What made you feel good today?

[Mechan1k]

Originally Posted by asagaai

Discovering not to overcomplicate things.

Two years ago I decided to buy a decent sound system for my main TV. But space in cabinet is limited in height and my wife does not want a huge system.

So I bought a Marantz Audio video receiver that is narrow and fits, does 50 Watts at 8 ohms by 7 channels. Little underpowered, but I was planning on running 2 speakers Left and right, with a SVS subwoofer.

Got 2 SVS Ultra bookshelf speakers that allow dual amping, as does the Marantz Receiver. This means that I run 1 channel 50 watts 8 ohms into the woofer of one speaker, and 1 channel 50 watts into the tweeter of the speaker. So effectively 100 watts of 8 ohms per speaker.

I set the receiver so the only speakers were L and R and subwoofer. I assumed this meant all signal processing would be sent to these 2 speakers, as well as to the subwoofer.

The sound- dialog was hard to hear. The Marantz receiver has a 500 page manual!!!! - and is not intuitive- and I read through it and tried to jig the settings.

But 2 years on- I was sitting there struggling to hear dialog and the volume max was sorta meh. The SVS ultra bookshelfs are supposed to be amazing- and they were just -underwhelming.

I started to think about getting a centre speaker and a Emotiva power amp with 300 watts per channel, to drive the left and right speakers. Only thing holding me back was extra boxes and my wife not liking it.

Anyway, had a crap day at work yesterday and took today off. Had a coffee, sat down, to try and work out why volume was stuck at going to 80 instead of 100.

Noticed front panel setting had been set to surround- turned that to stereo and presto, massive sound that literally hurt my ears listening to Peaky Blinders.

For some reason the receiver set to surround was not passing the signals for the middle speaker and other surround speakers to my L and R.

Now with receiver set to stereo, all signal is being processed to L and R. Now can turn to 100 volume - but the tweeters and my ears start distorting at 80.

Such a simple fix and there I was about to roll thousands for a 600 watt emotica power amp and a couple of gs for a middle speaker- when all I needed to do was apply some of my gray matter.

The SVS ultras are now sizzling- music and watching good movies- just mind blowing. Watched that 6 on Netflix with Ryan Reynolds and the sound was incredible with the SVS subwoofer.

My wife came home with volume at 73 and she said it sounded like a movie theatre as soon as she opened the front door

Realisation that I am a dumb f&*er sometimes but I am still wrapped- made me feel very good today.

Look at it as a "cheap upgrade" to your home theatre