rossyl

Hi,

I know there have been various thread like this, but I'm looking to buy asap so wuld apprciate your advice.

I'm after a all in one package for a 17 x 20ft room. It must be quite loud, enough to fill the room, and make my ears bleed! (well it must be quite loud)

It must have an active sub.
It must be region free. I have many american disks.
It must be able to read DVD-R's, as I have a recorder.
It must look fairly nice.
It must have SCART out
It must have at least two inputs (LP deck, Video) I would like 3 if possible.

My budget is £450.

I have been offered a Sony DAVs888 for £430. However, it is said not to be region free. Will it play DVD-r's?

Any other cheaper suggestions?

Thanks for the help.

DVD Josh

I would suggest that you get a receiver/speaker combo and then get a region free (or hackable) player. That will GREATLY increase your options.

rossyl

but could i do that within my budget. I don't think so.

DVD Josh

You absolutely could. I'm not sure about how much things cost HT wise in the UK, but over here, if you were talking about DOLLARS ($450), I absolutely could.

You see, if you go with the hackable route, you are looking at the bargain basement models. My current cheap hackable, a KLH, cost me $25. The one most US folks gets on the cheap, the Cyberhome 350 (I think) is $35. Either way, you have 90% of your budget or more for the rest of the system.

Could you do it? I think *so*

Brian Shannon

I am going to disagree, sorry.

I do not know how anything in that price range could adequately fill a room of that volume. Also, by active sub are you talking about "powered", as in self amplified?

DVD Josh

Brian, you couldn't possibly mean to say that the new Onkyo 770 ($400-$500) with 135W per channel could NOT fill that room with sound?

rossyl

100W per channel would fill the room.

I meant self-amplified sub.

If I spend £450 here on an all in one I get a very nice looking piece of kit, with a decent brand name. Denon, Sony etc.

If I spend it on sepatrates in particular I will end up with ugly large speakers!

Also here's how much it'll cost from www.richersounds.com (UK cheap hifi)
DVD £50
AMP £150
Centre £70
Fronts £80
Rear £70
Sub £65
Radio £60

£545 and it will not look as nice.

I'm currently looking at the Denon DHT-500

DVD Josh

Ugly large speakers? You care more about aesthetics than sound? Your priorities are out of whack. What's the sense in having a nice looking unit that sounds bad?

The specs on the speakers in the denon unit are shockingly low. Response to 90khz? Ugh. That means your sub will be picking up the slack your speakers should in that range. Sure, it looks nice and neat, but it won't sound very good.

No one says you have to get "ugly large speakers" to have a big sound. There are plenty 5 1/4" driver speakers that sound plenty good.

rossyl

think you've mis understood the speaker range.

The denon has been reviewed here and been given 5 star. It also has brilliant upgrade-ability. 7.1 Surround!

DVD Josh

7.1 surround doesn't provide much upgrade over 6.1.

If it fits your bill, go for it. I didn't misunderstand the speaker range either, it's right on the site.

rossyl

90 khz just means that the tweeter can reproduce extremely high frequencies.

we are talking 3 different speakers here with the approximate freq ranges as below...they could well be 20-30Hz here and there

1. Supertweeter from 16 Khz and higher
2. Regular speakers (The 2way PPD stuff) around 70 to 20Khz
3. Sub woofer 30Hz to 100 Hz..

so here you get a full frequency spectrum



As for the 7.1 at least its there.

I think for the money it is an extremely good buy!

Brian Shannon

I was not aware that the sub in this package was powered. Also, I am not familiar with exchange rates.

Having said that I am going to stand by my statement. Power rating as in "watts per channel" have no standard and are not regulated. I frankly do not believe that unit can produce that much wattage per channel and even if it does I do not believe that those speakers will be as the original post indicated ie., .

Here are the specs

http://www.onkyousa.com/model.cfm?m=...&class=Systems

5 1/4" drivers and an 86 db sensitivity do not inspire confidence.

Just my .02!

That is why this is a great forum!

cajun_junky

I have the Onkyo 760 and can't be more happy with it. It fills my living room (14 x 20) with more than enough clear audio. The ranges are wonder to my ears and the sub shakes the room. If there is a weak component I would say that the center channel is not up to par but it is still MUCH better than the speakers on my RPTV.


For what I paid for the surround system (about $400) it can't be beat. Granted, it is not a $1000+ system but it fit my budget.

I also bought a Pioneer A563 DVD player for a little over $100. It is not region-free but does SACD very well and I wanted that more than region-free. You should be able to find a region-free player for something around (or less) than $100.

Here is a schematic of my living room. It is not to scale but gives you an idea of the challenge I was faced with. Judge for yourself.

Living Room