My Bedroom AV setup

[BrianMW]

Hmm, that's not too great is it! Hopefully they have improved.

I'm tempted by the E8000 if there is a good price drop before the new one.

I'm hoping just unlucky, as I really like the TV, would actually buy another!

 

[Mr X]

I'm hoping just unlucky, as I really like the TV, would actually buy another!

I purchased an ES8000 55 for the kitchen just before Christmas. Have to say having come from years of Sony TV's I love it!

The reason for posting is that not sure if Samsung have many quality issues or I've also just been unlucky? Years of Sony never any issues at all. Within 2 weeks of the Samsung the built in wifi just failed. Called Samsung not an issue they can replace the wi-fi card BUT I need to dismount the TV which is a very unusual install - the bottom of the TV is around 7ft off the ground! So Annoyingly I just used a powerline adapter rather than faffing around with taking the TV down as it's a two man job and the engineer they sent wouldn't/couldn't help me

Anyway I'm sure just unlucky and at the moment would not put me off buying another Samsung again.
PS. Also saw that 75inch beast in John Lewis WOW now that's a TV!

 

[BrianMW]

I purchased an ES8000 55 for the kitchen just before Christmas. Have to say having come from years of Sony TV's I love it!

The reason for posting is that not sure if Samsung have many quality issues or I've also just been unlucky? Years of Sony never any issues at all. Within 2 weeks of the Samsung the built in wifi just failed. Called Samsung not an issue they can replace the wi-fi card BUT I need to dismount the TV which is a very unusual install - the bottom of the TV is around 7ft off the ground! So Annoyingly I just used a powerline adapter rather than faffing around with taking the TV down as it's a two man job and the engineer they sent wouldn't/couldn't help me

Anyway I'm sure just unlucky and at the moment would not put me off buying another Samsung again.
PS. Also saw that 75inch beast in John Lewis WOW now that's a TV!

Eeek another pain, I had ran Ethernet to my kit so don't use WiFi on the D8000 Plasma but wouldn't want it to fail though... I too have used several Sony TV's, had several old CRT Trinitron's and then the classic CRT Wega 32" 100Hz monster (what a depth to a cabinet ) and after that I bought one of Sony's first plasma's the Wega KZ-42TS1e was quite a sight back then (circa 2001) and lastly after that an early 1080p Sony the Bravia KDL-46W2000, the Bravia developed what was known as the Bravia Cloud Issue where a big blotch appeared in the top left as the backlight fluorescent lamps were failing but could only be replaced in the screen itself happened 3 weeks outside its 3 year warranty Went to the LG Infinia LE8900 and that failed spectacularly but LG agreed to authorise Currys to replace it with the current Samsung, again outside warranty so was above and beyond so really had failures from all these guys recently and my mate just keeps saying get the Panny but I cant live with the flicker I see from the Plasma's they make, I love their picture quality but cant live with it... so hoping the Samsung and it's replacements work out well...

 

[Mr X]

Hi Brian

Have come back and read your thread yet AGAIN! Your choice in AV equipment is sublime and it keeps drawing me back to read again and to look at your photographs is a real joy. You sir have great taste! I just love those B&W's simply sublime.

Talking of your photography skills, I've recently wall mounted my ipad and was trying to do a simple transparent shot, drawing inspiration from your great shot. However mine is simple wal lcovering behind but I cannot get the right shot. As you know I'm fairly new/naive when it comes to photography, could you tell me how you went about it - lens, setting etc? I must be doing something wrong?

Also any more plans or impending upgrades?

All the best

 

[BrianMW]

Hi Brian

Have come back and read your thread yet AGAIN! Your choice in AV equipment is sublime and it keeps drawing me back to read again and to look at your photographs is a real joy. You sir have great taste! I just love those B&W's simply sublime.

Many thanks Mr X, coming from a guy with your setup(s) that really is a massive compliment

I must admit I have never got bored with the 800 series sound and never thought about upgrading due to sound quality as they are superb, the main problem would be replace with what that would work in this area? I am happy to stay (for now) but circumstances do change

Talking of your photography skills, I've recently wall mounted my ipad and was trying to do a simple transparent shot, drawing inspiration from your great shot. However mine is simple wal lcovering behind but I cannot get the right shot. As you know I'm fairly new/naive when it comes to photography, could you tell me how you went about it - lens, setting etc? I must be doing something wrong?

