Making the move to small active lifestyle gear

[Chrispy]

Heck if I was in your position I would consider the same thing, but would probably still go actives as the technology is really there now in terms of sonic capability. For me, while the smaller actives make sense, and are certainly up to the challenge, I still know that big, room filling sound will always be what I truly want. Still, in life we have to make choices so for me this is my current choice. I wonder if in two years I will have returned to wanting big speakers. Funny enough, my girlfriend who was with me when I built up my full sized speaker rig actually thinks it is sad that I am moving on. Not the typical reaction I imagine.

I have one pair of actives, want to diy my next pair, tho. Most of my systems do a very good job of filling the room they're in, the smaller ones being easier of course. Good luck with the shrinkage!

 

[A Surfer]

I have one pair of actives, want to diy my next pair, tho. Most of my systems do a very good job of filling the room they're in, the smaller ones being easier of course. Good luck with the shrinkage!

Shrinkage, like in the pool shrinkage? Seinfeld fans will get that reference right away. I am really looking forward to getting the room ready. Currently the room my Sonos system is in is my bedroom which is soon to be turned back into the sitting room that it was before. It is frustrating as I can only hear the system lying down in bed and of course that just isn't how it is meant to be. Once I complete the transition back to sitting room I will add a second set of Sonos Fives and have a pretty room filling system that should do well if I move the rig to a larger room which could happen down the road. For now, my smallish room will be the home so shrinkage in that setting should be fine.

 

[Rufus T. Firefly]

That feels like something I can relate to. When I acquired my most recent full sized speaker rig, I was hoping to have somebody to share the experience with, but in reality, very few people care at all, and almost nobody wants to sit there and listen, they want to talk to you and enjoy the music in the background. Over time, I have been finding myself wanting that same thing so I am willing to make this move and see how it goes.

I cannot imagine more than a handful of times until I die when anybody else would remotely care about listen to music in the way that could justify a full sized speaker rig. Seriously, most people could care less. Same for movie watching I'll bet. Movie theatres are so loud to me that it is unpleasant, even dialogue is at an intense SPL and if there are loud passages, it truly can get painful to experience. I wonder if guests who come over to enjoy a movie at peoples home with these big, loud home theatre systems are often just being polite and waiting until their friend's husband finally gets over his new toy syndrome and doesn't try to make every gathering about his desire to show people what he has built.

The pursuit of huge media rooms and audio systems can actually be pretty a-social if what the owners really want is for people to rave about their system with them. For me, I am hoping that putting together a system that is small enough to be unobtrusive, and perfectly happy in the background is enough. If a gathering gets a little lively, great, the volume can go up, but I imagine those types of gatherings are less and less common as we age. Call it a hunch.

That about sums it up.

 

[Chrispy]

Shrinkage, like in the pool shrinkage? Seinfeld fans will get that reference right away. I am really looking forward to getting the room ready. Currently the room my Sonos system is in is my bedroom which is soon to be turned back into the sitting room that it was before. It is frustrating as I can only hear the system lying down in bed and of course that just isn't how it is meant to be. Once I complete the transition back to sitting room I will add a second set of Sonos Fives and have a pretty room filling system that should do well if I move the rig to a larger room which could happen down the road. For now, my smallish room will be the home so shrinkage in that setting should be fine.

Yeah the analogy seemed to work a bit In my bedroom all I use my system for is lying in bed....but there are no seats in there. It has a smallish 5.2 setup that works well.

 

[A Surfer]

Yeah the analogy seemed to work a bit In my bedroom all I use my system for is lying in bed....but there are no seats in there. It has a smallish 5.2 setup that works well.

5.2 must be nice. If you are ok with, could you say what components make up your 5.2 rig? I really enjoying reading about what other people do to make their system work for them.

 

[Chrispy]

5.2 must be nice. If you are ok with, could you say what components make up your 5.2 rig? I really enjoying reading about what other people do to make their system work for them.

It's a set of Ascend speakers, Sierra-1 NrT up front, 170SEs for surrounds, two diy 12" subs, Onkyo avr, Sony BR player, Amazon Firestick, Audio Chromecast....

 

[Ken1951]

Yeah the analogy seemed to work a bit In my bedroom all I use my system for is lying in bed....but there are no seats in there. It has a smallish 5.2 setup that works well.

