As mentioned in vintagebob's thread, pictures are forthcoming - I left my patch cable at home this morning.
DeliveryAfter scrambling over the past couple days to finish re-organizing my living room, everything was set for delivery yesterday morning. The majority of my apartment is now filled with 'stuff', but the living room re-org looks great. I suppose that it was inevitable that I wouldn't actually start doing any of the things I said I'd do until things were actually "on the way". Just who I am I suppose.
Just getting a delivery window from FedEx was interesting: when we were scheduling it, FedEx claimed that the order didn't have a residential delivery option on it... I insisted that it did, so they called Jim. A short while later they called me back and had changed their story. Not sure what Jim said, but he sorted them out quite nicely (thanks again Jim!).
Then they started talking about trucks with lift gates... Insisting that the boxes were too heavy for a normal truck, so they were going to need a lift gate, which was an additional charge. We eventually settled on my being there (possibly with a friend) to help the driver unload the boxes off the truck. This was a satisfactory compromise for both sides. The driver wouldn't kill himself, and I'm a healthy young guy, no issues here lifting boxes.
So yeah, I got a 10am-noon delivery window on Nov 4th. 10am rolled around and every time I heard a truck go by I ran out to the balcony to look outside (on the 17th floor). It was garbage day in our neighbourhood, so there were a lot of trucks moving around!
11am came and went.
Noon came... and went.
At 12:15pm I phoned FedEx:
"
Hi, FexEx Freight, John speaking. Can I help you?"
"
Yes, I had a package ship with you guys that arrived in Burnaby yesterday. It was scheduled for delivery between 10am and noon this morning. Noon has come and gone and I see no signs of a truck. So what's going on?"
...
30 minutes later, the truck showed up.
Despite our earlier conversations, the truck had... a lift gate. Ha!
The driver pulled the pallet off and then used a dolly to get the boxes up the elevator and into the apartment.
Unpacking / SetupIt's been said many times and I'll say it again: Jim and crew do a fantastic job with their packaging. I was SUPER impressed with how well it was done. Particularly the box with the surrounds and center. I have a picture of it that I'll post.
I had a friend over to help with the truck, so he stuck around to help unpack everything and then clean up the mess. The two of us then set about putting the plinths and spikes on the tower / sub. Used pennies under the spikes to save the laminate floor in my rental.
Putting the plinths on was easy. The spikes were supringly hard - if you don't get them perfectly straight, they catch while threading. It took several tries for most of them.
After that, it was time to run speaker cable. Like floresjc, I had placed an order with Bluejeans for a spool, a sub cable and some banana plugs. It was my first time finishing cables with plugs instead of using raw copper, so it was a very slow process. Agonizingly slow when the speakers were *right there*. But it was still fun, and the anticipation was fantastic.
Jim was right by the way. Pictures just don't do justice to the beauty of these speakers. The workmanship is amazing and they're super well matched. I particularly like the towers and one of the surround pairs. The one set of surrounds feels amost zen in how well matched the graining is and how perfectly matched it is to the shape of the speaker. Truely a work of art.
The TowersIn the end, the anticipation was too much. Once I'd finished cables for the two towers, I had to get something going though them before I was willing to do the others.
The room I'm in at the moment is far from ideal:
- 13' x 12'6"
- laminate floors (with a large throw rug covering more than half the room)
- one 13' wall is entirely glass and has a heavy curtain covering it
- the other 13' wall is only half a wall... the other half opens up as a hallway into the rest of the apartment
- no proper room treatments
I read through Jim's placement suggestions and quickly realized that it wouldn't be an option in my room. The towers are about 6'6" apart and a bit closer to the back wall than they 'should' be. That said, I figured I can move them around and work on placement over time.
Before playing through Jim's demo CD, I had to play a track that I'd long before decided would be the first track played on my speakers. It's a track from a CD I listened too WAY too often as a teen... the "Throne Room and Finale from Star Wars" on this CD:
http://www.amazon.com/John-Williams-Conducts-Star-Trilogy/dp/B000002712/ref=pd_sim_m_15.
I had an idea of what to expect because I visited with fishinbob before deciding on the purchase. And I was not disapointed in the least!
The sound came through beautifully and clearly. I was amazed at how loud I could turn up my stereo and still find that I could handle more volume. In the end I chickened out and kept it somewhat down. Despite being concrete, I know that sound can carry up into other apartments in my building.
I could actually hear the limitations of the room as well. It was incredible to realize that at a certain volume level things sounded good, but that after a certain point, the bouncing in the room became obvious and hurt the sound quality.
I listened through my track and about half of Jim's demo CD before I went back to work on setting up the rest of the equipment.
Surrounds / Centre / SubNot a whole lot more to say at this point. My stands aren't in yet for the surrounds, so they're sitting on the floor and their sound is being eaten by my couch.
The Song Sub is incredible... I turned it on and ran a test tone through it at only 1/3 of its power and I could feel the vibrations hitting my skin and clothes. I LOVE the sub and I've barely even begun to play with it.
Lacking any surround music, I dropped in a blue-ray disc to check out the surround setup. Iron Man was incredible! When they first demonstrate the Jericho missile system, there's the sound of the dust flying past everyone watching... it was at that point that I was blown away by the quality of the sound.
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Pictures will probably be up (with more listening impressions) over the next couple days.
