Got a system? Want to show it off? Email Tom with a written description of your gear (with links if you want), a few pics, and anything else you want to say. He’ll get it posted here and you too can be Internet Famous.

Tom’s Gear

You’ve heard about it, now see what it is all about. Rather than reposting it here, visit Audioholics.com for a list of what he’s got. He keeps it pretty well updated so check it out.

Kalle from Germany’s System (user name on AV Rant – Kalle)

• Panasonic TH-50PZ80E (50″ Plasma)
• Onkyo TX SR 606
• Teufel 5.1 speakers (Teufel is an online-only brand, but very well reputated in Germany. http://www.teufel.eu/. If you have a chance to test some of there speakers, that would be amazing. I must say that I went for the cheapest system they have, the Kompakt 30… As you can imagine, they are not exactly good and the first thing I want to replace!)
  Their higher end series could be something, though.
• + Frankenstein 2 rear speakers for the 7.1
• PS3 (the old non-bitstream-out capable one)
• Popcorn Hour A-100, connected to an acer home server with 3TB storage

All the equipment is connected via HDMI and located in the back of the room, behind wooden doors. One long HDMI goes to the TV in the front.

ToDos:

• First I need a good sub. The Teufel one is producing bass, but it’s more like a plane taking off in my theater. It makes a lot of noise, but no clear bass.
• As I said everything’s located in the back, so I need to twist my arm to change channels. Maybe I’ll invest in an IR blaster. Any suggestions?

Jason from South Africa via Denmark

     

• Display – 34XBR960 HD-CRT – The set’s been calibrated to within an inch of it’s life, color, grayscale and gamma are pretty spot on, all enhancements defeated etc. Geometry was really tricky to get right but after hours spent marking off measurements on tracing paper and navigating through the maze that is the service menu, managed to knocked everything into place. Overscan is still 2.5 but it can’t be pushed any further without causing issues.
• DVD player is a Denon 1930, Blu-Ray is a Sony BDP-S350. I also have an Onkyo TX-SR705 reciever and Onkyo i-Pod dock.
• Speakers are all KEF – IQ3 fronts, IQ6c centre and due to the misses not wanting to live in a bachelor pad, HTS-3001 rears.
• The subwoofer, a gift from my wife ( you’ve got to love it ) is a Velodyne Optimum-10.
• The room has no windows other than those directly behind the TV but I’ve got light blocking blinds in place and a D65 light fitted behind the TV. The system is divided equally between my three big passions: movies/TV, video games and music.

The frequency response of Jason’s room (using 1/6 smoothing).

Don from Canada

• 50″ Sony SXRD 1080p display
• Sony 5.1 AV Receiver
• Polk Audio Speakers including 12″ sub
• Sony BD-500 Bluray
• Scientific Atlanta HD DVR with a 750 GB external Hard Drive
• Mac Mini (Front Row) as the entertainment PC
• EyeTV runs on the mac as another DVR for OTA shows – mostly kids shows and movies
• D-Link media server with 2.5TB of for all my pics, DVDs, home movies, music and recorder TV shows.

Just noticing all the Sony gear – I’m not a Sony lover – really.

Some of the gear is a little old – the Sony receiver was given to me by my brother-in-law. I am trying to justify a new Denon 3808. The picture and sound is really impressive with the current equipment. The TV is a few years old as well but I certainly have no complaints about the picture quality. It can’t produce the blacks a Plasma can but I have never been able to do a side by side test to know what I’m really missing. The mac mini (a year and a half old) struggles sometimes with HD content – I wish Apple would add a bluray player.

The pictures really don’t do justice to the custom unit I had built for the gear.

I also have another smaller LCD display in the house with a mac mini as well. All the music and video content is shared over the network except the SC DVR shows.

Up next, as I mentioned, a new receiver would be nice and I am starting to do some research on whole home audio. And, maybe I’ll start to dabble with home automation – controlled lights and such.

