tkam

Nope - I don't use that e-mail account - it's only used for forum system e-mails/notifications. Could you forward one of the blank e-mails (including the header) back to that address?

Newegg drive packaging is usually pretty bad - the only way to guarantee good packing is if you get 5 or more at a time, then usually they'll just re-use the original packing from the HD manufacturer.

If your going to be near the store anyways I'd check and see if they will price match. I know Best Buy and Target at least have announced that they will be price matching Amazon prices.

Flight booked and room booked. Could only do the room for 5/3 - 5/5 at the group rate and when I called the reservation line for Marriot they wanted a $154 for staying the extra night. So I called this hotel directly, the guy I spoke with said just to tell them when I check-in I want to stay an extra day and they'll do it at the group rate usually. I guess I'm doing that, I hope the hotel doesn't get fully booked. Otheriwse I'll need a place to crash on Sunday night

Happy Birthday!

Good news, I've had the HT setup up and going for about two weeks now and I'm really happy with it. As previously mentioned I ended up getting the Marantz sr5007 to use only as a processor/pre-amp and the Emotiva XPA5 for amp duties. I also ended up getting the Oppo BDP-103 and some new cables (hdmi and speaker). Detour time - the last Oppo I owned prior to the BDP-103 was one of their universal dvd players. I don't remember the model but it was an older one for sure and while it always performed well the build quality was pretty poor. With the BDP-103 I have to hand it to Oppo the build quality is superb and while I realize $500 isn't cheap for a blu-ray player these days it's still a hell of a bargain for what you get. Color me extremely impressed. Back on topic, I'm really happy with how well the Marantz and Emotiva are working out. For being a lower-end model the Marantz really is loaded feature wise, it has all auto-calibration and networking related features you can ask for including a smartphone control app. It also has support for Airplay though it's not something I can test. Of course it also has the all important full set of pre-outs that most other brands have abandoned in the lower-end models. Setup was a breeze thanks to the on-screen interface which I quite like. It has an understated look and keeps things simple, everything I needed was easy to find and setup properly. I did use the on-board Audyssey auto-calibration for setting up the speakers. It did a fairly decent job as I only had to tweak things a little bit. The Marantz does have quite a bit of video processing capabilities but I'm just having it pass-through everything coming in through the HDMI inputs so I can't really comment on that. It does appear to pass-through the signals unmolested though so that's a good start. I am using the 12v trigger from the Marantz to the Emotiva and that works perfectly. Speaking of the Emotiva, it's a beast weighing in at 75 lbs and is solid. It drives my Selah speakers with ease and the 3D's (the fronts) are a nominal 4 ohm and 83db efficiency. It really does quite a good job, it's probably the best I've heard the speakers sound in a while. So the Emotiva sounds great, and maybe more importantly it functions flawlessly. At power up it cycles through each amp channel checking for faults before fulling turning on and this is just one of the many safety/protection features it has. The XPA5 is the first Emotiva product I've owned and I'm a big fan. It's a solid product at a very reasonable price. I'm a happy camper, I have a my HT rig rebuilt and it's looking and sounding better than ever.

There's no need for Cat6 as long as your existing cables are Cat5e your fine for gigabit.

That's a very good idea, since in most cases if a drive is going to die it'll happen within the first month of it's use.

I believe the part of the basement my friend is planning on using for the theater project should get us around any potential duct related issues. I'll have to double check for sure though. The basement in total is pretty damn huge so we're likely just going to be walling off part of it.

Not really needed as long as the drive is SMART capable and SMART is enabled. If SMART lists a lot of reallocated sectors on a drive I'll consider replacing it because that's a very good sign that the drive is going to be dead soon. This is in addition to relying on the raid array to mark dead/dying drives as failed.

I usually just replace drives as they fail.

The cellulose insulation with two layers of drywall (with a gap between layers) is exactly the direction we've been thinking about going. It should be the most cost-effective and I think realistically will give the best performance per dollar vs some of the other crazy solutions out there. My friend does want to have a contractor/home theater installer come out so we will see if they agree with this or recommend something else. I'll definitely mention the idea of new doors (for top and bottom of stairs) as I don't even think the ones in place are solid core.

Performance should be good I can max out a gigabit connection with the DS1511+ on single transfers. One thing to note, when uploading and downloading to the Synology at the same time the overall throughput drops to less than what it'd be if only doing transfers one direction at a time. That's likely due to the Atom cpu in use, but on the flipside that cpu is always why the units don't use much power. It's a trade-off I'm willing to make, and is something that might not affect you at all depending on your usage patterns.

The auto-post new threads to twitter functionality broke about 10 months ago (April 2012) due to a plugin that wasn't updated. The plugin has been updated and the issues with it are now resolved. New threads in public sections will now auto-post to the @headcasedotorg twitter account.

I'm helping a buddy of mine convert his unfinished basement into a full-blown theater room. He wants to sound proof the room so he won't bother anyone in the rest of the house. Sound proofing is not an area I have much experience in so I'm looking for suggestions as to the best method(s) and material(s) to get this done correctly. His basement is completely unfinished right now so there's not really any limits to what we can install.

I have a Synology DS1511+ I think is the model - I've been pretty happy with it for the most part. The web interface is quite noob friendly and it's pretty loaded feature wise. It's also pretty quiet and is light on power usage. I'm running it with 5 x 2TB Hitachi drives.

Good Luck Everyone!

Kinda happy the Monster guys got screwed - still it does suck that people spend so much money on those crap ass headphones.

Nope the idea is to use the Marantz as a pre-amp/processor and have the Emotiva drive the speakers.

Busy day today - both the Marantz and the Emotiva arrived!

Well some Schiit arrived today....the Gungnir and Mjolnir stack to be specific. Will post photos and some early thoughts sometime this weekend.

OneCall had an open-box sr5007 for $687 so I went ahead and got that and will order an emotiva xpa-5 for amp duties.

I've got Windows 8 x64 on my laptop here - the Windows folder alone is about 20GB in size

Yeah my lack of patience doesn't help in these sorts of matters. Looks like the marantz sr5007 is pretty much out of stock everywhere. Looks like one this years Onkyo models is going really cheap right now - the TX-NR717 can be had for about $500. Another Onkyo though.......

Count me in!