Monday, June 27, 2011

New Speakers & Why I love Groupon

A couple of weeks ago, I received this Groupon Deal. The deal had a photo of a flat screen TV with some cool looking, low profile speakers.

Dick and I had been trying to figure out what to with the speaker system in our main TV room. Our new house came wired for 2 front wall speakers and a low, center speaker. (it also has 2 ceiling speakers for the rear.)

The wall that our TV is on is huge, and frankly, it dwarfed our 46" Samsung LED (which looked quite huge on the wall in our old home). Many of our techie friends who have come over have informed us that we needed a larger TV. :)

The other problem is that the wires for the speakers in the walls are all about 6" off-center for no apparent reason. Very odd. We centered the TV to the un-centered speaker wires, which wasn't really working. Also, we had small, boxy speakers that looked really funny mounted to the wall, so we decided to keep them on stands, and not use the speaker wires in the wall. This worked well enough, so we planned to have a painter come in to stuff the then-unused speaker wires back into the walls, and patch over them.


Our huge wall with our dwarfed TV, and non-centered speaker wires coming out of the wall

Well, procrastination paid off.

When I received the Groupon, I forwarded along the photo to Dick.


the photo that changed everything

Dick loved the look of the speakers in the photo, so we decided to go to the store to check them out. The speakers are by KEF, and are part of the T305 System. We really liked the look of them, and the quality was great.

I hadn't bought the Groupon yet, because we didn't know enough about the product before seeing it. Once we were there and decided to get them, I was able to buy the Groupon right then and there from my phone! We paid $75 for $150 of merchendise. Awesome!!

We decided to install the speakers yesterday. We decided to center the TV to the wall, and have the speaker wires moved over so that they would also be centered correctly. We realized quickly that this is a task that we'll have to hire a pro to do (drill through the walls (drywall on top of plywood, with insulation running between the studs) and fish the wire to the new spot. In the meantime, we mounted the speakers, and draped some of the speaker wires to where they need to be (until they are done properly).

We're super pleased with the result!

The TV size looks much better now - it no longer looks like it's floating in the middle of the wall. It's nicely anchored by the 3 speakers surrounding it. We left enough space between the 3 speakers for a larger TV if we decide to get one. I don't think we need a larger TV now. (Not sure if Dick agrees with that or not!)


The full wall - with properly centered TV and new speakers


The new speakers are GREAT! The low profile looks fantastic, and the sound quality is SO much better than what we had up before.


Profile of the mounted speakers

We still need to have someone help us move the wires to the proper location, but we're really happy with how the new set up looks! I'll try not to procrastinate on having getting the rest of the project finished now. :)

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