I thought I'd share a summary of my experience when I visited forum buddy JimP's home this past week. Jim was kind enough to trust me with his Yamaha receiver and a couple of very nice speaker stands to use as I review the SVS SBS-01 5.1 Surround system.
You know when someone tells ya they live on Olympic off Jasime Hill... just past the lake... it's gotta be nice. I'm not sure which was more impressive... the home or the home theater.
Of course Jim is a of a nice guy too! I've been chatting with Jim for about two years or so I suppose. I think we actually first started chatting at AVS in the HDTV thread for Alabama. Anyway... we've kept in touch since we started and we've threatened getting together several times... finally we did. This is actually the first time I've been able to hear and see another HT forum buddy's home theater. I've seen some of Rodny Alvarez's system but I've not ever sat down and had a listen after he finished... I'm sure I will eventually.
I was immediately impressed with Jim's setup. He has everything arranged very well. He went over most all of his equipment with me and then we watched and listened.
One thing I got to see in action was the Velodyne SMS-1 sub eq. It was simple for Jim too hook up his mic and display the response graph on his Sony 60" Wega. He has his Velodyne HGS-15 dialed in quite nicely.
Jim has Atlantic Technology 8200's in a 7.1 configuration powered by a Rotel 1095. He uses the B&K Ref 50 for the brains and the main source is the Denon 5900. Once again... all of this I was seeing and hearing for the first time.
We started out by watching a little bit of War of the the Worlds. Truly awesome! Those subs really did the trick in his room. The bass was low and there was no problem handling WOTW. The surround panning was equally impressive... very smooth.
Then a real treat was a DVD concert he had mentioned to me on the telephone when we were chatting. Celtic Women (pronounced with a K). This selection of Irish tunes was arranged by the same guy that directed Riverdance and it was truly spectacular. Beautiful women with beautiful vocals. I have ordered it already. He'll get a listen to Sarah Brightman when he visits here... he's bound to like her too. His system really showed off these beautiful ladies vocals.
We then got to watch a little bit of Gorillas in the Mist in HD from his cable company as well as we browsed through several of the HD channels. Needless to say the Sony was showing off.
We ended up listening to little bit of Alison Krauss and the Union Station CD. Again his system shined.
I'm not one to use a lot of fancy words when describing the way something sounds, so I'll just say that Jim apparently knows what he's doing. His setup was super nice and it sounded great to me. I didn't get to see his projection system, but the Sony 60" LCD was well enough. Not only did he seem to have his sound system dialed in, he also had that Sony on the money with its image.
All in all a great visit. I can't wait for Jim to visit our home and help me make sure I've got system all setup correctly.
Check out Jim's toyroom listing
here... being a professional photographer, maybe he'll share some pics with us soon.
06-17-06, 12:11 PM
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