With the transparent iPad photo that is as much a trick as a photo, it was something that was popular on the internet some years back that I liked and the iPad is an easy target for it.

Basically you take three photo's all of with the camera must be on a tripod or in a static place as it cant be moved, you take a picture of the target in place and one without the target to get the background, you crop the background using layers in photoshop to get the background region identical as the screen area of the iPad and crop it and save it to the iPad's wallpaper and then take the final third shot with the wallpaper on, if the cropping is accurate and lighting done correctly then it should look like you can see straight through the devices screen, it works with any device that has a screen where you can save the background.

Here's my first attempt some years back on an old peecee laptop: (bad lighting though!)

typing in 'Transparent Screen Trick Tutorials' into google will give you much better help on doing it though... this one seems to follow the same idea

Also any more plans or impending upgrades?

TBH, no, I had been contemplating a new processor, maybe something along the lines of the Marantz AV8801 but as much as I want to play with the room correction and have some of the other features I still genuinely like the sound of the AV9, I was tempted to replace it as a while back it failed on me, it kept jumping between inputs very quickly and locked you out of control but it was sent back to Arcam who replaced the board and its been perfect since and I do enjoy its neutral and mellow sound with music and with the Oppo/NuForce doing the HD decoding it can still kick me in the pants too but if I can ever get the money together I might get a new processor

 

[luckysim0n]

glad you asked that question mr X been bugging me its a superb effect

 

[Mr X]

Thanks for the detailed response Brian, I will certainly give it a go but will need to get myself a tripod first.

Really love the 800's. I've got the XT series and PV sub in the lounge that I want to upgrade at some point. I always seem torn between the 800 series and Fact.8's by PMC who have also just announced the Fact.12's but I do like the B&W sound and always get drawn back to them and they seem well matched to the Arcam so will be a tough call.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[benjani]

Great thread this one, its so informative with all the details you need, great pics and some great knowledge for all.

I love the iPad trick photo, etc.

 

[Ewan154]

Wow

Very nice set up there-love the PJ

 

[D-an-W]

Damn, got to the end...no more to read!

Not sure what else you could do but I look forward to reading about it when you do.

 

[BrianMW]

Thanks for the nice comments guys, I only just noticed that some have voted it a star rating too! this really made me blush I am very happy with the system but I know it's all only in a small bedroom and not a bespoke custom install dedicated theatre room and cant compete with those that are, so to see some still like it that much and to take the time to vote is very humbling, thank you!

 

[Mr X]

I think you your room competes Brian and in some ways on a very different level. For me it has a real artistic approach and "clean lines" and above all, I've said it before and I'll say it again, your kit choice is sublime!

 

[luckysim0n]

Brian you are far too modest/humble you have done an outstanding job in the space you have had to work with I shudder to think what you would achieve let loose on a full sized room

 

[beecee]

amazing.. absolutely in awe of the gear you have got!

that kit would do a room 2 or 3 times the size its in! your ears must melt at higher levels!!!

 

[BrianMW]

amazing.. absolutely in awe of the gear you have got!

that kit would do a room 2 or 3 times the size its in! your ears must melt at higher levels!!!

Many thanks for that

TBH, I dont push it as high as some might so my ears are safe, its an advantage of speakers with high(ish) sensitivity that you can still extract a full and detailed sound at lower levels especially with music, I really like this...

My mate's Tannoy Prestige have a sensitivity of 99db! and he can run them of really low power valves at very low volumes but the big lazy 15" drivers are still delivering stunning detail, I cant rival it but they are very different systems

 

[weejinky67]

Love this setup, really nice mate bet it sounds amazing

 

[BrianMW]

Love this setup, really nice mate bet it sounds amazing

Thanks for the comments

Yeah I think it does sound really good, I have been working my way through the James Bond 50th Blu-Ray box set and reached Casino Royale today, what a sound (& PQ) that movie has, detail is amazing even on the crazy effects, I thought 'my' house was coming down when the building was collapsing in Venice, wow! Made me smile

Thanks

 

[upallnight]

Great setup
Is the projector screen 77inch?
As it looks a good size up from the tv and its a dilemma i have at the moment
Cheers

 

[BrianMW]

Great setup
Is the projector screen 77inch?
As it looks a good size up from the tv and its a dilemma i have at the moment
Cheers

Thanks

Yeah the screen is a mere 77" but it seems big enough in this little bedroom and the actual percentage of real estate over the 51 plasma is significant.

