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Q

QuinnDexter

Guest
Hi All,

I got reading a friends what hi-fi mag the other day, and got the bug for suping up my audio visual setup at home. Believe me when I say it was previously rubbish. I am new to all the talk etc (2 weeks ago i didnt even know the difference between dts and dpl!!

1) 2 yearold 5.1 grundig piece of cr*p dvd player with built in receiver and amp, the speakers (supplied with the grundig) hummed, surround sound was practically non existant- plus i had to turn it on and off 10 - 15 times to get it to play a dvd. sigh.
2) a media PC (1.4Ghz duron etc) for playing divx an games on the tv
3) ps2 for san andreas (dont seem to play anything else these days)
4) my beloved sky+
5) TV 32" Panasonic 100H flatscreen CRT (2 rgb scart, 2 normal scart, 1 yellow phono video, 1 svideo)

I turned to ebay as i only had about £400 to spend, poor for new equipment.

I now have (yet to connect all together)

Yamaha RX-V630 receiver
Pioneer DV-636D dvd player
Sony surround sound speakers
1 X SONY 50W SUBWOOFER SA WMS 225
1 X SONY 120W CENTRE SPEAKER SS CN225
4 X SONY 100W SATELLITE SPEAKERS SS V225
MKII Kameleon 6in1 remote
Whole bunch a cables

I'm planning on connections as follows:
Video sources by S-Video connected to the Yam
Audio sources by optical tos link PS2, SKY+ / PC - jack to phono / DVD digi-coax & 5.1 phono to phono

Then Yamaha - TV via s-video

Does this sound like the best set up? I think the idea of routing the video and audio through the yamaha is simplest idea for controlling the whole set up. Will i loose much quality routing the video through another source?

I'm not too fussy about the whole thing (ie. i only spent 120 quid on all the cables necessary for the above) and am new to all this stuff.

Is there an area on this forum for legacy equipment purchasing, building a good system with older parts etc? It took a long time to find the bits i thought were going to be acceptable for my first system, i dont know how it would be rated compared to a system of similar components nowadays, has everything really improved that much in the last 3 years?

I recon the weakest parts are the speakers and cableing but it might be all cr*p in the eyes of the new audiophiles.

Your thoughts would help me sleep at night ;)

Q
 
for £400 you seem to have picked up some bargains.. one thing i would point out that while routing video via S-video on AMP is conveiniant it will probably not be best quality RGB scart would be better for Sky and DVD as well as PS2................
 
but i have soo many inputs on the back of the amp, seems a shame not to use em all :D

i tested the dvd player today through 15m old svideo cable i had knocking around and that was sweet, ive really been missing out over the last 2 years.

plus isnt it better that everything will be controlled via the amp no?

Q
 
oh, just to clarify the 400 (actually 365) quid was for the receiver speakers dvd player remote and cables. ebay went smoothly unlike some of the horrors i have been reading on here.

reciever 115
speakers 92
dvd player 29 (he even drove 15 miles to deliver it for free)
cables 89
remote 49
 
Lol, you neirly spend more on cables than anything else :)
 
gazbarber said:
Lol, you neirly spend more on cables than anything else :)
Believe me if i could have spent less i would have.. all came from a site i found called tvcables.com

dunno if they are all rubbish but the looked cool enough on the site (im sure everyone on this site will think i should have spent 3 times as much)
 
I think we all go over board with cables at times, but its all about seeing where a difference is felt. For example expensive scart cables will probably do nothing for a 28 inch or less tv especialy if the tv doesn't have an RGB output. But on a projector an expensive component cable, could be like you have bought a more expensive projector.

Ofcourse you will not know any of this without investigating/trial and error.
 
I'd just like to say, "Well done you"!!!

You knew you weren't happy with what you had, did a wee bit of research, went to fleabay and got you some bargains! Excellent!

Best off avoiding connecting all ya picture stuff through the amp as you are adding anothing link into the chain. When you can't avoid it any longer then use the amp for your switching. Basically, if you can't use SCART (get a fully wired SCART multiplug), then you can look at using S-vid and hence the connections in your amp.

They say your cables should be 1/3 or the equipent price, or some such quote, but go with the best you can get. I'm terrible for compulse buys so over the years I've bought a lot of rubbish but with a bit of patients and a bit of review searching you can get some good kit!

My advice? Enjoy what you have, keep reading here to learn how to get the best out of it then when you come to buying stuff again, check the classified ads first then go on from there!
 

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