We have a 5.1 system in our bedroom that sounds really good. Watch movies/shows from bed every night. Our bed has an angled headboard/storage so we are very comfortable partially sitting up. Get great surround sound. System = Yamaha RX-V483, Focal Chorus 706S, CC700, SW700, Paradigm minis, Sony 42" LED. Streaming from TV to Yamaha. DISH Joey.

 

[srrxr71]

That feels like something I can relate to. When I acquired my most recent full sized speaker rig, I was hoping to have somebody to share the experience with, but in reality, very few people care at all, and almost nobody wants to sit there and listen, they want to talk to you and enjoy the music in the background. Over time, I have been finding myself wanting that same thing so I am willing to make this move and see how it goes.

I cannot imagine more than a handful of times until I die when anybody else would remotely care about listen to music in the way that could justify a full sized speaker rig. Seriously, most people could care less. Same for movie watching I'll bet. Movie theatres are so loud to me that it is unpleasant, even dialogue is at an intense SPL and if there are loud passages, it truly can get painful to experience. I wonder if guests who come over to enjoy a movie at peoples home with these big, loud home theatre systems are often just being polite and waiting until their friend's husband finally gets over his new toy syndrome and doesn't try to make every gathering about his desire to show people what he has built.

The pursuit of huge media rooms and audio systems can actually be pretty a-social if what the owners really want is for people to rave about their system with them. For me, I am hoping that putting together a system that is small enough to be unobtrusive, and perfectly happy in the background is enough. If a gathering gets a little lively, great, the volume can go up, but I imagine those types of gatherings are less and less common as we age. Call it a hunch.

Agreed and this is what Sonos is for. An alternative is to place 6-8 OG HomePods around the space.

Start light and you can even take them to party levels after a few rounds are served.

 

[A Surfer]

Agreed and this is what Sonos is for. An alternative is to place 6-8 OG HomePods around the space.

Start light and you can even take them to party levels after a few rounds are served.

Do the OG HomePods have any appreciable bass? For me that is one thing that I couldn't sacrifice. While I know that the Sonos system is by no means at the same level as my 2.2 speaker rig was/is, the Sonos still have good coverage of bass that digs down to the upper lows properly. Despite having the 2 Sonos subs, I'm not sure that they really could produce any true sub bass in a substantive sense. I think of them as lower bass extenders really. If they are giving adequate output at even 40Hz that would be enough for what I expect. Without larger drivers, cabinets and amplifiers I am not expecting to be able to get real output any lower than that. It would be nice. I'll have to test and see though, maybe the subs do better than I believe?

 

[A Surfer]

We have a 5.1 system in our bedroom that sounds really good. Watch movies/shows from bed every night. Our bed has an angled headboard/storage so we are very comfortable partially sitting up. Get great surround sound. System = Yamaha RX-V483, Focal Chorus 706S, CC700, SW700, Paradigm minis, Sony 42" LED. Streaming from TV to Yamaha. DISH Joey.

That sounds like a great system. You two must be pretty darn happy with that as a bedroom rig.

 

[srrxr71]

Do the OG HomePods have any appreciable bass? For me that is one thing that I couldn't sacrifice. While I know that the Sonos system is by no means at the same level as my 2.2 speaker rig was/is, the Sonos still have good coverage of bass that digs down to the upper lows properly. Despite having the 2 Sonos subs, I'm not sure that they really could produce any true sub bass in a substantive sense. I think of them as lower bass extenders really. If they are giving adequate output at even 40Hz that would be enough for what I expect. Without larger drivers, cabinets and amplifiers I am not expecting to be able to get real output any lower than that. It would be nice. I'll have to test and see though, maybe the subs do better than I believe?

Surprisingly satisfying bass especially if they are played are single units as opposed to stereo pairs.

I was always hoping for a HomeSub but they went and discontinued the OG HomePod. They had a great platform but killed it.

I’m not sure about the Sonos subs probably no deep bass but should be fine down to 40Hz. Even the HomePod was measured to go quite far down. Actually much better than my LS50w.

It would be nice to be able to throw in a 3rd party sub. You could actually with old school AirPort Express. I have a few somewhere from my old days. If you can’t find one or 5 on eBay there might be other airplay receivers at this point. You could just wire up all your subs to one AirPort Express and do PEQ and phase correction on each sub individually if the sub supports that. I think the SVS subs support that.

