Home Cinema Help needed

[Arthran]

Ok, SO I'm moving house in a week and have this wonderful attic room I've decided to turn into a home cinema/Office. So my plan is simple, My pc (reasonable i5 gaming machine running a HD 7870, onboard sound only, Have Bluray Drive) will be set up at the desk as normal, but I will have connected to it a Projector via HDMI (Viewsonic PJD7820HD) by HDMI mounted above the doorway pointing at the end wall. Giving a good 95" Screen. This bit is simple to me and utalising a Bluetooth keyboard I can control the PC from my sofa happily and watch any moving from my PC and even game on the Projector.

The bit that I'm struggling to make the best of is sound. At the moment I use a headset for my PC for everything, and whilst that's fine at the desk, on the sofa I want real sound, I want to be able to feel it and for it to be guest proof. The issue I have is deciding on the best way of getting this set up and the most cost effective method as well. Should I look at a high end sound card and individual speakers into each port? Should I run the Video out through a home cinema audio system before going into the Projector (are there many that have HDMI in and HDCP?), Is simply connecting a set of 5.1 or 7.1 speakers via a single audio jack going to give anywhere near the sound quality?

I'm lost as to where to start unfortunately, Anybody got any guidance to share?

Thanks

[dave87]

Home Cinema Receiver and speakers are the way forward.

What's the budget?

For info, this is my setup:







There are also Acoustic Energy Evo 1s as the rear, and a Monitor Audio RSW12 Sub. It sounds awesome, but wasn't cheap to put together (though was assembled for a lot less than it might be thought!

[Skinleech]

As Dave87 says, I would go HDMI out from the PC to an AVR then out from the AVR to the projector. That way the PC will pass down either the direct audio stream (Dolby, DTS, both lossy and lossless) to the AVR for decoding (this is known as bitstreaming) or you can set it to PCM output, where the PC will decode the streams to PCM and send it to the AVR. They will essentially give the same sound, but if you bitstream you'll see the little DTS and Dolby sign light up on the AVR, with PCM output you won't.

[Arthran]

Unfortunately Budget is tight, very tight. Rather than being a full home cinema set up this was one of those situations where I realised I can get a decent mid range 1080p Projector for not much more than a reasonable smart TV and thought it a better option. I'm now starting to question how sane I was.


From brief checking I'd be looking at £80 cheapest for a Home cinema receiver, then speakers on top of that. depending on price/quality of speakers that would be doable, although possibly costly. Might have to pop into Richer sounds tomorrow to find out more

[dave87]

Don't be afraid to look at second hand stuff - AVForums classifieds are a goldmine for those on a budget (which is where I got my speakers and sub from).

[virtuo]

The other week I asked if anyone had experiences of the Yamaha YHT-199 bundle that richer sounds do for £250. I took a punt on it last week and it has easily exceeded my expectations.

Amp and 5.1 speakers, impressive bass and plenty to play with. Amp isn't as feature packed as some, but like me you are plugging a PC via HDMI in to it, so it doesn't really matter. For the money it was a no-brainer for me and the sound fills a large-ish room. I did need to buy a bit more speaker cable, as I had a couple of long runs for the rears. Think you get about 25-30m in the box.

[wasabi]

Tight budget? Advantage of PCs is you can mostly have separate front/rear output from the soundcard, so you can use 3.5mm jacks rather than pricey hdmi/optical kit. Front sound is more important, so you could get a better quality 2.1 for the front and a cheapo pair of small speakers for the rear. Plenty of plugins for MPC-HC etc to output to 5.1 that way.

[DanceswithUnix]

Looking at the pictures from Dave87, my room looks such a cluttered mess, time I tidied it I think. My wife will like you for making me do that

Richer Sounds have an excellent range of AV surround receivers, that is where I got mine (Pioneer) from, so yeah go have a chat.

Speakers is the bit that could floor you for cost, but you don't have to get them all at once. I have some bookshelf speakers at the back that I have had for years, and some decent sized floor standing speakers at the front that were given to me again years ago as broken which I sourced new tweeters for and so have repaired. The AV amp fakes a centre speaker by mixing into both fronts, and again the fronts are large enough that a subwoofer isn't really necessary it can fake that too.

I did start with just the decent pair of front speakers and that is a huge upgrade from TV sound. Now I have the rears wired in TBH I am not in any hurry to add more speakers.

[Arthran]

So, I ended up picking up this:
http://www.richersounds.com/product/...99/yama-yht199

The AV receiver looks to be good quality, and an active sub, So hopefully should be good sound.

Also my projector arrived today, couldnt help but play with it in the office, half the office crowding round to look at 1080p on the wall, A lot of tempted people!

[Biscuit]

So, I ended up picking up this:
http://www.richersounds.com/product/...99/yama-yht199

The AV receiver looks to be good quality, and an active sub, So hopefully should be good sound.

Also my projector arrived today, couldnt help but play with it in the office, half the office crowding round to look at 1080p on the wall, A lot of tempted people!

You can always upgrade the speakers at a later date if the money is available and you fancy an improvement.

On my soundcard (Xonar D2X) you can simultaneously use the analogue and digital outputs so the audio comes out of both at the same time. Might enable you to use your headphones and amp without switching anything... food for thought...