I was going to go more and the room can take the size of about 84"+ or something but the screen area would be getting closer to the ceiling and I wanted to avoid as much reflections as possible with the room being pure white.

Still contemplating what to do with the room colour or future of this room so if I change it to something better for PQ from the projector then I might up the screen size but for now I have been really enjoying watching some movies on it.

Thanks

 

[BrianMW]

Hi, I have been asked a couple of times lately if I have any updates so i thought I would show some small changes so far, not big but in the future I have some larger updates planned.

Source

I showed previously I was using an iPad as a solid state source connected to a DAC directly and the media on an iTunes server built from an old Apple TV, this worked really well and I was happy with it, happy until Apple decided I should no longer be, an update to the iPad broke this and it had issues retrieving the library structure from the iTunes Server, even switching to my i7 iMac and the latest versions of OS and iTunes did not help and I could not get the iPad to retrieve the full library, only partial, I could recover it with a full restore of the iPad but any new albums added to the library and the issue came back... after my SSD died and took out the iMac completely I decided to change it all anyway and I purchased a new MacBook Air with the latest Haswell core, I was dubious about how fast it would be but its fine, in fact its pretty amazing but for me its its environment operating thats more important, its sits totally silently serving my music libraries and DLNA libraries too with no fans on at all, even with my head against it I cant hear it (unless I run Call of Duty)...

So the MacBook Air is connected via USB to my DAC with up to 24bit 192KHz Asynchronous connection and I switch between using either BitPerfect or Amarra to ensure I am getting this, it sounds great I am very happy with it as a source and I control it from my iPhone too.

Most of the external drives on the older i7 iMac were firewire 800 but I no longer have this as an option so I added a further 12TB of USB 3 drives (3 x Western Digital Studio USB3) not the fastest drives but fairly quiet and easily fast enough for media serving duties and the old FW drives got used to back up the media and sent off site just incase... I was going to build another large NAS setup but I am not sure what is going to be needed yet for the next gen of HD movies in higher resolutions regarding streaming and what not so to save spending twice I got these and perhaps the drives can be removed from the cases and slot into a future solution as its cheeper buying these than bare drives anyway but no doubt interfaces with change again

My New Project

I have mentioned before I have pestered a mate for his old Tannoy SR-840 studio amplifier, I loved it but as he uses his (simply stunning) Ear Yoshino amps he hasn't used the Tannoy in years, so its a bit un loved and looking this way as its sat in a cupboard (and perhaps even abused by his mrs!)... finally he agreed to give it to me but there is much to do...

Currently there is some slight cosmetic damages (his wife related) and also a fault as one channel is blowing a fuse on the load protection panel on turn on so this must be fixed too.

Its a bit of a beast! weighing around 25 kilos and with 4 large capacitors that are actually the same size as a coke can! the transformer is over 17cm's across, it all looks more heavy duty than the 250watt into 8ohms suggests (875 watts bridged mono at 8ohms! or 1220w at 4ohms).

Studio orientated so no straight forward Phono in's or Speaker binding posts, XLR all the way or studio jacks

Adjustable Volume limiters are hidden behind a screwed shut Tannoy plate

So a lot of work to go into this amp to get it up and running and looking sweat so its a long term project but I know and remember clearly how it sounds and when attached to my mates Prestige Tannoys or his old Little Gold Monitors it was stunning, I am thinking the authority it can drive my 803s with stereo music might be something I like, time will tell.

Thanks,

 

[Rodrigues]

That Tannoy amp looks pretty sweet, but 250 watt in a bedroom? Wow!

Cheers!

 

[luckysim0n]

That looks like a beast can't wait for next update.
Are you sending it off to be fixed

 

[BrianMW]

That looks like a beast can't wait for next update.
Are you sending it off to be fixed

Yeah, its outside my skills with electronics to repair, I can see the fault, just behind the face plate right at the top there is a circuit protection and two small fuses on the top edge and when powering up it goes through its checks and you can see one of the channels fuses pop, but the why is what is beyond me...

Most of its internal components were fairly standard RS components so it should not be too hard to still get parts and repair for an expert but I will have to find one, failing that perhaps even talk to Tannoy about it but I dont have a bottomless pit of cash for it.

I already started the cleanup though, if you see some components on one side are cleaner that the other, this I can do

 

[Alliswell]

Just made me self a nice cup of Rosie Lee and read this from front to back. Great taste, superb kit and very interesting reading.

 

[Danial]

What a great little room!