speaker cables are 16 guage zip-cord.

The cables seen going into the wall connect to the computer in the other room.

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