AlienALX
Active member
Saw a thread earlier that got me to thinking we should have a cinema rig thread here at OC3D.
About 18 months ago now my lady and I came into some money. We decided that because we were both Aspies and thus hardly ever leave our house that we should spend some money on creature comforts. We got a new sofa ETC then we started to look at TVs etc. We decided in the end that the best way to create space in our main room was to wall mount. I know this is usually frowned upon, but when you only have one main room it seemed to work out to be the best idea. We ended up settling on a 65" Hisense monitor (it has no TV tuner so is classed as a monitor).
You will see later why we needed it to be so big.
So then it was onto the audio side and I decided to fulfill a couple of wishes I had had for many years. Firstly I wanted it to be all valve based (huge fan of the sound) and secondly I wanted it to be all Scandyna.
If you'd never heard of Scandyna I would see why. They're not exactly a household name but ever since the very early 90s when they made their first set of speakers in cast fibreglass shells (for many thousands of pounds) I was hooked on the looks. It's not like you sacrifice audio quality either because they only use Bowers & Wilkins yellow drivers.
So first up was what I chose to be the front stage.
These are known as Smallpods. I did some bartering on Ebay and managed to source them for a very good price. They were brand new but the box had been opened, perfect really. Here is a shot without the spikes and this is how I run them.
And then it was time to find some rear speakers. I was determined to find Scandyna, and in the end I found these. They call these "Micropods".
They usually retail at around £200+ per speaker (these are sold seperately). However, I managed to work out that they also did an amplified set of bluetooth speakers that were identical and Amazon had these on sale for £250 for a pair. So I bought them, took them apart, bypassed the amplifier and all was good.
The next thing I bought was the amplifiers. I am using three in total. The first amplifier I bought was a Koda which is a Russian valve based amplifier. It cheats ever so slightly, only using valves for the pre stage, but overall the sound ends up the same so it was no problem. I got this for an absolute steal from a seller in Greece. It worked out (after converting Euros) to £120.
Sadly I could not find another bargain like that so I decided to go with the Fatman "Mitube" for the rear stage. It's less powerful than the Koda, but also has Bluetooth so I can jump in with my cellphone and listen to music on the rears
The third amplifer is one of those small Chinese things. I use that to drive the centre channel speaker...
Next up was finding a subwoofer. Now Scandyna only make the one subwoofer and it's eye wateringly expensive. I first decided to just get a cheap one and bought a cheap thing for £35 shipped (forget the name now but it was brand new and sounded OK) whilst I saved up for the Scandyna bass station. However, I was poking around on Ebay one day and saw this.
It's a Scandyna Bass Station in yellow. The seller said that he had dropped it one day and the top half had broken and was now out of line with the bottom half. However, it worked perfectly but was also missing the spikes (feet) and the black trim that seals the two halves. However, he only wanted £120 delivered for it. I figured it was well worth the risk and if it was broken beyond repair that I could simply remove all of the parts and create a new enclosure for it out of MDF.
The subwoofer arrived and I immediately started working on it. First I had to remove the mesh woofer guard, then I removed the subwoofer and then I noticed that it was held together by long metal rods. One hour was all it took and I had this.
I then went on Ebay and ordered this.
And again after about another hour (and modding the Smallpod feet to fit it) I had this.
Now that was a nice way to save over seven hundred quid !
Most of you will be wondering how I connect up three amplifiers and a subwoofer to each other to all work together. The answer? this.
The only caveat is that it's a bit of a PITA to change the volume, but, considering we live in a flat we decided just to set the audio to a level we were happy with and then just leave it
Now the wiring, which I decided to make myself as I wanted high quality cabling without spending the earth. I bought an enormous great run of this (Rockford Fosgate OFC)
And a mountain of these.
And the job was done
Here is a shot of it all running (and before I finished the cable management) but you can see why we needed such a large screen.
The only thing I have left to do now is replace the centre channel speaker. It's some crappy Jamo thing that I got for £15 whilst hunting down the Scandyna centre channel (this).
