Home Theater v1.1 & How To Protect A Studio Monitor…

I posted a while ago about how my niece accidentally blew one of my main speakers. Then, in a fit of absolutely stupidity, I did the same thing, blowing both mains. Of course, as you can tell… my immediate plan to was to buy some Orb Audio Mod2 speakers, and audition them as possible replacements for my Infinity tower speakers — with an eye towards either keeping them on as permanent fixtures in my home theater, or moving them to a pet project where I intend to turn an old antique radio (that he grew up listening to) into a Mac Mini-based iTunes listening station.

The story behind this is that my grandfather apparently owned this radio. I’m not sure of the age, but I vaguely recall that my Dad apparently listened to radio shows on it when he was young, so it’s a bit of a family treasure. It’s, of course, completely not operational. The plan is to try to wedge a complete Mod2 system (with subwoofer) into the chassis of the old radio, pop a Mac Mini into it, wire up the controls, perhaps throw in a dash of USB-powered neon lighting, and attach an articulating LCD mount to it with one of my Dell 20″ LCDs to create a nice blend of old and new tech. Of course, I’ll probably finish this project before I’m done installing the flooring in my basement…

Of course, like most of my incredibly well thought out plans, I forgot something — in this case, I own a pair of Mackie HR824 studio monitors. Remember my home studio that has been sitting idle, because I had writer’s block? Well, the monitors I’d been using for years were a pair of HR824s that have served me well — in fact, I once supported an event at church, and the 824s were sufficient to cover the auditorium at Cedar Ridge Community Church a few years back. Not as good as real stage speakers, but good enough. Bass response has always been impressive, and these things kick. I’d never thought of using them for home theater because, quite frankly, I only had two, and my all-Infinity home theater rig seemed pretty tight.

Ha! At the Institute of Wrong Thinking, I must have graduated Summa Look Stupid. I cannot believe I didn’t think of this earlier when I blew out the main speakers… The HR824s kick major ass and have me rethinking my entire home theater rig — I was considering buying a pair of Infinity Cascade 9 speakers, which seem reasonable at $2,000/pair. However, I’d ultimately wind up blowing close to $4k upgrading my rear and center channels to match if I really wanted to do it right.

However… for a little less money (close to $3,000) I could get a bunch of HR824s or the HR626s and trick out my home theater with THX-approved studio monitors. Suddenly my home receiver would become just a decoder and these self-powered monitors would likely rock out even more than conventional home theater speakers. The only possible issue is feeding them sufficient power on the circuit that powers the home theater room.

If you click the picture, it’ll show you a really crappy video of my home theater setup in action. Why I video’d it, I have no idea… It’s not like you can see it in all of it’s high-definition glory, or hear the sound quality… but hey, it does show how incredibly orange my den is.

So now I’m seriously rethinking how I plan to deal with my home theater rig, and in the meantime, I’ve got the sound dialed in nicely so that the Mackies blend in reasonably well with the existing speakers. I think I’ll wait until our next quarterly bonus hits before I think about spending major ducats on the upgrade.

Oh, and as a near-afterthought — while researching the Mackie monitors, I stumbled across this delicious entry in the Mackie HR824 FAQ…

Hey, if it’s good enough for Joe Namath and Captain Kirk, it’s good enough for my home theater…

14 July 2006 | Home Theater | Comments