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Best 2.1 Audio Solution for the living room
apotheos
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
We're finishing a redecoration of our new house, and a new player in my upstairs living room is a spanky 32" 1080P Samsung LCD. I adore it. Its a million times better than my 50" DLP, but its in the living room so it won't be my primary game system. TV, movies, the occasional game.
It didn't take long for me to get sick of the on board speaker, and I'm looking for a quality audio solution with the emphasis on looks, preferably nearly invisible in terms of speaker footprint. This has brought me to the Bose 3-2-1 series as it is, without a doubt, the best sounding 2.1 solution I've ever experienced.
A few things about it suck though. First, I have an amazing upscaling DVD player. Second, its really fucking expensive. Third, I don't even know if its expandable for the occasional Xbox usage.
I looked at assembling my own parts, but I have not seen receivers that specialize on being attractive and small. Nor have I found speakers. Any tips would be appreciated.
It didn't take long for me to get sick of the on board speaker, and I'm looking for a quality audio solution with the emphasis on looks, preferably nearly invisible in terms of speaker footprint. This has brought me to the Bose 3-2-1 series as it is, without a doubt, the best sounding 2.1 solution I've ever experienced.
A few things about it suck though. First, I have an amazing upscaling DVD player. Second, its really fucking expensive. Third, I don't even know if its expandable for the occasional Xbox usage.
I looked at assembling my own parts, but I have not seen receivers that specialize on being attractive and small. Nor have I found speakers. Any tips would be appreciated.
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Can I suggest any? No. Sorry... but look at things other than Bose!
I'm not sure what your budget is like but for stylish, small AND great sound you could take a look at Bang & Olufsen http://www.bang-olufsen.com/page.asp?id=343. Among other things they have developed a special amp. technology which is very effective meaning they do active speakers that are small and pretty powerfull (and energy efficient).
Another company is Bowers & Wilkins http://www.bowers-wilkins.co.uk/display.aspx?infid=821&sc=ht it must however be said I'm only familiar with their very big stuff. Still they have a reputation to uphold so I can not imagine them doing crap with their name on.
2. How aboot some pictures/diagrams of the living area? I imagine you've got to be able to hide/blend a pair of smaller satellites in there pretty easily, unless you wall-mounted. What are you using for a DVD/TV stand?
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
As a bonus, it's actually a 3.1 setup, there's a dedicated center channel driver in the speaker bar. Having a decent center channel really makes a big difference in home theater setups, since that's where the vast majority of movie dialog gets output. A dedicated center channel helps to ensure that dialog doesn't get lost behind the ambient effects that are usually output in the surrounded channels. Some of the user reviews say it doesn't have enough volume, while others say it's great, so I suspect it's limited in terms of how much sound it can push. Those who like it probably have it installed in smaller rooms, while those who say it's too quiet probably have it installed in too large a space.
You could also look into something like this, though it's quite a bit more expensive, and I'm not sure it would work. It's a 40-speaker array inside a single enclosure. From the user reviews, it sounds like it works best in sparsely furnished rooms (since the surround effect works by bouncing sound off the walls), so I guess how well it works for you would depend on your layout.