Sadly they are around £550 so I am thinking about making my own with fibreglass and some 5" woofers.
About 18 months ago now my lady and I came into some money. We decided that because we were both Aspies and thus hardly ever leave our house that we should spend some money on creature comforts. We got a new sofa ETC then we started to look at TVs etc. We decided in the end that the best way to create space in our main room was to wall mount. I know this is usually frowned upon, but when you only have one main room it seemed to work out to be the best idea. We ended up settling on a 65" Hisense monitor (it has no TV tuner so is classed as a monitor).
You will see later why we needed it to be so big.
So then it was onto the audio side and I decided to fulfill a couple of wishes I had had for many years. Firstly I wanted it to be all valve based (huge fan of the sound) and secondly I wanted it to be all Scandyna.
If you'd never heard of Scandyna I would see why. They're not exactly a household name but ever since the very early 90s when they made their first set of speakers in cast fibreglass shells (for many thousands of pounds) I was hooked on the looks. It's not like you sacrifice audio quality either because they only use Bowers & Wilkins yellow drivers.
So first up was what I chose to be the front stage.
These are known as Smallpods. I did some bartering on Ebay and managed to source them for a very good price. They were brand new but the box had been opened, perfect really. Here is a shot without the spikes and this is how I run them.
And then it was time to find some rear speakers. I was determined to find Scandyna, and in the end I found these. They call these "Micropods".
They usually retail at around £200+ per speaker (these are sold seperately). However, I managed to work out that they also did an amplified set of bluetooth speakers that were identical and Amazon had these on sale for £250 for a pair. So I bought them, took them apart, bypassed the amplifier and all was good.
The next thing I bought was the amplifiers. I am using three in total. The first amplifier I bought was a Koda which is a Russian valve based amplifier. It cheats ever so slightly, only using valves for the pre stage, but overall the sound ends up the same so it was no problem. I got this for an absolute steal from a seller in Greece. It worked out (after converting Euros) to £120.
Sadly I could not find another bargain like that so I decided to go with the Fatman "Mitube" for the rear stage. It's less powerful than the Koda, but also has Bluetooth so I can jump in with my cellphone and listen to music on the rears
The third amplifer is one of those small Chinese things. I use that to drive the centre channel speaker...
Next up was finding a subwoofer. Now Scandyna only make the one subwoofer and it's eye wateringly expensive. I first decided to just get a cheap one and bought a cheap thing for £35 shipped (forget the name now but it was brand new and sounded OK) whilst I saved up for the Scandyna bass station. However, I was poking around on Ebay one day and saw this.
It's a Scandyna Bass Station in yellow. The seller said that he had dropped it one day and the top half had broken and was now out of line with the bottom half. However, it worked perfectly but was also missing the spikes (feet) and the black trim that seals the two halves. However, he only wanted £120 delivered for it. I figured it was well worth the risk and if it was broken beyond repair that I could simply remove all of the parts and create a new enclosure for it out of MDF.
The subwoofer arrived and I immediately started working on it. First I had to remove the mesh woofer guard, then I removed the subwoofer and then I noticed that it was held together by long metal rods. One hour was all it took and I had this.
I then went on Ebay and ordered this.
And again after about another hour (and modding the Smallpod feet to fit it) I had this.
Now that was a nice way to save over seven hundred quid !
Most of you will be wondering how I connect up three amplifiers and a subwoofer to each other to all work together. The answer? this.
The only caveat is that it's a bit of a PITA to change the volume, but, considering we live in a flat we decided just to set the audio to a level we were happy with and then just leave it
Now the wiring, which I decided to make myself as I wanted high quality cabling without spending the earth. I bought an enormous great run of this (Rockford Fosgate OFC)
And a mountain of these.
And the job was done
Here is a shot of it all running (and before I finished the cable management) but you can see why we needed such a large screen.
The only thing I have left to do now is replace the centre channel speaker. It's some crappy Jamo thing that I got for £15 whilst hunting down the Scandyna centre channel (this).
Sadly they are around £550 so I am thinking about making my own with fibreglass and some 5" woofers.
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