Tales from the Mid-Budget
Trenches, or It's Not Just a Project, It's a Process
Part Three: Making Everything Work
With all of my new home-theater gear
delivered, I figured I could set up everything one morning as my newborn napped. How wrong
I was! I wasn’t quite ready for the enormity of the task. But help was on the way . .
.
SA (Setup Anonymous)
Some may mock me, but I know that quite a few GoodSound!
readers (identities hidden to avoid public humiliation) could join me in a group
confession: We need a little help in getting all this stuff to work in harmony. You may
know someone who dropped $10,000 on their system, only to leave one component in the box,
its back portals a big mystery to its proud owner. Or worse: There’s a cheapo RCA
cable going straight from the DVD player to the 50" HDTV.
It’s not a secret that setting up a home-theater
system is not exactly a simple, intuitive process. Many big electronics retailers now
charge to set up everything from home-theater systems to computers in customers’
homes, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. (The setup fee for home
theaters varies according to the size of your TV, the article notes. Apparently, the
bigger your monitor, the deeper your pockets.) Eventually, I did turn to someone for help:
my brother-in-law, Dave, who’s trained as a sound engineer. (He attended and served
as an instructor at Full Sail in
Orlando.) But first, I tried to set up everything myself.
All of the new little black boxes needed a safe place to
live. Because my décor relies on comfort, antiques, and flea-market finds, I investigated
wooden cabinets. I wasn’t interested in gigantic entertainment centers -- my TV is
48", and I didn’t aspire to hide it in a pricey armoire. Also, I dislike that
"wooden bridge" above the TV in most of those units. So I found two matching
wooden cabinets with open shelves at a local freight salvage warehouse -- the TV fits
between them. All of my electronics fit well within them, and there’s plenty of room
for ventilation above each component. However, I often wish for an alternate reality in
which I live in a sleek loft with modern décor and open-backed shelves.
I had to fiddle around with the connections more than I
could have imagined. Example: I endured a visit from a red-eyed cable guy who began
disconnecting things willy-nilly. (The cable company thought our signal was weak -- they
weren’t able to transmit pay-per-view ads.) The guy suggested that my husband could
reconnect everything when he got home from the office. I grabbed a flashlight and
physically blocked him from the equipment, squeezing behind the TV and cabinets. But was
he really worse than the cable guy who originally set up our service, who sported an
award-winning plumber’s crack despite it being the dead of winter? The unbearable
ring of his cell phone (which he answered, to speak with friends, every two minutes) put
him in the lead. What gave me the confidence to deny his request to remove my beloved
three-way splitter? The setup diagram.
Map it out
The first thing I did when all of my components were still
in the box was to map out a diagram of what connected to what, and how. I won’t scare
or bore you with the details, but I needed to connect the cable from the wall to a cable
box, as well as to a ReplayTV unit. Then my new Denon AVR-3803 receiver could handle
signals from the ReplayTV, the digital cable box, the VCR, and the DVD player. The cable
split three ways to go into the cable box, the ReplayTV, and the TV for
picture-in-picture. We’ve had trouble connecting a digital cable box directly to the
ReplayTV, so we decided to sacrifice our ability to record digital-only channels. This
compromise is typical of the complexities we encountered in setting up the system.
After I drew a not-too-convoluted diagram, I headed out to
supplement my stash of cables: some coaxial, some digital, some plain old RCA.
| Last But Not Least: the Right
Speakers!  With
my system almost completely assembled, I was still using a makeshift speaker array. I was
looking forward to using my 15-year-old Infinity pair in another room, ditto the
five-year-old Gallo Nucleus Micros. The 20-year-old Panasonic Turbo Thruster (and its mate
and matching stereo) had a hot date with the Goodwill guy.
I considered systems from manufacturers such as Paradigm,
Athena, and Axiom. I was lucky enough to hear the Axiom Audio Epic Grand Master system at
the home of an audiophile friend. It delighted my ears, but real-life limitations came
into play: I needed smaller speakers, for sure.
