I have wanted to do something with my living room for a while now. Having a 2 ½ year old son makes you forget that you actually have a living room, rather a play/toy room. So to put my plan into action, my first step was to find a toy box big enough for his toys that were considered “outdoor”. Upon looking for a while, I could not find one big enough to hold all these toys. Off to the lumber yard I go.… For about $65 I was able to build & stain a very nice wooden toy box that is about 2’ x 2’ x 4’, with that on the patio filled to the brim with toys & some nice toy bins for his room, I now had the living room back!
Now onto the good stuff! With our new venture into home theater, I have been around exciting new stuff everyday for a couple months now, this is very hard to do when you are into audio & video as much as I am. The first thing I wanted to do was to replace my current TV with a shiny new plasma. I have a very narrow living room, about 13’ from wall to wall. Did I take this into account when I bought my last TV? No, bigger is better right!? Not really. I had a 52” HDiLA from JVC which was about 18” deep, about 24” with the stand, so from where you sit, to the front of the screen was down to about a 10’ viewing distance, way too short for a 52” screen. So with this in mind, I decided to step it down a bit so I could benefit from the better picture that you get from viewing the TV from the proper distance. I decided to go with LG’s 42PC5D, a 42” plasma screen. This screen (and any of LG’s screens for that matter) is really amazing! The colors are more vivid than I ever saw on a screen, and the slim profile mounted to my wall, gained me about 20” more viewing distance.
The next item on my list was something I have wanted to do for a very long time… in wall speakers. But first I needed to figure out what I was going to do with the existing receiver, DVD player, cable box & Playstation that were sitting on the floor now that the old TV with stand/component rack was gone. I looked at our catalogs and found a nice a/v rack that would fit in the corner of the living room where I wanted it to go. Ok so the rack situation was taken care of. Wait! A couple of Yamaha receivers just came in! So now I have a new receiver to take home too: the new RX-V661 (yeah, I know, I’m weak)! Back to the speakers…. One of the best speaker companies out there is a company called SpeakerCraft. If you are into home audio at all, then you already know this, if not, just trust me on this one. I decided (with some persuasion from Mitch) to go with their AIM-LCR1 in wall speakers. The LCR means that you can run them as left, center or right. They house two 5.25” mid drivers and a tweeter, all on a plate that you can angle for aiming the speakers. With 5 of these in my trunk, I was on my way home for an exciting weekend. Did I forget to mention, LG has some really cool DVD players??? Yep, got one of those too. So at one o’clock in the morning I get done with putting all the speakers in and call it a night. Bright and early Sunday morning, I start doing the a/v rack and component wiring, by early afternoon I am all wired and cleaned up, it’s now time for testing. One of the most important things to me when I decided to redo my a/v setup was to have the ability to listen to my mp3 player easily, so with my napster player plugged in, I sit down and take a listen… WOW! Amazing! I was very pleased with it all…. very crisp sound, and tons of volume. I could hear symbols and different sounds that I hadn’t heard in those tracks before.
The last thing that I had to add was a subwoofer. I thought I knew what I wanted: something relatively big, to put out tons of bass when I wanted. The draw back to this theory was the size. I just went through the whole regaining my living room again thing. So I talked to our Definitive Technologies rep and told him what I was looking for, he suggested that I wait until we got their Supercube II in and set up in our theater room. But the Supercube II is an 8” sub with 2 passive 8’s, how could this make me happy, I had 4 15” subs in a wall behind my head in my Cavalier. Come on, he must not know me! Once we got our DefTec order in and Mitch got the Supercube II setup I took a listen, I could not believe my ears! This thing is only about 12” x 12” x 12″. It is UNREAL!. At home I actually find myself turning the sub down sometimes.
Throughout this project I have learned quite a bit. Bigger screens are not necessarily better. Bigger subs aren’t always better. Clearing out your living room, and using space saving a/v equipment to make your living room appear bigger, is definitely better! Everything that I used in my new Home Theater setup is on display in our new Home Theater room, so stop by and I will demonstrate it all for you, and you’ll be hooked just like I was, no wait, like I am!
