blake johnson

For my birthday, I embarked on a new project to build a home theater speaker system. I did a substantial amount of research before purchasing, so I thought I would share what I found out.

The first option that just about everyone is familiar with is these “home theater in a box” (HTIB) solutions that you can find at your typical electronics box store. These systems are very affordable, but you get what you pay for. The sound is okay (sometimes a substantial improvement over built-in speakers on TVs), but HTIBes don’t come close to producing the kind of sound available from even similarly priced solutions available elsewhere. By spending the same money, or perhaps a little more, you can get a more neutral frequency response with a broader, deeper soundstage, resulting in a clearer and more detailed sound.

In the sub-$1000 bookshelf speaker market, there are a lot of products. Some standouts include (ordered by price):

• SVS SBS-01 ($250/pr)
• KEF iQ3 (a discontinued product replaced by the iQ30, but still available for $250 from Amazon.com)
• Ascend Acoustics CBM-170SE ($350/pr)
• Jamo C603 ($400/pr)
• Axiom Audio M22 ($470/pr)
• Usher S-520 ($480/pr)
• B&W 685 ($650/pr)
• NHT Classic 3 ($650/pr)
• Ascend Acoustics Sierra-1 ($900/pr)

I am listing MSRP. Expect most dealers to offer 10-15% off of these prices. Your mileage will very depending on the store and your negotiating skills.

So, I have not actually heard all of these. SVS, Ascend Accoustics, and Axiom Audio are all internet direct stores. Each allows for a 30+ day at home “audition”, where you might only have to pay the shipping charges if you want to send them back. SVS and Ascend get talked about a lot on the audiophile forums. SVS apparently makes awesome subwoofers that can only be matched by spending 3x as much, and they just started producing a complete 5.1 system for $1000. I considered this package for a while, but eventually decided that I really wanted to focus on getting a nice pair of fronts for now. The SVS SBS-01s seem to be best when paired with a sub.

The Ascend Acoustics CBM-170SE supposedly sound as good or better than many $1000/pr speakers. Unfortunately, they aren’t much to look at: simple, almost plastic-y looking boxes. If you don’t care about such things, this might be the best bang for your buck. Ascend’s Sierra-1, on the other hand, looks fantastic, and are causing just about every reviewer to glow with praise. Apparently these bad boys are as good as many $2k or $3k speakers. If I were willing to spend $900 on two speakers (I am not), this is where I would have put my money.

The Axiom speakers also get mentioned a lot on the forums. They are compared frequently to Paradigm’s Studio 20 speakers. I happen to not particularly like the sound of the Studio 20s, especially with classical music (they are great for rock). So, I decided that these were not for me.

The Jamo’s, Usher’s, and NHT’s have a lot of fans, but there are no dealers particularly close to me, so I could not hear them. Without a similar 30-day at-home audition policy on these guys, I was unwilling to seriously consider them. Still, apparently these are great values (and the NHT Classic 3s used to be considered the best value under $1000 before some of these other contenders came on the scene).

I listened to some KEF iQ30s and liked what I heard. Like the B&W speakers I eventually chose, these have a very neutral sound and produce a large soundstage. They did not seem to have as much low-end, though (not an issue when paired with a subwoofer, but I wanted speakers that could stand on their own) and they have a very unique aesthetic which you will either really like or really dislike. I think they look cool, but Phyllis is not such a fan. Ultimately, the Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF) does count, so I moved on.

To my ear, the B&W 685s are substantially better than the Paradigm Studio 20s (while also costing less!). They reveal an amazing amount of detail and create a huge soundstage. In auditioning these, I heard several things in recordings which were completely hidden from me before. So, these are what I purchased. You can see my new setup in the image at the top of the post!

Everyone has a different taste in speaker sound, so there is no way to say that “these speakers are best speakers available under X dollars!” You really just need to go out and listen to some systems (preferably in similar listening conditions and with the same source material) to find what you like. I hope that my comments here will simply help you create your own audition list if you are ever in the market for some speakers.

Today I turn 27 years old. Thank you all who have passed along your greetings and well-wishes!

I am developing a backlog of things I want to blog about, so before I forget to do them entirely, here’s a list of things you should see here sometime soon-ish:

• Another juggling video. I haven’t stopped working on my 5-ball juggling. I still can’t juggle 5 indefinitely, but I can fairly regularly do 30+ catches.
• Display of the new speakers that Phyllis bought me for my b-day, and discussion of how I chose them.
• Excitement/commentary on the last few episodes of BSG
• Display/commentary on the culinary delights from our superbowl party

My usual apology for ignoring my blog… I actually have been thinking about redesigning the site so that I can pull in content from flickr, twitter, tumblr, etc., to better reflect my larger web presence. But that is a topic for another time.

I saw Slumdog Millionaire last night and am pleased to report that it lives up to the hype. It is a very well-constructed story, using each question from the game show to tell a different part of the hero’s life. The movie leaves the viewer with a grim view of life in the slums of India, and it includes some scenes which caused my (rather squeamish) wife to cover her eyes. However, the movie never becomes depressing because of an underlying current of hope that runs throughout. This has the danger of leaving audiences overly optimistic about the plight of the poor. After all, part of what makes the story so compelling is that it is so improbable. Yet, I think the movie successfully straddles the line between raising awareness and not turning people away.

I really got a kick out of the credits for the movie, which feature a “standard Bollywood”-style dance. In an otherwise non-standard Indian movie, this is a very cute joke to throw in at the end.

This has been a uncomfortable election season for me in terms of interaction with my faith. A couple weeks before the election, a friend went to mass at St. Mary’s church in New Haven, where the homilist told the congregation that if they voted for a pro-choice politician it would “count against them in heaven”. This was accompanied by a flier produced by the conference of bishops seeking to educate voters about church teachings with regard to abortion, euthanasia, etc. I have not actually seen this document, but a document was handed to me 4 years ago, also at St. Mary’s, with similar content. Noticeably absent from the document I saw 4 years ago was any mention of immigration, torture, war, the death penalty, health care, responsible stewardship of the earth, feeding the hungry, sheltering the poor, or any other issue from the host of social justice issues which are supposed to be at the center of the Catholic faith.ﾠ

To add insult to injury, the week following the election, I went to mass at Our Savior church in Manhattan where the homilist proclaimed that “those of you who forgot the teachings of the Church in this election have committed a great act of apostasy”. The next day I read this article in the nytimes. According to that article:

“Some bishops meeting here said they did not view that outcome as a repudiation of their guidance, but as a reflection of polls that showed that social and moral issues were not primary concerns for voters, including Catholics, this year.”

All of these messages have led me to the conclusion that the leadership of the Catholic church in the US has drifted out of touch with its congregation. At a time when the Church’s authority on issues related to sexuality is at an all-time low, somehow our leaders have thought it appropriate to focus solely on the issue of abortion, at the cost of ignoring all else that threatens to tear apart our world. Then, when this strategy failed (and it did… roughly 54% of Catholics voted for Obama in this election), they have the audacity to proclaim that the faithful did not consider moral issues when voting.

Of course we considered moral issues while voting! Vatican II affirmed that every catholic is capable of praying about issues, informed with the teaching of the church, and then the choices they make afterward are informed and influenced by God.

I have to imagine that there are bishops out there who understand and respect they they do not have unique access to the Holy Spirit, that the congregation of the faithful may come to different conclusions given the same information. If such bishops are out there, I pray that they will find the courage to speak out so that the “heretics” in the church who voted with their consciences can find support from the leaders of their faith.