The truck came last Friday (6-25-2010) at 10:00AM in the morning and unloaded 2 pallets in my garage. I spent the next 6+ hours unpacking and setting things up (I took the day off of work).
This system is a 5.1 system comprising of a pair of HT2-TL mains, an HT2C, a pair of HT1 rears (configured in Ellis 1801 stand mount cabinets 9” by 19” by 14”), and a Salk Rhythmic Servo 15 sub. I also had Jim fabricate the speaker stands for the HTC & HT1’s.
Unpacking is quite an ordeal with this many components. I took my time to set up everything including assembly of the speaker stands and positioned the speaker in my room without any issues or accidents.
I hooked up the speaker to the amp and began the process of configuring the system on my preamp. My system components are:
CD Source: Cary Audio Design CD306 SACD
DVD Source: Arcam FMJ DV139
Preamp: Anthem Statement D2 with ARC (Anthem Room Correction)
Amp: Anthem Statement P5, 5 channel mono-blocks , rated at 500 w/channel at 4 ohms (675 w at 2 ohms)
I took about an hour and a half to get the system configured to where I could begin listening to sources with all of the channel and source setup routines that i had to perform. These Salk speakers replace the Onix Reference 3’s that I had before.
I started out listening with two channel mode using direct analog pass through of the CD source material through the Anthem Statement D2 preamp without processing. I listened too many of my favorite disks and quickly discovered that I wanted to listen to every disk I have allover again because it sounded so much better and so much more revealing. Rather than have me try to describe the sound like so many others can do much better than I can (like describing the unique taste of $1000 a bottle wine) I will just say that the sound exceeded my best expectations.
I spent the weekend tweaking the system, performed the wonder Anthem room correction process, played with the Rhythmic servo 15 sub (I love it!) and got it integrated seamlessly into 2 channel and 5.1 surround modes. The sub has all the thump I want for home theater duties (to problem).
My listening room is 22’ wide 24’ long 16’ high with two open walls (think of a slightly rectangular cube with two adjacent sides opened up). It’s a tough room to tame because of the size along with the stone floors. The Anthem room correction does a wonderful job on it. Two channel play with subwoofer gives the best pure sound quality.
I have lived with this new HT2-TL sound system now for almost a week and every day I discover a new virtue about the way they deliver music. I love these speakers and can highly recommend them. My world is a better place now.
Kyle
