Work In Progress

[drichardb]

Moved house with the 'rents in February and got lumbered with the smallest room in the house. Trying to shoehorn my old L-Shape glass desk into a 9' square room was an impossible task so two trips to Ikea Cardiff later and the result is...

For some crazy reason I had my DM601's in the attic for about 5yrs before we moved. It was only when I realised that I needed to rethink my room setup that I realised how much of an idiot I had been and brought them back out of retirement. I got the HTM62 for a bargain £140 off ebay within days of moving in and then promptly lost my job Unfortunately I'm still out of work but job hunting while listening to these lil beauties has been bearable. It's annoying the hell out of me that the savings I was hoping to invest in a new sub/amp are being drained while I find a job. ARGH!!

 

[drichardb]

Seeing as an increasing number of people are linking to their system threads in their sigs, here's mine!

Audio - B&W DM601-S3, B&W HTM62, Logitech Z5500 Sub & Surrounds

Display - Dell 2407-HC

PC Spec - AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 4Ghz, Asus Crosshair V Mobo, 8Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3, 64Gb Crucial SSD, 500Gb Samsung Spinpoint F1, ATi Radeon 6950 2Gb, Asus D2X, Corsair H80 Water Cooling Loop.

Portable - Sony NWZ-A729, PA2V2, Sennheiser IE8

An update on my orignal post from last year....

I managed to get a job about a month after that post but by then the money I had stashed had run out and since then I've been fighting a battle just to stay afloat. Fingers crossed I'll be landing a better paid job soon which should see my evil plans (sub/amp replacement) come to fruition. Failing that I'll just have to wait until October for my next Open University grant!

 

[steve_1979]

It looks like a really cool setup. I like it a lot.

What's the integration like between the B&W speakers and the sub? Also how's the integration between the front and rear speakers?

 

[drichardb]

tbh the rear speakers are in totally the wrong place (on shelves by my knees :doh: ) so I cant comment on that.

As for the B&W/Sub relationship...adequate at best!

Compared to the original setup (i.e small satellites) the difference is immense but then substituting in speakers that cost double the price of the originals you would expect that, I should have done it when I bought the logitech's 7 years ago!

The B&W's have genuinely given me more of everything, before I had to micro manage the settings and eq constantly to get the best out of the logitech's but now I have just two eq settings - one for loud (and I mean shake the bloody floor loud) and one for quiet. Other than that I just tweak the centre and sub volume levels depending on whats playing.

The logitech sub goes very loud, as it should with over 150 Watts of amplification but other than that its not very exciting. It's lumpy, in a big way, but the b&w's definately help to give more definition when its cranked up.

As I said before though, change is needed! I really want to get an amp that will allow me to feed more bass frequencies to the B&W's as I know they can go lower than the 100hz restriction they currently endure.

 

[steve_1979]

I used to own the Logitech Z5500 system myself which I thought was great for the price. Obviously it'll will never give hifi quality but it does sound far better than a £200 5.1 system has any right too. It goes bloody loud too!

In the end it was the sub that made me upgrade because it sounded too much like a one note boomer to my ears. Mind you the Q Acoustics 5.1 package that I upgraded to wasn't all that much better either....

 

[John Duncan]

Mind you the Q Acoustics 5.1 package that I upgraded to wasn't all that much better either....

I highly recomend the £300 Q Acoustics 1010i 5.1 speaker package. I've just bought them myself last week and they sound absolutely fantastic! They look and sound like they should cost £600 not £300!

Don't forget that these speakers will sound best if you use with them with stands. Expect to pay about £100 for a set of 4 decent speaker stands - money well spent in my opinion.

www.richersounds.com/product/speaker-packages/q-acoustics/1010i-5.1/qaco-1010i-5.1-pack

http://www.richersounds.com/product/speaker-packages/q-acoustics/1010i-5.1/qaco-1010i-5.1-packwww.whathifi.com/Review/Q-Acoustics-1010i-51/

 

[chebby]

I am guessing the complimentary comments were pre-AVI.

 

[drichardb]

It's funny you mention them as I was about 10 seconds from pulling the trigger on the 1010i's and an Onkyo 308 18months ago but I had this feeling in my gut that I would be left unsatisfied and couldnt bring myself to do it.

 

[steve_1979]

the Q Acoustics 5.1 package that I upgraded to wasn't all that much better

This comment was more of a reflection about how good the Logitech Z5500 system is considering it only costs £200. The Q Acoustics 1010i 5.1 and Yamaha RX-V667 receiver combo was obviously an improvement but not £600 worth better.

p.s. I apologise to drichardb that this thread has been derailed.

 

[steve_1979]

When the Q Acoustics 1010i were on sale for £300 (down from £550) they offered superb value for money. As a cheap 5.1 speaker package I would still recomend them to anyone for surround sound duties because they have a nice inoffensive sound that's easy to listen to.

But with stereo music they are most definitely not 'hifi' quality. Any good stereo speakers will simply blow them away for detail and dynamics. The subwoofer is also a bit of a boomer that's fine for films but doesn't cope too well with music and can sound directional at times.

 

[drichardb]

no harm done 8)