Home Audio / Re: SPDIF support

[brk]

On Apr 9, 2007, at 10:25 AM, Ben Scott wrote:

> On 4/9/07, brk <gnhlug at karas.net> wrote:
>> For me,  a speaker should reproduce a sound faithfully and
>> accurately, without imparting it's own color or style on that sound.
>
>  I'm curious as to what brand(s) you do like.  (Just curious what you
> like.  I am not interested in actually getting into discussions about
> why this or that should be considered objectively better, and I doubt
> the rest of the list is, either.  :)  Such discussions usually go
> nowhere useful anyway... :)  )

(Some of my opinions may be a tad dated, I generally keep up with  
things, but since I got out of my audio/video/automation business in  
2001, I'm not as on-top of the minor details as I used to be).

There are multiple classes/categories.  For the upper mid-fi stuff  
(ie: what you'd typically find in a non-engineered home theater) I  
like the Harmon/Kardon receivers the best, followed by Onkyo/ 
Integra.  The HK gear seems to continually put out the best high- 
current, low-noise, flat response stuff in its class.  The Onkyo  
stuff is (IMO) a good close second.  I won't consider much of  
anything else to be a contender.  That's not to say there are not  
other quality components, but that within a given price band they are  
usually bested.

For speakers in this range, Pinnacle makes (or at least used to) make  
some incredible stuff for the money.  They are fugly to look at, but  
perform like stuff 2x their price.  RBH was another favorite brand,  
as was B&W.  *Some* of the higher-end Infinity stuff is good here also.

Getting into the components, Integra does well here, as does Rotel.

Higher-end speakers include Maggies, Velodyne subs, higher-end RBH's  
and the higher-end Celestions.  Speakers tend to fall into west-coast  
sound, east-coast sound, and British sound, so you sort of have to  
pick a category and go from there.

Most of the upper-end of Panasonic's video gear is also a stable.   
All my plasmas at home are from Panasonic as is my main theater TV  
(PT56WXF95)(rear projection CRT), and my DVD-H1000 is still a solid  
piece of gear (even if it's a bit old).

When I had my A/V store, I carried a limited line of products that  
were generally hand-selected in their respective price ranges.  At  
typical theater package that was a "starter" system from me, but head  
and shoulders above anything from a Best Buy/Tweeter/etc kind of  
place was about $14K.  Better packages came in around $50K, and  
rarely did the electronics go for over $70K, unless the customer had  
either some insane requirements, or an absolute desire to be  
separated from their funds.  Room engineering and build-out would, on  
average, come in at about the same amount as the electronics.

I could tell endless stories about the elitism and outright bullshit  
of many brand reps.  A short story:
A rep from Straight Wire came into my store to tell me all about how  
their wire was simply the best thing around.. blah blah blah.  I took  
him down to the first level of the store and showed him my "basic"  
$15K theater setup.  I told him that since his product was so great,  
and made such a noticeable difference, that I would replicate this  
same setup, only instead of using the "basic" cables that I had used,  
I would setup everything with his best product for each  
interconnect.  Clearly, customers would be able to see and hear the  
difference between the two setups for themselves.  To make a long  
story short, he left about 10 minutes after that offer and never  
returned or contacted me again.