Systems Showcase

Bar NONE!

by jeberhart

What can I say? Kicking back with a glass of port and a cigar goes well with sound and vision, so my barroom doubles as my home theater. If only the glasses wouldn't rattle! Anyway, I guess I'm probably like a lot of people -- my system has evolved over the years. Except that I never throw anything away! The oldest pieces of equipment still in use date from my high school days in the 1970s.

Gallery
This is my wall of music and video. Actually, I'm considering getting rid of the big Akai reel-to-reel and the JVC cassette deck, if I ever get all my tapes transferred over to CDR. I'd also like to dump this 4:3 Hitachi TV, but I just don't see any HDTVs that have enough HD component inputs yet. Whatever happens, one thing that won't change is my having a house full of Polks! The speakers in this photo are Monitor 10Bs from 1989. The rest of my Polk arsenal consists of FXI30 surrounds for movies, a pair of RT15Is for surround back, a CS245, a PSW450 sub which you can see here on the left, and a pair of R40s as extension speakers in another room. Usually, my JVC GR-DVM90 combo still/movie digital camera is wired into the system and sitting on top of the TV, but hey, I had to take the picture.	The equipment on this rack to the left of the TV is the heart of my system. Top to bottom: Denon 3801 audio/video receiver, a nasty old Kenwood KD-65F turntable, California Audio Labs DX-1 CD player, a 1985 Kenwood Basic M1 amplifier to run my other-room speakers, a Sony DVP-N5700P DVD player with Progressive Scan that I can't fully utilize yet because of the old TV, a JVC XLR5000 CD recorder, a Panamax 1000+ surge protector/line conditioner slaved to the Denon so all my amps come on with the Denon, and an early 1990s Acom GFA-555 power amp that runs the Monitor 10Bs.	This rack holds secondary equipment. Top to bottom: A Teac portable DA-P20 DAT recorder, a Niles VSA-1 patching system to route all my analog tape decks, a JVC TD-W354 cassette dubbing deck, a Technics SL-MC4 61-disc changer for parties, an gnarly ol' Akai GX266II reel-to-reel recorder, some kind of cruddy Hitachi VCR (who cares?), and a Philips CDV 487 laserdisc player.
The bar itself is in the back of the room, behind the chairs and sofa. Note the RT15I mounted on the wall and the refurbed New Advent Utility Loudspeaker on the stand. The Advents are 23 years old and function as my music surrounds. They're the only non-Polk speakers in the system, except for a tiny little pair of Sonys in the upstairs bedroom. All the Advent drivers have had to be replaced over the years, and I had to change out the old gray face covers because too much Guinness had been spilled on them at a succession of rather boisterous Halloween parties. I opted for black cloth so they would fit in a bit better with all the Polks.	Bo the Donkey takes a ride on one of the RT15Is. He must have had too much port to drink, or maybe he just really likes Miles Davis.