 

[A Surfer]

Surprisingly satisfying bass especially if they are played are single units as opposed to stereo pairs.

I was always hoping for a HomeSub but they went and discontinued the OG HomePod. They had a great platform but killed it.

I’m not sure about the Sonos subs probably no deep bass but should be fine down to 40Hz. Even the HomePod was measured to go quite far down. Actually much better than my LS50w.

It would be nice to be able to throw in a 3rd party sub. You could actually with old school AirPort Express. I have a few somewhere from my old days. If you can’t find one or 5 on eBay there might be other airplay receivers at this point. You could just wire up all your subs to one AirPort Express and do PEQ and phase correction on each sub individually if the sub supports that. I think the SVS subs support that.

Really interesting to know that those OG Pods could bring some bass. Yes the Sonos Sub3 are decent, I have a pair of them. I also have a pair of SVS SB2000 Pro subs with my other system. There is of course no comparison in terms of moving area and true sub bass, the SVS are the real deal whereas the Sonos Sub3 are as close as a lifestyle product can get, which is excellent, but you need to be realistic at the same time.

I had thought about using the Sonos network device for integrating other speakers, but in my use case scenario it defeats the purpose which is to make everything smaller. I love my SVS subs, but they are still ultimately pretty big. It is a shame that sacrifices have to be made, but I'm really trying to reduce the overall room dedicated to my music system.

 

[A Surfer]

Finally added a second pair of Fives. Great for the size of room I have. If I had a larger room, I would be thinking about the middle zone and probably adding in another pair of Fives.

 

[Dan8558]

A couple years ago I built a 5.2.4 Atmos system in our gameroom. Maybe I didn’t manage to calibrate it correctly, but I found it underwhelming. The cables were a mess too. I also found that sometimes the Harmony remote didn’t start everything properly sometimes and I had a really weird experience one night where music played over the top of the audio for the show we tried to watch. I finally decided to switch to a Sonos Amp with a pair of Elac DBR62 speakers plus a sub. There are never any control problems with this setup. When the Sonos Era 300s came out I bought a pair for the room. I love them for Dolby Atmos music. I‘ve basically decided to just buy Sonos stuff for now on. It works really well, is easy to use and sounds great to me.

 

[DMill]

I’ve gone though the same. Different outcome though.

I ended up with Genelec’s, DAC, streamer. I’m using zero floor space and very little shelf space probably much less than the Sonos.

I was going to reply to the OP but I’m glad you mention this. You could even simplify this more by consolidating the streamer and DAC in one box. Curious though, do you think you’d benefit from a sub?

 

[srrxr71]

A couple years ago I built a 5.2.4 Atmos system in our gameroom. Maybe I didn’t manage to calibrate it correctly, but I found it underwhelming. The cables were a mess too. I also found that sometimes the Harmony remote didn’t start everything properly sometimes and I had a really weird experience one night where music played over the top of the audio for the show we tried to watch. I finally decided to switch to a Sonos Amp with a pair of Elac DBR62 speakers plus a sub. There are never any control problems with this setup. When the Sonos Era 300s came out I bought a pair for the room. I love them for Dolby Atmos music. I‘ve basically decided to just buy Sonos stuff for now on. It works really well, is easy to use and sounds great to me.

Can you use ATMOS without one of their soundbars?

 

[Dan8558]

Can you use ATMOS without one of their soundbars?

You can play Atmos music using the Era 300 (alone or a stereo pair) by playing Apple Music or Amazon music from the Sonos app. To play Atmos in a movie you need a soundbar.

 

[617]

Did the same. Nice wireless headphones, nice desktop system and a soundbar for my girlfriend's shows. I don't watch TV.

If I didn't live in the city I'd have big speakers but there's no point unless you have a big room.

 

[kemmler3D]

FWIW I found middle ground in this space vs. gear vs. decor conundrum by using wireless KEF stuff. I respect the Sonos gear for what it is, but it's not cheap either, and the amps in particular compare unfavorably to a WiiM setup. The rest of the house has tucked-away Fosi and WiiM setups and it works pretty well for me.

Basically no complaints, but I'm also not trying for a surround setup. There's no way I'd find a spot for 3+ more speakers in the living room.

 

[Ron Texas]

Small active lifestyle gear: A Speedo and sandals.