The day after xmas I went to Best Buy with a receipt to return a $299 mini iPad for my wife. I walked past a box that said, TOSHIBA 50” 1080i LED $299. I have no use for another TV but I could not pass it up, after all, as far as I was concerned it was free.
When my son moved out a few years ago the old bar/party room garage that had served us well for some 30 years had turned into a massive storage area I could no longer even get in. We emptied it, hosed it down, put the bar back up, hooked the amp up to the old Bose 901’s and 12” wooden cabinet speakers, turned on the amp and It smoked and died. The same ending in store for not a few of us.
I wrote this article because I found old farts suffered quite a bit of confusion concerning the new amps these days. They are now primarily home theaters made for watching action movies and playing console games. The back of the amps are very different. Only two RCA connections and a poopload of speaker connections and HDMI ports.
At Fry’s Electronics I found a discontinued demo DENON 5.1 with 145 watts per channel at half price for $249 and grabbed it up.
My millennial son and I spent a frustrating day trying to get it to work as a music system rather than a home theater. Getting the two old cabinets in the rear to play the same stuff at the same volume as the 901’s up front. As far as I know, Rock and Roll does not have ambient footsteps in the background. We failed, it was home theater or nothing.
The following morning we realized much of our problem was that we had the wrong remote. Back at Fry’s they could not find the correct remote so gave me a deal on new Denon 7.2 with 165 watts per channel system for an extra $40. After complaining a bit more about their culpability in the matter, they also cut us a good deal on an Polk amplified 10” woofer cabinet for half price, $80. These new amps have a single RCA passive WOOFER OUT jack. This one has two, the 2 of the 7.2. [Passive means no wattage from the amp, the woofer needs it’s own amplification.] The setup went much smoother with the correct remote.
With no Comcast box out in the garage we hooked the new TV up to a CHROMECAST with a laptop. After some days of using Chromecast we find it works great with most everything available other than no access to the five over the air networks. Comcast now casts most of it’s cable channels as I am sure most providers are or will shortly do. We found that Netflix, HBOGO, Amazon, TCM and PBS programs (not live) all worked flawlessly without stutter or freezes. The most serious casting problem is with live sports.
As a Packer fan I want my football! Though the free FOX SPORTS app we can get half the weekend football games the stutter and freezes make live sports unwatchable. In fact it seems any live TV has casting stutter / freeze issues.
The Denon amp has 5 HDMIs IN and one OUT to the TV. This puts the amp in control of the room with the extensive setup and settings shown full screen on the TV. Without the TV it would be a nightmare to setup.
It all came together after we realized our mistake from the previous day. The options button we were using was not a choice of programmed equalizers as we assumed, but was the menu of how the entire system was presented:
STEREO. Front speakers and woofer
DOLBY P2. Surround Sound Home theater. Movies and TV. Front main, center, woofer with the rear speakers as movie effects. The 7 in the 7.2 is for another set of BACK speakers behind the front speakers.
MULTI CHANNEL STEREO. Front, woofer and back same output. There it was! For tuner, phono, streaming mp3, CD player, YOUTUBE music video, etc…
Once set each input sticks, so to change from a music system to surround sound home theater system just click the MUSIC or MOVIE button.
The first thing we did was cast a HD YOUTUBE of The Rolling Stones Beast of Burden. It sounded so good I teared up. It was like being there. We no longer need the neighbor-troubling extreme volume to get the punch out of the 901’s. I walked around the room to find it sounds great no matter where I am. The reflecting 901s throw it around all over the place. Simply amazing. With no equalizer possible for the 901’s, [these amps no longer have TAPE MON in and out] not only does the center woofer compensate for it, but the 12” woofers in the old cabinets are doing lows and the tweeters highs that they never reached before. The music has come alive.
And neighbor friendly too! Well… I got drunk at yet another funeral the other day, came home and did an hour of AC/DC videos as loud as I ever will. I walked around our tight neighbor property to find it could be “annoying” only to the people just next door on the garage side. And then only when they are sitting out on their patio smoking. But how often will they be out smoking with me rocking at the same time? Especially come the Texas Summer. I also have them at an advantage. They can’t call the cops because the bread winner is a felon on probation. For shooting a loud neighbor I hear…
After the initial excitement of the sound coming so alive, we noticed a button on the remote that said BLUETOOTH. Had no idea it was there. As soon as I pressed it the TV screen showed SON PHONE, MY PHONE, MY LAPTOP and MY TABLET. We clicked SCAN on our devices and thousands of songs from our libraries now play flawlessly without a wire. Amazing.
Next I noticed a wireless icon on one of the buttons. I pushed it and up on the TV screen up came PANDORA, SPOTIFY and SIRUS asking me to hold the button down to join our home network. The boy is a big SPOTIFY guy so that really brought it home for him. So, after more than three years, THE BAR IS OPEN.
I found my fountain of youth in live music and rock and roll, I hope yall find yours somewhere too…