Built a system, please tell me how I did!!!!!!!

[Wafflebird]

Happy New Year everybody, I hope 2010 is a great one for One and All. First post here although I have been here often. I am more of a forum lurker than poster.

I have put a system together that I think will be simply awesome and would like some feedback from those of you with something similar.

This is for a friend who has wanted to put something together for a long time is is VERY DESERVING, as he is an awesome person (Huge Understatement) and has placed his trust in me to put this together. I have been doing this a while but have never had the opportunity to start from scratch. This is exciting. I want him to be simply slack-jawed when we fire it up for the first time. Please bear in m ind they will be coming from a Sony HTIB all in one DVD player amp section with plastic enclosed slim speakers and a non-powered sub.

So the short-list goes something to the tune of;
Denon 4810-CI 9.3 140 watts per channel (this was the hardest decision to make as there are a lot of contenders but this one in my opinion is simply the best that does not have some of the bugs/glitches that other manufacturers have in the same price/features range. This took literally weeks to sort out, went from Yamaha Z-11 to the Onkyo 5007 (Very buggy unfortunately).............................. Suffice it to say the Denon won.

Ascend CMT-340SE Mains, 340SE Center, CBM-170SE's for surround duties (R&L) and HTM200SE's for R&L rear duty.

Subwoofer will be the Elemental Designs A7S-650 DIY kit. I will be putting this together for him and we save almost a grand. This thing from all I have seen and read is quite outstanding.

The listening area is not that large, not small, but say 24' by 20' with a pretty high vaulted ceiling with the other half of the house open. To better define the house has a complete open area that a little less than half taken up by the Family room, the other half just open. The area is however also open to the kitchen, dining room and another larger area behind the kitchen, on one side with a thin dividing wall between the dining room and kitchen area.

We will be able to get the rears in a really good position directly behind the listening position and the surrounds will be pretty well placed, not optimally, but still pretty well placed. We also got the Omni-Mount brackets for the 170's. It should provide the surround envelopment for movies, SACD, and music.

Purchased wire, wall plates etc. from Mono-Price.

I think this is going to be an incredible system.

I request your thoughts and comments please.

Sorry for the long FIRST post and thanks in advance for all of your input.

Cheers and Happy New Year again to all.

[RCDAVE]

Looks good to me. I'm sure with him coming from a HTIB, he will be astonished.

[Tushar]

Looks good, but curious the choice of the 4810 receiver.

I have an older receiver (Denon 988) which is a much cheaper model than the one you are looking at ($600 when I bought it). It's ~105-110 Watts seem adequate to drive Sierras (which are less efficient) to loud volume in a big room.

The system you outlined doesn't use all of that receiver's capabilities, so curious if you chose it for the 2 HDMI out (a cheap alternative is the 4x2 matrixing switch at Monoprice but that's another box and remote...) or planning to add more front speakers later (which might be nice to have so I'm not knocking it) or for some other reason.

Many blu ray players have pretty good video chips in them, so with the exception of the Wii (which doesn't need that good a processor since it's got jagged edges intrinsically) and SD TV broadcasts (which I am usually too lazy to turn a receiver on for) I don't get any use out of the chip in my reciever.

I'm not sure where in the modern Denon lineup pre-amp outs show up but if it's $1000 lower in street price vs. the 4810 you might check out what $1000 in multi-channel amplification buys you or just save $$$'s and look into what you give up stepping down from the 4810,

[Wafflebird]

RCDAVE Thank you for your coments Sir, I think it will be awesome as well.

Tushar, thank you as well.

The Denon was chosen for wireless streaming, seperate amps to run outdoor speakers, Video upconversion of SD Cable Channels and DVD's from a PS3 which is not the greatest DVD player to say the least when compared to several other high-end players. It is great for Blu-Rays but not so great for DVD's. Internet Radio, Audyssey room correction, HD Radio, Rhapsody, Assignable amps, Potential for heigth and wide, HDCD....................................... I could go on but I hope you understand now. This was not a "Blind Purchase" with no forethought to say the least. The Denon is the best out there that will do all that needs to be done with less bugs (Hopefully) than any other competitor. As stated it was the hardest part of the decision.

The Ascends were the easiest.