Begging SoundStage! Network staffers for suggestions, and
reading speaker reviews here, there, and everywhere, I kept seeing one system that seemed
to meet all of my requirements -- the Mirage Omnisats -- but I was afraid to buy them
before hearing them for myself.
But the speaker selection isn’t great here in Corn
Country. I traveled to the big city to get an earful of what I’d be buying. The
Tweeter in Lincoln Park, in Chicago, obliged, demonstrating both the Mirage Omnisats and
the Omnisat Micros (as well as a few other brands of similar price but much lower
quality).
It didn’t take much listening or looking to decide on
the Omnisats. They sounded perceptibly bigger than the Omnisat Micros, and they still fit
into my budget. They now sit nicely on stands behind each corner of my couch, as well as
atop the cabinets beside my monitor. The subwoofer is huge, but it hides nicely at a far
corner of the couch.
...Kelly Kolln |
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I set up everything pretty quickly out of the box, during
one of my aforementioned newborn’s naps. Yet the system didn’t quite come
together that first time around. I couldn’t get the ancient VCR to play its audio.
Also, I didn’t have my new speakers yet, so I was just using the TV speakers for
audio. The more temporary this solution would be, the better.
When my brother-in-law showed up, we promptly disconnected
everything, leaving all of the components on the floor in front of the cabinets and TV.
First, Dave had some fun spending my accessories budget. Then, he patiently bore my
"reminders" not to step on or scratch the components. I momentarily thought
he’d gone mad when I saw him hunched over two remotes, pointing them at each other
(he was programming the Denon remote to handle the functions of six others).
Because my entire system is somewhat inaccessible from the
back, it was important for us to wire everything up and test it first. It all had to jell
on the floor before we’d move it into the cabinets. We put our heads together to
troubleshoot my original diagram, and, a few cable-buying trips later, we loaded
everything into the cabinets and zip-tied the tangles of cords hanging from the back,
mercifully hidden from view.
Obsessive labeling
The most important lesson I learned in all of this: Thou
Shalt Label Everything On Both Ends. When the cable guy came, I depended on those
descriptive little strips of masking tape. My rule of thumb is to label everything,
in preparation for the inevitable night when you’ve purchased a new component and
have guests coming over to audition it in half an hour. When you’re back there with
your flashlight, you don’t want to find a hanging cable labeled Input. I’d much
rather see that masking tape looking like a little gift tag: From DVD To TV. I also note
the type of connection: S-video, RCA, audio, video -- all the details. You might feel
silly writing all this out on strips of tape, but you’ll thank yourself some day.
I still have my original diagram (I can’t bear to part
with it, even though the setup has changed), as well as the one Dave scrawled the day he
set up everything. Because I’m always interested in self-improvement, I’ll
declare right now that I’m due to update it. Since Dave’s visit, we’ve
installed a new component, as well as the new speakers in a different configuration. Think
of it as estate planning: If you got hit by a truck tomorrow, who would take care of the
home theater?
The big reward
When it was all done -- finally -- we rehydrated, got a
breath of fresh air, sat down, and popped in Almost Famous. We jumped out of our
seats when the plane almost crashed, and slipped back to 1973 during the Stillwater
concert scene (well, Dave wasn’t actually alive back then, but I was). And that was
with the cobbled-together speakers I described last time.
Now, I finally have the final piece of the puzzle: new speakers (see sidebar).
I think everyone must go through such a period of
trial-and-error when setting up their system. If you know anyone you can bribe to come
over and help you through this process, take advantage of him or her. Who wants to hire
the guy from the big-box store? He might not understand why you want that three-way
splitter, even if it’s not the most logical choice. Ultimately, Dave saw me enjoy the
fruits of his labor, as only a very good friend or relative can.
When will home-theater setup become wireless, or otherwise
much less complicated -- without compromising quality, of course? It shouldn’t take a
couple of Ivy League graduates and a sound engineer an entire weekend to plug in and play
five black boxes, a TV, and some speakers. Then again, I now have a system that’s
completely tailored to my family’s quirky demands, and that doesn’t come
straight out of the box for free.
...Kelly Kolln
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