Some new pictures of the Speakers

Some new Speakers, though they are hard to see in the dark theater. The Fronts are now Definitive Technology 7001's BiPolar towers, and the center is a Definitive Technology CLR-3000.

Some new pictures of the rack

The rack has now changed, but some of the same equipment remains. The projector is still currently the Panasonic E-700, the buttkicker amp is still pounding butts, a new Belkin PF-60 line conditioner was added. The Oppo was replaced with the RCA HDV-5000 HD-DVD player, and the HK-635 remains the workhorse of the rack.

A new toy

All that work I did re-arranging the center and sub...only to end up buying a CLR-3000 center the very next week! I love this center, it blends perfectly with my towers and has the clarity of strength that a good center channel needs. It did set me back a few beans, but it was worth it.

I moved the ProSub 200TL to the rear of the room and used it to supplement the low frequencies in the surround channels. I should be getting my matching sub back from the shop in a few weeks. Once that is installed, each surround will have its own low frequency sub, rather than sharing one.

The theater is alive now with teeth jarring bass all the way around the room. From the 10" SuperCubes in the two 7001 towers, to the matching10" sub in the center, to the 12" ProSub in the rear. If that doesn't shake your bones, the buttkicker will!

Now we wait for "300" to be released at the end of the month for the next big show. It should be quite a treat.

Twiddling and Tweeking

I did some rearranging, and moved the ProSub between the 7001's and connected the center speaker wire to the input and the C-25 to the output. I set the cross-over to 150Hz, the max that the ProSub would allow. I then connected the LFE pre-out to the pair of 7001's (along with the L/R speaker wires).

I re-ran my EzSet equalization on my HK 635, and as expected it now identified the center as LARGE rather than small (as it had with the C-25 previously alone). It also identified the 7001's as the sub channel. All the distances and cross-overs looked correct and when running the test tones I got a very good balance when measured with a RS sound meter.

I then checked out the speaker balances using the DVE HD disc and the 6-Channel output of the receiver. Everything was fine except for the sub. It was the same low 8-10dB that I have come to expect from using the analog outs on the HD player. I went back in and boosted the sub the required amount, and ran the all the tests again. I was very pleased with the results and was able to keep within 1 dB around the room.

The real test was playing the True-HD audio of the Matrix and finding out how it sounded. It was quite an improvement from my original un-powered center configuration. So after many, many hours of twiddling, I finally have a better understanding of what a sub enabled center channel can sound like. The towers seemed to handle the LFE without a problem, so I don't miss having the ProSub doing that function.

So I think I will stick with this configuration for a while and see if it grows on me. I can already appreciate the improvement in clarity of the dialog. Someday I do hope to have a matching set of speaker rather than what I have today, but I will just have to be patient and work with what I have.