Im in the busy of making my ultimate home audio setup. But I'm facing a few problems and i need your thought and expertise.
A brief history; i always used my htpc (with a creative soundblaster live) and a old 5.1 surround set from creative. This was fine until i saw two JBL150's in a local shop. I bought them and absolutely love them (at least the look). I exchanged my htpc for a laptop because the noise of the htpc fans was starting to annoy me. I used a Sony str d595 as a receiver with 2 of the old creative surround speakers for the rear (no center and no sub). Now there are no distractions when i watch a movie or listen to music. A new problem arrived, the sound quality of the laptop is sh#t and the Sony str d595 isn't that good either (sounds flat and empty). To do a quick fix i placed a Philips F3610 pre amp in between the front channel out and the receiver which did improve the sound a bit.
All this playing around and experimenting made me realize how every element the sounds passes through is affecting the sound. Im a very skeptical guy so i needed to hear by my own ears Since then im thinking about how to improve my setup and get optimal sound quality using the stuff i already have. Im willing to spend some money but im not that rich so it has to be reasonable. Im no audiophile but since i have the JBL150's i started to read articles about audio and learned a lot since then.
This is what i came up with.
Lets start with the audio source. All the music/movies come from my laptop. The audio quality isn't good, only has stereo and the graphics card is to slow for 1080p so it needs to be replaced. I want to build my own HTPC based on a mini itx board that has low power consumption and can act as a file server. Since im a computer guy i know what to do here. The HTPC is my main/only audio source so this shouldn't be the bottle neck in my system so i did some research on good audio quality from a pc. Reading reviews i realized that a standard soundcard is not going to fly because of their poor DAC capability's. More high-end soundcards are better but they are more engineered to go with studio and music production, meaning low latency, midi support and stuff. My theory is that you pay for all those features and since im not going to use them it seems a waste of money. Second option is using SPDIF, only sending a digital signal that still needs to be processed by a DAC. Most mini-itx motherboards have this feature build in so this seems the way to go. I guess i can build a HTPC for about 250 euro.
Now I have the HTPC covered and have a 5.1 digital signal that i can use and need to process. The easy option would be to go with the Sony str d595 receiver i already have. But i don't think this will do justice to my JBL150's. Now i could go for a new standard all in one receiver, but again, you pay for a lot of stuff i don't need (like a thousand hdmi inputs, complex remotes, network connections, tuners etc.) Besides that, I also have two Alesis MKII active monitors i want to use for the rear surround. Since they're active i really only need an amp that will amplify the two JBL's. So a good standalone preamp/dac/surround processor is what i need. This could either be a 4.0/4.1/5.0/5.1 setup since i have four speakers total. The JBL150 delivers enough bass so a subwoover isn't needed. For the center speaker i would like (for now) to use the speakers from my hdtv (straight from the htpc to my tv if it is possible to use your optical and centerjack/hdmi at the same time (i couldn't find out), or go with the center out from the dac/preamp.) The question is, what would be a affordable surround dac/preamp without all the unnecessary whistles (some eq-ing and setup would be nice offcource).
Now that i got the htpc, center and rear covered i need to power my JBL150's. im still wondering which way to go since these speakers are my pride and joy! I have a small living room (about 25m2) but planning to move to a bigger place soon. The JBL's are rated with 300 watt rms at 8ohm and the manual suggest using a powerful amplifier that can deliver this. I guess adding a 2x300 watt amp is a bit overkill and also because normally i do not listen to very loud music. So im looking for a amp that sounds good but also has the power to play loud music/movies once in a while. I cant figure out what to do here, i could use a mono block for each speaker, maybe a pa power amp, some other amp? I don't know what will deliver the most bang for the buck.
Like i said before i'm no audiophile but are having lots of fun figuring this out. So what do you (audiophiles) think of my train of thoughts? Any recommendations on the preamp/poweramp? And to give you an indication of budget, lets say a €1000
Thanks!
