View Article  Home Theatre Makeover Project 3
I didn't really want to without studying all the documentation and pondering over it for a while (I'm a bit like that ) but I dived into this on Friday night and got everything lashed together then proceeded to run the Audyssey 2EQ 'room calibration' routine on the Onky.

Audyssey 2EQ is used to counter distortion created by walls, furniture, and other objects. This technology detects speaker distance, and then sets levels, delays, and crossovers, while also measuring room acoustics so your speaker system is set up for your specific room. Following from this while you are using the Onky to watch TV, movies etc it uses Audyssey Dynamic EQ to make constant correctional tweaks to the output.

Stunning technology but not if you overlook one small thing. If you are using a 5.1 system then you must ensure you wire up your rear speakers to the Surround Left and Surround Right outputs instead of the Surround Back Left and Surround Back Right Outputs (which would be the logical ones to use
), if you don't do this then Audyssey 2EQ will throw a Speaker Detect Error which basically means you're stuffed .
It took me several frustrating hours to find this out so basically I didn't get the damn thing working until Saturday night. Everything is now roughly in place while I figure out where to actually put all the kit, here are some pix








View Article  Home Theatre Makeover Project 2
Sorry to all the Retro/Vintage bike lovers for posting another techy/geeky article, I promise there will be much more bike related stuff in the coming months, I just had to post an update on this long term project

Last time I chatted about getting a bunch of new kit and last night I fetched some nice new shiny toys from my local TNT depot. An online Pro Audio store called A-1 Sound are running a brilliant promotion on Onkyo/KEF bundles at the moment and I couldn't say no to an offer that saved me £680.00 on the retail price and got me nearly everything I need to complete my project.

I scored myself an Onkyo TX-SR607 AV Receiver, a set of KEF 3005SE K2 Speakers, 40 meters of Chord Campana Speaker Cable, a 3 meter QED Sub Cable, a Chord 1 meter Supershield HDMI Cable and 2 x pairs of KEF HT3001 Satellite Speaker Stands.

The Chord Campana cable isn't anything too flash but it is 40 strand Oxygen Free Copper and its light and flexible so will suit my particular installation for the time being and be better than the copper bell wire i've been using


This little lot weighed in at 61kgs and filled the back of my car, to give you an idea of scale the KEF speaker box below is about the size of an under counter fridge

The Onky was way bigger than I expected it to be so the original plans for sitting it atop the Media Center are no more so I'm contemplating getting something cool fabricated out of Lexan Polycarbonate and standing him on that instead, guess it will kind of ruin the vibe a bit but maybe not as I need something to balance up that big fat sub that's about the same size as my Media Center.

Sadly this weekend is not going to be giving me much free time but tonight I will be making a start on assembling the speaker stands and measuring up cable runs......will keep you posted of any developments but in the meantime, here's some pix of my new babies


Boys Toys



Heavyweight speaker stands..




More outputs than you can shake a stick at




Individually sewn soft cloth bags and styrene sandwiches....top packing!!




My (not so) 'little babies'




Big Daddy - The K2 Sub that my neighbour's are gonna hate