Post #638956 by jokeiii on Sat, Jun 2, 2012 4:19 AM

I chime in as someone who is a complete and unrepentant recusant on Apple anything.

At the moment -- as those of you who have suffered through the tales of my lethargic build in the "Starting!" thread may recall -- my Tiki bar is at the far end of my living room, so a sound system must pull double duty until I have a separate environment.

This is also complicated by my being both a cheapskate AND audiophile.

Given that a lot of the time, the music I have going features birds, jungle sounds, ocean surf, etc., and also given that I'm after an IMMERSIVE effect, surround-sound is the only option I considered.

Here's my surround-sound rig, scored in bits-and-pieces, off eBay for essentially nothing.

Carver M1.0t stereo amps (3) (For purely "tiki bar" sounds this is MASSIVE overkill, granted)
NHT SuperZero speakers and SW2 subwoofer, all in a stainable oak veneers (For home theater purposes, replace the three "fronts" with NHT 1.1s) which is KEY in an aesthetic sense, as you can make the speakers match whatever you want.
Denon ADP-2000 decoder

I rip all the various CDs to MP3 and then use the laptop to play for social situations.

Oh, and I am a HUGE fan of "speaker tape" which is a speaker wire that rather than being cylindrical as most wires, is wide and flat, so that it can fit behind wallpaper without bulging or can be painted, etc.

I am REALLY not a fan of in-wall speakers, and the NHTs are small, "camouflageable" and sound spectacular and with, say, OmniMounts go up and out of the way and can be angled for optimal sound dispersion.

HTH.