Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater An epic man-cave, requiring epic speakers

Nathan, my personal experience with A4L was excellent, and their reputation in general is excellent. Understand that it's Onkyo itself that does the refurb and provides a one year warranty; A4L is their authorized re-seller.

It's been said that problems with refurbed units have been lower than with brand-new ones, and although I haven't seen statistics to confirm this, I'd be inclined to believe it. My personal experience with them has been uniformly good, and I now go this way for my own use and in making suggestions to others whenever possible. It would appear that correcting a problem that already occurred and/or thoroughly re-testing the unit would give a better prospect of less future trouble.

I don't think that refirb units are as "bad" as they were maybe 10 years ago. In fact, some people really swear by them... Lower price for something that (from a reputable manufacturer) has been 100% tested. Generally, they are tested more and any issues resolved because of the testing than new units. That is primarily since all refirb units are tested, where new production lines generally only have a small sample set tested, such as everyone 1 in 10 or more.

I would buy a factory refirb any day over a Best Buy "open box" item. Any issue that the purchaser experienced before returning it could be left untold and you could end up with a lemon.

Thinking about factory refurbished products in retrospect, it does make sense that the units undergo more extensive testing since there was already a known problem with the unit.

I also have another doozie of a question that I have done 0 research on.

I have been picturing my home theater without wires...

With a projector on one wall, I am assuming that I would want to position my device cabinet next to where the seating would be? I have no problem with running a bunch of cords around the room to achieve the best setup, but I am a computer person, so the wire management that I am used to is nothing compared to what a home theater would require. I guess my question is, how do you guys usually tackle that?

Also, back to the choice of receivers.
I am comparing the 609, 708, and 709 at ac4l trying to narrow down the differences.

I can see that only the 709 has Multi EQ XT, which from what I understand is how the receiver naturally equalizes the sound based on the depth of the room. I'll admit I don't know the technical different between that, regular Multi EQ and just Dynamic EQ. So with the 609 out of the question, between the 708 and the 709, what are the 3 biggest differences? It seems that they both have the same audio decoder capabilities, they both push 110 per channel, they have the same ports. I do notice that the 708 does not do 4k upscaling, but I wanted to ask what that is? I am familiar with the resolution, but where would the receiver get video like that from? I have been trying to read up on all of this terminology for the receivers but I don't feel like I'm making much progress!

I can't help much with the wire management since I've been fortunate enough to build my last 3 theaters from scratch. My first one was "interesting" but it was a dedicated room... It had a TV though, so all electronics were in the front of the room and behind that wall was an open storage room, so I had access to everything. I just needed to run speaker wires, and I stashed them under the baseboard molding/trim just above the carpet. I then drilled holes in the walls and used fishtape to get to the bottom of the wall where I notched out (instead of putting a hole in it)the wall. I fed wires up, and then replaced the trim boards.

Of course, that is when I knew nothing, and I probably had something like 22ga speaker wire (j/k, it was bigger than that, but maybe only 18ga)...

I know nothing about the Onkyo line-up either..

Man I suck!

I can't help you with wires. I am a mess, and have no experience with the projector part.

Dynamic EQ is NOT THE SAME THING as MultiEQ. Dynamic EQ (as I understand it) is sort of like an automatic "loudness" feature, where - based on your MultiEQ settings - it figures out how to tweak the sound dynamically to account for volume that is dissimilar from the measured/standard volume. The Audyssey site explains it better. I think that Dynamic EQ and Dynamic Volume (or Dolby Volume, if that's what the AVR manufacturer is licensing) would be pretty cool, but I don't have any first-hand experience with either.

MultiEQ XT is a "better" version of MultiEQ; it is a significant upgrade relative to the number of measurement points and the processing applied.

Not sure I can be useful on the 4K thing, but I understood that there aren't even any consumer-level projection devices capable of that resolution yet.

Saddly, I have yet to hear a wireless speaker setup that actually sounds good. I'm not even talking about being picky and demanding audiophile sound here, I'm talking that they all seem to sound BAD.

Sending digital signals wirelessly from a source like a PC to a reciever or another device to be decoded and sent out speaker wires is another matter. That can happen seamlessly and sound as good as a wired connection if done correctly. Streaming is less perfect as it often involves compression but can produce good results.

Connections between the amp and the speakers though still seem to work the best on good old fashioned copper. At least until they invent something greatly improved than what I have heard so far.

Yeah wireless sound has been an unpleasant experience for me in general, I'm just wondering what everyones solutions are when it comes to running wires to 5 different speakers in a mid to large sized room.

Also, anyone with QS4s or 8s, do you usually mount to the wall or use a stand? The wall-mount seems most practical, im just thinking about how im going to organize all of this.

Wall mounts are the way to go, IMO.

Wall mount for me. SirQuack (Randy) has his mounted to his ceiling using L brackets... Or at least he DID. He is reworking his theater right now, so I don't know what he is planning...

Wall mount all the way, but DON'T USE FOAM TAPE to put the wires up. Good lord, that stuff is IMPOSSIBLE to remove.

Not sure how I'm going to wire them in the new house, but it ain't gonna be that.