sorry , repost ignore this post
[quote name=\'Steve G\']his isn\'t Bose... I have no clue of the brand, the amp is just a black box with a light in the middle. His speaker wires alone cost him around 400 bucks :lol: Crazy
One place I like loud ass sound is when I\'m watching a movie... once I get my house (this fall hopefully) I want some subs under the couch.[/quote]
You can build a very good sounding system for a LOT less than what your boss paid. It\'s all in the quality of the speakers themselves, and the placement. You don\'t need high amps or even magic wires to make it sound awesome. The best speaker wires I\'ve found? Lampcord. Really. You can get a spool of it in Home Depot for dirt cheap, and 14 gauge lampcord will EASILY handle over 5k watts of power. Monster Cables have a monopoly on shiny, and you WILL pay for the shiny. But there isn\'t any other benefit.
When setting up the room, try to avoid a lot of soft surfaces on the walls. Your basic padded furniture is fine, unless you have a lot of leather stuff. Then those are about the same as hard floors and walls. You are trying to control reflections, but not eliminate them entirely. If you eliminate all reflections, you will have a \"dead\" room, and need to have more available power from your system. You also don\'t want purely hard surfaces, b/c that will create massive reflections and distortion. Ideally, you should be able to stand in the center of the room and clap once loudly, and hear only one reflection. The sound should die out almost instantly, unless you live in an auditorium sized room.
The system... Get one that supports as many of the encoded standards as possible. Do NOT get one that has a built-in DVD player! Standards change, it\'s better to be able to upgrade what you want, when you want. Sony makes some of the best processors I\'ve seen, they are affordable and still support THX, AC3, DTS, SDDS, and of course, Pro Logic.
Speakers: Your center channel is the workhorse. Don\'t skimp. Get a decent box with at least 3 speakers in it, most good ones have 3. Small is OK, when everything is set up properly, it shouldn\'t need to be blasting to sound AMAZING. The front sides are also important, but can be almost anything. Here is where you want to match the power of the processor\'s amp. Look at the \"per channel\" rating, and match that. If it\'s 100 watts per channel, then look for speakers with a 100 watt or 150 watt peak. Try to find stuff with plastic cones, they sound crisper than paper, and will produce stronger signals with less distortion. Frequency response is important, you want to have just a little bit of overlap between the sub\'s upper end and the other speaker\'s low end. For a sub, get the biggest one you can afford, they are usually self-powered (Don\'t get unpowered!) and can always be turned down. Several smaller subs spaced around the room can also be a good idea, if the room has a lot of furniture to hide them behind.
