Conservatory setup

[BuckOff]

Hi everyone, excuse the noobness, never dipped my toes into anything like this before, but I've been relegated to the conservatory by the better half, so now I can set up some sort of HT for myself Thinking ahead, I'll be wanting HTPC, NAS for movies etc, to start off though, I'm looking for advice on my first purchases, which will be the Tv:- SAMSUNG UE48H6400. Tv Stand:- OFF THE WALL ORIGIN 2 S4. Speakers:- MONITOR AUDIO BRONZE 2 fronts. Now this is where I'm really unsure which route, do I get an AV receiver, Sonos connect or is there anything else you could suggest for me, your help appreciated.

 

[lucid]

Speakers: If you're in a conservatory then that probably means there's quite a bit of glass around. Hard surfaces reflect a lot of sound, and so that sound bouncing around makes it harder to hear what the speakers are doing directly because the direct sound is fighting against the reflected sound. If you want to hear the difference that the room makes to sound then try listening to and comparing the echo from a clap in the conservatory to a clap in the bedroom or somewhere else with a lot of soft furnishings. There'll be a lot less of the tsk-tsk-tsk sound bouncing around in a room with soft fabrics absorbing the reflections. Carpet and window blinds in the conservatory will help a lot.

Electronics: A Sonos Connect running in to an AV amp or 2 channel Hi-Fi amp makes a lot of sense if you plan to add Sonos to other rooms in the house. A Sonos Connect Amp will quite happily run a pair of Hi-Fi speakers but it will struggle to be an effective hub device to handle multiple AV sources. The TV could act as a switch for the sources and also as a way to convert audio via HDMI in to Optical. You'd then need an Optical to analogue audio converter box to get the sound in to a format that the Connect Amp could use. That's all doable, but it just seems a bit messy for what's supposed to be a main TV/music system.

As a standalone solution for accessing stored media files and streamed music there are alternatives that will work nearly as well such as the built-in media streamers in network AV amps. So, as good as Sonos is (and it is very good indeed) going Sonos depends on your plans for the rest of the house.

 

[BuckOff]

Speakers: If you're in a conservatory then that probably means there's quite a bit of glass around. Hard surfaces reflect a lot of sound, and so that sound bouncing around makes it harder to hear what the speakers are doing directly because the direct sound is fighting against the reflected sound. If you want to hear the difference that the room makes to sound then try listening to and comparing the echo from a clap in the conservatory to a clap in the bedroom or somewhere else with a lot of soft furnishings. There'll be a lot less of the tsk-tsk-tsk sound bouncing around in a room with soft fabrics absorbing the reflections. Carpet and window blinds in the conservatory will help a lot.

Electronics: A Sonos Connect running in to an AV amp or 2 channel Hi-Fi amp makes a lot of sense if you plan to add Sonos to other rooms in the house. A Sonos Connect Amp will quite happily run a pair of Hi-Fi speakers but it will struggle to be an effective hub device to handle multiple AV sources. The TV could act as a switch for the sources and also as a way to convert audio via HDMI in to Optical. You'd then need an Optical to analogue audio converter box to get the sound in to a format that the Connect Amp could use. That's all doable, but it just seems a bit messy for what's supposed to be a main TV/music system.

As a standalone solution for accessing stored media files and streamed music there are alternatives that will work nearly as well such as the built-in media streamers in network AV amps. So, as good as Sonos is (and it is very good indeed) going Sonos depends on your plans for the rest of the house.

Thanks for the reply, I'm going to call into a couple of HiFi shops near me over the weekend. See what options there are, I might be over complicating things for what I need.