[RCDAVE]

I love my 340se center channel. Pretty soon I'll buy the matching mains, and put my current mains into a separate 2 channel system. A bit of a downgrade in mains, but there is something to be said of a full matching system. I've tried many different center channels in the past, trying to get a good match to my mains(since the company that makes my mains does not make a center channel) and the 340se ended up being the best match for my mains, but I was also very surprised to find out that it sounded a lot better than many other center channels that I've tried and returned. Just amazing, considering the price.

[Tushar]

Wafflebird,

Your choices showed tremendous amounts of research so I wasn't presuming you hadn't done your research. I was just curious your motivation since it wasn't explicit from your first post. If it was for sonic reasons (better D-A, more powerful amp) I was suggesting you might want to look at dedicated amplification as well if you hadn't looked into that (not everyone does).

Denon 4810 seems like a very cool piece of hardware-- lots of nice features.

[RCDAVE]

Especially coming from a HTIB setup. The Denon is a huge step up in quality in comparison. Then later on, the Denon can serve as a pretty solid pre/pro for some nice amps if he wanted to go into separates.

[georgee]

Why do you think Onkyo 5007 is buggy?I plan to buy 3007 that probably same problems, so I am curious.I don't know if you know that the DENON you plan to buy is the ONLY ONE on the market to play BOTH front AND rear surrounds speakers SIMULTANEOUSLY!Promise to report on that when you install everything, tell us what are your impressions when you play SACD or /and dvd.

Georgee

[Wafflebird]

georgee,

I did a lot of research and reading prior to making the receiver selection. It all started out with the Yamaha Z-11 which is a great receiver especially with the recent price-drop of 50%. However after a lot of research (And despite my undying love for Yamaha) I just could not recommend it based on a couple of things, a less than stellar video up-conversion chip which will be important in this application (Wii, and a lot of DVD content as well as SD cable) and the lack of wireless networking built-in. Otherwise the Z-11 is a no-brainer decision at this price point if these two things are not needed which will be the case for many.

This brought me to the Onkyo which, because of a dreadful/almost non-existent Customer Service, I have always been leery of. I have friends who have had to suffer through with them in the past. Looking at the feature set in conjunction with the price I just thought I could not go wrong. I studied the forums intensely and found out that these things are buggy. No audio after shut-down when fired back up, a lot of owners have had to remove the power cord from the rear of the unit or re-set it to get it to come back on. Lot's of audio drop-outs on playback of many sources. Very loud audible clicking when watching TV and the digital audio mode switches (like watching an HD channel and then a commercial comes on that is not DD) along with several other issues.

In all fairness I will state 3 things;

1)I know forums can a lot of times turn into complaining sound-boards but in conjunction with my knowledge of poor CS and these known issues I just could not do it, especially as my friend is trusting me to make a good decision.

2) There has been a recent firmware upgrade that has reduced the decibels of the clicking during audio format changes by a good margin based on comments I have seen and may have possibly reduced the amount of audio drop-outs but they unfortunately still exit post firm-ware upgrade.

3) For the money and feature set the 5007 should be hard to beat and Onkyo packed a tremendous feature-set into this unit no question.

After looking at all of the other options the Denon has just been the best fit. I love the Z-7 but it is only a 7 channel receiver and we needed 9 so........................................

I hope this helps and I am NOT trying to talk you out of the Onkyo and am not flaming them either, just reiterating what has already been stated.

[arkiedan]

I've had an Onkyo 805 for over two years. It's a powerhouse of am AVR with clean sound and tons of headroom and features but I have to agree with you about Onkyo's CS. The man issues this fine piece of equipment had were all solved over at the AVS forum, NOT at Onkyo. Mine is now update to the latest firmware, eliminating all of the problems and minor annoyances but, again, Onkyo never participated in the corrections. Knowledgeable owners had to grab the bull by the horns and find the fixes themselves.

I haven't read many of the posts regarding the newer Onkyo AVRs but I'd have to assume Onkyo continues their tradition of ignoring their owner base. That said, if I was to buy a newer AVR I'd be hard pressed to avoid the Onkyo line. Dollar for dollar they just can't be beat. Of course, if bucks were not an issue I'd likely go Denon.

Still, the end result is an exceptional piece of audio gear with unlimited power, clean sound and a great feature set, all hallmarks of Onkyo's equipment. Just don't expect much help from the folks over at their customer service branch.

arkiedan