Jonathan from the US

• Sharp 42″ LC42D62U
• Yamaha YSP-4000 Soundbar
• Squeezebox Classic (Immediately right of soundbar)
• Onix x-Sub (On the left)
• Directv HD-DVR (Under soundbar)
• Samsung BluRay BDP-3600 (On top of HD-DVR)
• And my other speakers: CL Systems Bookshelves (on top of cabinet), driven by
• Sony STR DE-885 (right of HD-DVR and BluRay)

William from NJ

     
     
My girlfriend and and Live in a apartment in Hoboken so there is only so much gear i can put in here w/o Liz giving me the evil look. So my set up is done on the cheap. The core is the Onkyo TX-SR304 that I picked up at the Refurned Onkyo store (shop.onkyo.com). It came with a set of speakers and a sub. Nothing fancy and the whole thing cost me about $120 (i think a MSRP of 300 or 400). The rest of the system is as follows

1. PowerMac G5 housing a 2TB RAID5 which serves out media to my desktop, laptop and other computers. This is running Leopard Server and doing SMB/AFP as well as a remote BitTorrent computer. That lets me start a torrent from anywhere (Even my iPhone) and have the media file waiting for me when i get home.
2. TiVoHD w/ OTA HD (2.5 miles from NYC makes for great OTA HD)
3. Xbox 360 w/ HD-DVD 4. Headless Macbook running plex. This lets me have access to all the media on the server via my TV and receiver.

Everything is all wired up over GigE and Wireless-N when necissarry.
(IT guy by trade, can you tell?)

Christopher (mperfct)

     

• RBH SI760’s L/C/R
• RBH MC6-DB surrounds
• Pioneer Elite Sc-07
• Pioneer BDP-51FD bluray player
• APC H15
• Mits HC6500
• Seymour CenterStage XD 110″ 2.37 AT screen
• AV123 MFW-15
• Harmony 1000
• Lutron Spacers
• SA8300 (yuck)
• All HDMI/speaker/analogue/etc cabling from Monoprice, except for an unused 35′ BJC HDMI cable.

I’ve completely treated the front wall with 8 lbs rockwool, and with 6″ (mid-) bass absorption. I also have a false-soffit with the 6″ fluffy stuff in there. I’ve double-rocked 5/8ths sheet rock with green glue, caulked everything, and the sound isolation is not too bad. The MFW still shakes the house, and that is entirely acceptable to me.

I love the screen and it’s a lot of fun to watch everything down there, even when we have such a close viewing distance (110″ wide screen, front row is at 100″, Clint would barf before I even started up the PJ).

I built the whole basement first, and then finished up the theater.  I think the whole thing took me about 21 months, and cost about $42k, which wasn’t bad for adding 1,250 finished sq ft (the whole basement). The theater itself is roughly 11′ by 21′ deep, 7′9″ high.

Tom – On a personal note – Damn, dude, that’s a nice theater. Can I come over?

Alexandre (Kolia) – French Canadian living in Ohio

     

Here’s my little basement setup. We just got the projector 2 months ago. My girlfriend really didn’t care for it, until I went ahead and bought it! Now, she REALLY likes the home theater room!
Forgiveness wins over asking permission! Aha!

• Epson 6100 projector (1080p, 115in of available wall, no screen)
• NAD T743 receiver used as a Pre/Pro
• Pioneer BDP-120 Blueray player
• Emotiva XPA-5 amplifier
• Monitor Audio Silver series speakers RS-LCR, 2xRS6, 2xRS1
• SVS PB12 Plus subwoofer (I need a second one…)
• Xbox360 with RockBand instruments
• Harmony One remote
• APC AV H10 surge protector

I’m waiting for the LMC1 Pre/Pro from Emotiva to move the NAD receiver to the living room where it’ll join the Kuro 42in plasma that got bumped there by the projector.

j.Lucas Theatre

Television:
- JVC 56″ HD-56FN97 (HD-ILA Rear Projection – 1080p)

Receiver:
- Marantz SR-4400

Sources:
- Sony BDP-300 Blu-Ray Player
- Xbox 360 w/HD-DVD Player
- Xbox (Classic) Soft-Modded running Xbox Media Center (XBMC)
- Nintendo Wii
- Comcast DCX-3400 HD-DVR
- Project Debut III Turntable

Speakers:
- Mains: Paradigm Mini Monitors
- Center: Paradigm CC-350
- Surrounds: Paradigm ADP-350
- Rear Center: Paradigm CC-170 (Not hooked up at the moment. Right now, it’s basicly just ‘art’)
- Sub: Velodyne VRP-1000

Power:
- Transparent Cable PowerBank 2 Power Conditioner (x2)

Lighting:
- Dimmer: Lutron Mistro IR (Wired around the room using extention cords)

Remote Control:
- Logitech Harmony One