Hi Everyone..
Thought I'd drop a few words here to say "hi" and "this is me".
Soon after college, when I finally had a small amount of disposable income, I bought a modest home theater setup, the Atlantic Technology 250 system and a Harmon Kardon AVR25 MkII. At the time, that system cost me ~$1300. That was a LOT of $$ for me back then, but it kept me happy for several years.. until it was stolen during a house move. This is when I learned about homeowners insurance. Turns out that the 250's were no longer in production, rather, AT was up to the 270's by that point. I was explaining to the insurance agent that I was having a hard time finding a new set of speakers for the same $1,300 I originally paid for them. I told him that the same line of speakers were now retailing for $2,800 and blah blah blah. I was really hoping I might be able to squeeze another ~$500 out of the guy.. to my very happy surprise, he said "spend the $2,800". So, this is the amount that I got to play with, before sales taxes of course. This is the also the point where I left the "normal" world and entered the "mid-fi/hi-fi" world. The next month or so included countless hours of research on the web and listening to a few different brands of speakers at some of the local boutique audio shops. I ended up with a nice set up from Paradigm and a Denon receiver. We moved again and disaster seemed to strike, my center channel wasn't playing correctly anymore. Back to the internet.. where I stumbled on to a few AV forums where I solicited some advice on what could be causing my problems. I got several responses of possible solutions -- which unfortunately, didn't work. Turns out that the one of the "bridges" connecting the two sets of binding posts wasn't connected anymore. Feeling both elated and retarded at the same time, I reconnected the bridge and everything worked great. But, I ended up hanging around the forums and learning a LOT in the process. Of course, it's cost me a LOT as well. If it weren't for the forums, I'd have never decided to build my own speakers (see pics below) or built a headphone amp (still waiting for the last part to come before everything gets put together) or thought of creating a listening area in my garage with the proper acoustical treatments and layout with the potential for an IB subwoofer or..
That last item is what brought me to this site in the first place -- how to calibrate the sub when/if it gets installed.
I figure, I'll stick around and share whatever I've learned so far. Expert? Heck no, but, every once in a while there is SOMETHING I can help out with.. or at least I hope so.
Anyway, that's me in AV.
JCD
DIY Usher 2.5 speaker
