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Sunday, June 17th, 2007
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1:50p - Work sucks, Home's better.
If anyone reading has been thinking to themselves, "hmm, I haven't seen Matt around the internet in a couple weeks," well, let me tell you something. First off, we lost one person at work which we knew we wouldn't have a replacement for, for nearly a month. Then another person got fired a week later. So we're two short for almost a month now. I'm doing twice my normal work, plus I have to become familiar with the authorization process for payments (which is something that means I have to approve and check other people's work for payment basically). I figured I'd be back online shortly after I got situated, but then last week we get a temp in who I end up spending half of my days training. SO! I'm doing two people's work load, plus taking on more responsibility, plus training someone for half of my day who won't be here anymore after next Friday! I'm more than extremely busy at work, so by the time I get home I just want to sit on my couch and unwind. Please don't think I've disappeared, this is only temporary and things will be back to normal by the end of July at the latest.
Anyways I finally got all my equipment together for my new entertainment center:
So, I was going to stick with the small "satellite" speakers from my last receiver, but I decided after it was all said and done that they just didn't have a good enough range. So I grabbed my dad's old Genesis speakers that he gave me when I went to college out of the back room. They bring a much fuller sound to the setup, but they are in pretty ugly shape (note the staining on the grill covers). I just ordered some new speaker grill fabric that will tie the color into the carpet better, and I will recover them in a couple of weeks. At that point I'll be done until next tax season when I plan to buy all new speakers (and enough to utilize my new 7.1-ness). Also, really quick, off to the right is a fairly decent sub-woofer.
The TV is still the same one (Samsung HLS-6187W, 61" DLP with 1080p).
The new AV Rack is nice, and before I brought the Genesis speakers in it seemed very lonely, but the speakers fill the area nicely. The stand was very easy to put together and it looks gorgeous. It cleans up really nicely with canned air, so I'll probably be using that since I use it for my consoles anyways.
From bottom to top:
Onkyo SR605 a/v receiver.
Xbox 360
PS3
Xbox(old)/Wii
Samsung Upscaling DVD player
The new receiver is really excellent. The main reason I got it is because I can input (nearly) all my video sources and output them through one HDMI cable out to the TV. The receiver even uses the Faroudja chip for upscaling anything that is passed through analog sources (i.e. the Xbox and Wii have slight visual improvements). Unfortunately the 360 is using the VGA cable, so that has to run straight to the TV. The receiver is also very impressive. I didn't notice how average my old receiver was, but I'm finding out slowly (still it was leagues better than using TV speakers). The spacial separation is now amazing with stuff that I'm use to (like Gears of War) now having even more depth to the audio. The bass is now also passed specifically through the LFE channel so there isn't so much bleed from the general low pass sound (so basically the bass is cleaner and not so constant). At first I thought this was a huge problem because I'm use to so much more bass, but then I watched The Last King of Scotland last night and I was absolutely blown away by the impact that separated bass has on the audio. Honestly, I wasn't expecting too much of an improvement from the audio quality with the receiver, just access to the new audio formats and getting rid of my switcher box for my a/v: so I'm happily surprised with the added bonus.
Well, that's the new set up. Unfortunately I don't have any good photos of the old set-up, but for fun: here's a photo of all the wires after taking down the old shelving, and here's the best old shot I have of the shelves.
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