First of all I really new to the forum. DOn't have much idea about how to go with it. I am planning to buy AV receiver and the brands that I haev in mind is Marantz 5003 6003, Pioneer 1019, NAD 775 Yamaha (Havent seen yet). MOre sugestions are welcome.

As far as speakers, I am looking at 5.1 but I love Floor standing speakers. I have followign brands in mind. I have polk monitor 70 with me at the moment. I want to buy new set for my dad.

I need your help guys
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How far from the back wall? How much from the front wall? How much toe-in? How much distance? What height? Soft or hard mounting?

Optimising speakers to the room is one of the trickiest things to do. Since there are no set rules, I usually start with placing one speaker in the middle of the room and playing pink and white noise alternately, looking for reflections and traps. I mostly find that there should be enough room behind one speaker to keep one more if required, and my preferred...

I've been spending some time reviewing the Asus Xonar DX for another forum, hopefully I'll be publishing the results here as well. PC audio has come a long way - I remember the first creative Vibra that I recorded my first guitar solo on. It was a 20-bit card, surprisingly quiet, reasonably inexpensive and the sound quality though not spectacular, was tolerable. But then, the quality of my downstream equipment was also lower.

Today all my sources are PC-based again, after having been...

Marantz MM8003 Power Amplifier
Introduction
When I first heard that the MM8003, the companion piece to Marantz’s new audio/video processor, the recently reviewed AV8003, was going to be a 8 channel amplifier I thought it was kind of strange. Now that it is here I see that the 8 channel idea was well thought out. A 8 channel amplifier can power an entire 7.1 system with a passive amplifier such as those found in many in-wall systems; four separate stereo systems; a 5.1 system with...

What not to carry usually becomes more important than what to. Balance genres, artists, recordings, and the exercise degenerates rapidly into a mindless sorting of recordings based purely on technical parameters. Some terrible recordings once made me feel good, I want that feeling again.

Is it possible? Only time will tell. I may be stepping out of the simplicity of the years I only had a little Panasonic tape recorder to listen to; everything sounded awesome - even recordings that...