The "Shit I just bought" thread

Vvoid_sl said:

I don't see a receiver mentioned anywhere, so it sounds like you are routing things directly to the TV and sound bar. Buying even a moderately priced receiver would have eliminated most of your problems right there, wouldn't they? Simply buying "dumb" speakers to go with it would have made things so much easier. I see that wireless was probably a big part of your decision-making process, but I'm fairly sure there are some options available for that too.

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Yeah, the TV handles the video processing and the Playbar handles the audio. Keep in mind when I was shopping for this, due to my own negligence and dumbassery, I had done no prior research and didn't know a couple of key things:

1) the differences between Dolby Digital and DTS and what most current bluray's are encoded in
2) what High-Def audio was and what was required to pass it
3) what TOSLink/Optical/SPDIF even are
4) the limitations of the Sonos home theater

So with this in mind, you can see my depth of knowledge was quite lacking. I knew home theaters had a receiver, and a whole bunch of speakers that needed to have wire run to them, and the .1 on the 5.1/7.1 must have been the bass or something...yeah not much to work on. So when I set down with the Magnolia guys and they said, "Here is a home theater solution that takes care of a lot of the problems for you. No speaker wire runs, don't need a receiver, runs completely off your home subnet and can be controlled by tablet/phone, and listen to this....*THUD BANG WOOOOSH BOOM BANG BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*... and you're getting full "surround" sound!" Except he didn't do the air quotes like I'm doing right now irl. It certainly sounded surround, and I didn't know you could trump up a PCM stereo (or even what PCM was) signal to Dolby Pro Logic II matrix and make it sound surround as hell, even if it wasn't truly. I bought it hard, and waited blissfully for Geek Squad to come install thinking I'm getting a bad ass surround system with a big TV. It wasn't until my geekness kicked in after the install and I started reading about it on AVS/Hi-Def forums and started discovering the truth.

Hindsight, yeah I woulda went with Yamaha/Onkoyo/Denon receiver and 5 discreet speakers with a sub or two. But alas, I did not and have to deal with the shortcomings. Honestly, it doesn't sound bad. I've had about 15-20 people over for GoT/Sports/movies and not a single one had any clue it wasn't true surround or didn't think it sounded bad ass. The bass hits hard, the whole damn house shakes when it's at like 60% volume, and it does feel like an immersive experience. I added a Zone: Amp and two outdoor speakers of a different brand and can bond the zones together to play simultaneously, or my wife can be streaming Spotify/Pandora outside while I watch the Romo break his own record and throw 3 pick6's in one game this fall. I'm not sad or depressed about my set up. Just thought I would share my research and knowledge with people who might be looking for a home theater system.

Yup! Honestly, its not a bad product for what it is. There is something to be said for the simplicity of it. And now when you want to upgrade you can just retire it to the bedroom and use all your new found smarts on a traditional setup!

And honestly, synthetic surround sound isn't horrible. I always recommend for people to buy a decent sound bar over a HTiB. While a few HTIB set ups may trump a sound bar, they certainly aren't worth the dealing with the downsides of a traditional 5.1 setup for sub par sound quality.

This would probably go better in a "Shit I Just Built" thread, but here's a pair of speaker stands I just made for the new bookshelf speakers I bought for surround speakers that go with my floorstanding front speakers.

Good quality speaker stands that would actually hold these monsters cost too much, so I went to Lowe's with my dad and made them out of shelving, pvc pipe, and some plumbing flanges.

Total cost: $28 to make 2 stands.

Looks good. Pick up somecable cover / ties there as well, make it look neat and tidy. Pawn the Pepsi bottle and you're all set

Dude I think we have the same couch (my non-leather one)

I am totally fucking terrible at that cord organization shit, even though I'm good at just about any other kind of organization. I look at my mess of cords and I just herp 'till I derp. I did kind of clean up the cords that come off the back of the TV, but god I do not even know where to start with the rest. Especially that terrible mess on the left side where there's 2 rear speaker wires, 1 front speaker wire, a headphone extension cable, 2 ethernet cables, an hdmi cable, and will also soon be a subwoofer cable. Right now that's also all running across the kitchen doorway to the left (except for the front speaker wire) and I just kinda have it ghetto duct taped to the floor across the doorway so people don't trip over it (yes, I know I need to fucking vacuum but it's past 9pm atm).

If someone wants to stop by and help with cord clean up feel free.

Dude that duct tape is some next level shit. Leave it as-is IMO. True gamer.

Noodleface_sl said:

Dude that duct tape is some next level shit. Leave it as-is IMO. True gamer.

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Sad part is I need to redo that and add in the subwoofer cable tomorrow since I'm moving my sub to between my desk and couch in front of that speaker stand that's shown a couple shots above. Or I could just add another layer of tape on top of that I guess.

Lol, the duct tape. Jesus christ.

I just use these, but they probably wouldn't work well on carpet because they have sticky pads on the bottoms -http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?p_id=8288

I'm sure you can find something similar for carpet.

You could have at least ran the wires from the tv behind that center support. I wouldn't be able to watch anything with that hanging down and calling me a lazy fuck every time I look at it.

For the floors, I've had cable push rods for years so I just push them under the carpet. Could prolly do the same thing with a couple coat hangers + more time. For multiple wires you have to make sure they run side-by-side and not in a bundle or you get a big ass lump under your carpet.

I'm going to try to do some major work on the cables tomorrow and hopefully clean them up. I've got a couple ideas on how to make it look better, but I have to wait until Fedex gets here tomorrow with the new RCA cable for my subwoofer anyways.

Went ahead and got all the curtains for the room put up, looks pretty decent and blocks out light quite well:

<critique> Iron those curtains you damn, lazy bum! </critique>

Sean.....you're killing me, lol. Noodleface's comment also killed me.


Just picked these up for the drift car, shit is so fucking close to being done it's driving me insane.

Hey Sean, you might want to pick up some of these from Home Depot/Lowes. I can't remember what they are called exactly, but they were in the isle with all the random wiring stuff. Comes in a pack with several long 4' pieces, and joint "L" pieces for snaking them around corners as well. They're flat on the back with sticky adhesive that just sticks to a wall. Makes it real easy to snake cords around a doorway or up a wall, and looks halfway decent for being a cheap amateur install.

Here are some pics of my rear surround speakers in my basement where I used these wire covers. We're going to repaint the walls this summer, so I haven't bothered painting to make them blend in yet, but once they are the same color of the wall, they wont even be noticable. All of my friends that have seen them have thought they looked damn good, and asked where I got them at. They sell them in various diameters, depending on how many wires you need to send through them. Mine are the smallest diameter, since I only had 2 speaker wires to send through.




(also, fuck my paneled walls in the basement, need to rip those out and drywall one of these days. The stupid stuff that people did to houses in the 80s when they were built...)

Yeah those work wonders for running cables around the house Sean, you should definately pick some up. I think you can get a good sized pack of them at Home Depot for like 50 bucks. Also look into those wire tabs that have sticky shit on the back side for hiding all the wires behind the metal on your entertainment center.

Here's the best picture I can show of what I'm talking about.

And this may be WAY more than you want to do in an apartment that you rent, but you can actually buy baseboards now that have empty space in them for running cables as well. Probably wouldn't want to go that far in a place you don't own yourself, but it's a damn nice option for homeowners.

Tarrant_sl said:

Sean wtf is it with you having garbage laying all over the place in your pictures.

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He has a cat, what do you expect? They are nothing but vile, vermin.