Kitchen/snug sound system
Discussion
Currently we're at early stages of planning an extension to our kitchen/sitting room. The room is 4.3m x 6.8m at the moment with a sitting/snug area at one end served by a 42" TV connected to a Pioneer VXS921 Receiver which in turn has Apple TV, Amazon Firestick, Sonos and Freesat all connected. Output is to 4 Monitor wall-mounted speakers and a Monitor centre speaker (no sub-woofer).
The extension will add a further 3.5m to the length of the room and as the build will require a pretty extensive refit of the whole room so I'm looking at it as an opportunity to upgrade the audio side of things. Anyone with any recommendations? Continue with the Pioneer but go ceiling speakers? Start afresh with something different but still have the same degree of connectivity? I'm really not sure of the state-of-the-art now so any pointers would be welcome.
The extension will add a further 3.5m to the length of the room and as the build will require a pretty extensive refit of the whole room so I'm looking at it as an opportunity to upgrade the audio side of things. Anyone with any recommendations? Continue with the Pioneer but go ceiling speakers? Start afresh with something different but still have the same degree of connectivity? I'm really not sure of the state-of-the-art now so any pointers would be welcome.
VEX said:
The first question really is what are you using it for?
What is the ration split between movies/tv and audio/music?
On a daily basis predominantly movies/TV although if it's a movie I want to watch then we'll generally go to the lounge with the bigger screen and full 5.1 set up. My wife generally streams more movie content than me and will happily watch in the kitchen. Music streaming is more ad hoc - during the day if we're prepping food or it's a social event then streaming Amazon/Spotify is the norm.What is the ration split between movies/tv and audio/music?
VEX said:
Then the ultimate is budget?
V
The complete build/kitchen budget is in the order of £100k +/- £20K (probably +£20K V
). For a set up that provides a significant improvement to what we have I'd go to £5k but this is why I've asked the question because I really have no idea what you could do with a budget of that magnitude.I put an 8m x 6m vaulted ceiling extension on the back of our kitchen/dining room and also made it all open plan.
The reason I mention the above is that for decent sound quality you will have to really plan ahead and in the end I realised that the new room was never going to have good acoustics. A tiled floor with a 5m wide section of glazing and a 3.5m ceiling height just doesn't work for good hifi sound.
My turntable set up is in the old living room.
I went down the route of using Sonos as I already had the stuff but felt it worked better as I didn't need to have an amp and runs lots of speaker cable about, just made sure there was a power point where the Sonos gear was. The rear Play1's are mounted at high level with the power socket just behind them. I bought a replacement white lead and cut it down to suit.
I'm sure I could have got better sound with a dedicate amp but don't regret using Sonos.
The reason I mention the above is that for decent sound quality you will have to really plan ahead and in the end I realised that the new room was never going to have good acoustics. A tiled floor with a 5m wide section of glazing and a 3.5m ceiling height just doesn't work for good hifi sound.
My turntable set up is in the old living room.
I went down the route of using Sonos as I already had the stuff but felt it worked better as I didn't need to have an amp and runs lots of speaker cable about, just made sure there was a power point where the Sonos gear was. The rear Play1's are mounted at high level with the power socket just behind them. I bought a replacement white lead and cut it down to suit.
I'm sure I could have got better sound with a dedicate amp but don't regret using Sonos.
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