First off when I say on a budget I mean like $5K for the whole thing. If you have less money then instead of down grading each component and doing the whole thing, buy as much nice stuff as you can and skip the rest till your budget allows. If you have a DVD player and some old speakers then start with the TV and receiver, and replace the rest later. If you buy a cheap TV, receiver, DVD player, and speakers, to upgrade they’ve all got to go so the initial investment is wasted.
Now you need to pick the room, and since you are on a budget and so pretty largely will be sacrificed for performance pick a room that company isn’t going to see much. Also, unless you live alone or plan to in the near future you should check with the other decision makers in the house, before starting any project. Ok lets pick a room, the general rule is a cube is bad (and weird angles can lead to weird echoes). Remember sound reflects off walls and in a 9x9x9 room the reflects will all be in the same places so you will have loud and quiet spots, a 11x12x8 room will sound much better. If you can help it, make sure the room has a nice tight door, and no or only a couple of small windows (light is bad anyways). Sound is air pressure waves, so the more isolated (air tight) the room is from the house and outside world the better. Even the gaps around electric plugs or the crack under the door will let sound leak. However, the room must be livable (and will require a great deal of cooling) so you can’t cover the vents or anything.
Speaking of electric plugs, be sure the room has enough plugs and the breakers can handle the heavy load, 20 Amps is best but 15 will do, this is not how the NEC would recommend doing it but plug in a hair dryer (or toaster) then add a few lamps (with 60 watt bulbs) and then with the drier running turn on the lamps. The drier is the receiver/amp, and each lamp is a component (1:TV, 2:DVD player & cable box, 3:Videogame/VCR) If the breaker doesn’t go then you should be ok load wise. Also, check the ground in your home, a bad ground beside shocking or killing you can seriously degrade your home theater experience. (Lots of people put in supplementary grounding rods, but all they needed to do was keep the area around the rod well watered.)
Ok this my philosophy but before you build, watch check your power quality. When you turn on a major appliance do the lights dim? If so you are having sags, (basically local brownouts) and this kills performance, (ie if your receiver is excepting 120V and you are only giving 90V then the performance suffers since it’s output is down rated.) So here are my thoughts, the difference between the middle and the best A/V equipment besides a few features (and how nice the case looks) is the quality of the power supply. Good power supplies can compensate for noise and sags to keep the equipment performing at its best, but require big transformers and capacitors that are expensive and heavy. So cheaper equipment gets cheaper power supplies, which can’t handle power problems as well (the lowest part of the totem pole here is the wall wart) and so the equipment performs poorly. By feeding good clean power (120V@60Hz) to a power supply, all the power supply has to do is supply power. So, if the real difference between the models quality is in the power supply, then performance difference with good clean power should be minimal.
How can you improve the power quality?
Note a surge protector does nothing for power quality, except protect against surges. While they are a must, the biggest problem is power sags.
In my case I use two different systems. For the smaller components I have them on a UPS with the ability to make up for sags using battery power. This also means that when the power blinks the clocks don’t get reset and anything the TIVO can continue to merrily record my shows. The TV is too much of a load when it is on to share a UPS so it is on it’s own surge protected, short duration UPS. Now the big power hog is the receiver, with is rated for 1500W. I could put it on a huge UPS, but that is a waste so I have a different system. I have it on a Tripplite telecom grade noise filter and variable output transformer. This means I get 60dB noise suppression and 120V constant output as long as the voltage is between 90 and 160V. Since my receiver is capable of browning out my place, this is my best solution. Now you can buy nice stuff to do the same thing from APC or Monster that is AV grade, but all that means is it is pretty and marked up. A regular APC UPS that you would use for a computer will set you back $50 and set to max sensitivity gives excellent performance, and the Tripplite thing costs $100, and while it is a unattractive, it’s telecom rated performance is I believe actual higher than the consumer rated performance of specialty AV product of similar purpose and 1/10 the price.
Why have I gone on and on about power supplies and power quality? If you can supply good power your middle tier equipment can perform like top tier equipment. This means the money that you might have spent to buy the audiophile grade equipment that is treated with pixie dust, can go to getting you further along the upgrade path, and you will be just as happy or happier since you kept the money in your pocket.
Next time we analyze the room and preshop.
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