My oddball cinema rig (literally)

[ALXAndy]

Hi all. So basically a couple of months ago I had a windfall and decided to kit out the house. I bought a new PC first, then moved onto starting my purchases.

I bought this for £90. It's a Russian valve/pre staged amp.



And then I bought these for £230 from an auction site. They were brand new still shrink wrapped.



So that was the front stage. They then sat in boxes for a month whilst I deliberated over the rear stage. In the end I settled for these, which I bought from a website for £119 for the Bluetooth version.



The non amped versions are £300. So what I did was take the main one apart, remove all of the amplification circuitry and then wire straight into the X/O. Worked a charm.

Then it was time for a rear amp. This time I chose the Fatman Mitube 2. It was expensive @ £179 but worth it.



Then the subwoofer. Initially I bought a cheap stand in (Vibe Optisound 6) for £30 as I knew the sub was going to be expensive. However, I was on the auction site the other day and I spotted this.





Obviously it looked pretty damaged, but at £129 inc I could not say no. It arrived this morning and I fixed it in about twenty minutes. There was no actual damage, it had just slipped. I took it apart, re-aligned the bolts and ....



Hey presto, £650 subwoofer for £129. I have spare feet left from the Smallpods (front stage) so I'm going to epoxy them into the mounts as the original feet are missing. All tested, really makes the house shake

Then it was onto the cabling. I chose RF cables because I used to use it in my car and it always sounded good to me.



£5 worth of plugs from good olde China...



And it's all set up and wired. Right now I am using a cheap Jamo center channel, but expect something special to land there. For decoding I ordered an expensive unit @ £120 but it did not work so I bought one of these for £25.



And the coupe de gras, the 65" Hisense 4k monitor, running 120hz*



* it's going up above the fireplace next Monday when my brother gets down. The rest is all wired and working, will get some pics once the TV goes up.

TBH the decoder works so well I'm loathe to replace it. I connected it to the optical out of my current TV (a 42" 3d Toshiba) and it works really nicely

 

[ALXAndy]

Groovy Baby !

I just took the feet from the Smallpods and glued them into the sub. Hoping they allow it to stand properly.

They are very retro modern. They were initially made by B&W in the 90s out of fibreglass and cost thousands. Now they're injection moulded plastic but do retain the B&W drivers.

sounds novel, the screen is a beast.

What are the unusual looking "bubble" speakers?

What interested me most was your decoder box, I had never heard of these. I could do with one as I've not got an AVR, but my Toshiba TV doesn't output 5.1 through it's optical

They're Scandyna. The front speakers are Smallpods and the rears are Micropods. The sub is called the Bass Station MK2.

They're very expensive at retail. I found a set today where you got the Smallpods and the sub for £1350. The rears are called Micropod Bluetooth and as I said, I took them apart and removed the circuitry leaving just the crossover to make them passive. You can find out more here.

http://www.podspeakers.dk/

I've been incredibly lucky with mine

 

[ALXAndy]

Above the fireplace? No.

Mounted TV's should sit at eye level when seated.

With a TV this big you have about as much chance of getting a hand shandy from the pope. There's just nowhere to put it.

I repaired the rubber trim on the sub and glued in the feet from the front speakers with epoxy.



Very happy with it. And my temp center channel speaker.



You can buy Micropods separately so I may just get one of those. It does for now though.

 

[ALXAndy]

If that was the only position the TV could go - the fireplace would be ripped out/boarded over in my house.

Sadly -

1. It's not my flat it's rented.
2. I actually adore the Victorian fireplace, coving and ceiling roses. Ripping them out would be a crime..

Phate.

Back in the very early 90s Bowers & Wilkins made the original blue room pod speakers. They were made from fibreglass and cost thousands. Obviously being pod shaped there are no straight edges, so there are practically no standing waves. I fell in love with them then because they were so different.

Scandyna took over at some point and still use B&W drivers, only now they're injection moulded plastic which works out far cheaper.

I'll add it all up later but I would say that without the TV as I see that as a separate entity all in I have spent well under £1000. I wouldn't even get the sub and one of my amps for that.

So happy the sub was completely repairable. Rode my luck a little but it all panned out

The only thing I will not have is the actual centre channel speaker because it costs £550. I'm actually thinking about making one, given I can get 5" kevlar drivers for around £10 each. I also have a box somewhere with a selection of tweeters in, many are Tannoy so I could use those.. Thinking about the old Tshirt, epoxy and bondo method to create my own centre pod.

 

[ALXAndy]

TV went up.



Proper lush