Digital Home Cinema Questions...

c0y0te

Hi there,

I'm looking at getting myself a Pioneer DCS-313 system but I have a few questions for anyone who can help:-

1) Has anyone had any experiences of this system? good, bad or ugly?

2) How easy/hard is it to extend the default cable length (to rear speakers) with systems like this? Is there any max limit before degredation happens?

3) Any advice on ordering systems from UK vs walking up to shops here and getting them?

4) Have you come across any nice techniques or gadgets to help hide the cables across/up/down walls?


Thanks in advance.

c0y0te

robbie1876

Hi Coyote,

1) Yes, I've installed a couple of these systems before. Observations are that the picture quality is excellent. Setup is excellent too. Sound is very good on movies, not so good on music DVDs or CDs, but still more than acceptable. When setting up, you'll need to boost the two rear channels quite a bit just to get them near to the same levels as the front speakers, then you can adjust to your own taste. The sub is a bit hollow sounding, you'll need to play with the location of it in your room to find the sweetspot. Generally try to avoid putting the sub in a corner, cos it will just sound boomy. Also, one time I used Pioneer's own speaker stands for this system. Sound quality was notably better once the stands were installed. This is because the stands are very heavy and sturdy, so the speaker itself wasn't picking up counter-vibrations from surrounding shelves/walls etc.

2) The speakers connect to the amp by way of a custom speaker clip, so there is no chance of extending that end of the cable. The other end is just bare wire into the speakers, so you can extend this no problem. Just use standard electical junction boxes/strips. Sound wise, there is rolloff particularly on the extreme treble and bass frequencies once you go more than about 10 metres. It is dependant on the quality of your speaker cable, but in reality with these speakers, you won't notice any difference, so I wouldn't worry about it!

3) As far as I know a Pioneer system purchased in the UK is covered by a European warranty, so if you have a problem you can bring it to the Pioneer service centre on the Naas Road. You should check this out first though. Apart from saying that, I don't have any experience buying stuff like this from the UK, sorry...

4) Well it depends on how invisible you want the cables to be, the locations of the speakers, and how handy you are at diy! If the walls are dry lined plasterboard, its easy enough to cut a small hole at the top of the wall where the speaker will be, and drop a counter-sunk line down to another small hole at the bottom of the wall to pop your cable out. Invest in a stud dector from Woodies/Argos etc to get a map of your studs in your wall, just in case there's any cross beams in your way. Once the cable is out of the wall at skirting level, you can just use standard electrical trunking to hide the cable above the skirting. Or take the skirting off and pop the cable behind. If the room is carpeted, you can run the cable between the wall and the carpet grips, so its completely hidden.

Hope this helps, feel free to ask more, if I can help I will!

Robbie

c0y0te

Thanks for the advice...

I have a wood floor, so running stuff around the top of the skirting is probably the way to go, but digging holes in the walls is likely to get me into a whole world of pain with wifey:)

Interesting points you make about the sound quality and the sub, specifically related to this model/unit. If you were not going for a pioneer, is there another brand/model that you would recommend?

My main needs are auto-sensing multi region, decent quality, good formats (dvd,cdrw,mp3 etc.), digital output home cinema etc. Beyond that I'm open to suggestions...

c0y0te

robbie1876

To be honest, that Pioneer unit is about as good as I've heard in that price range. The top end Sony units are excellent too, better than this Pioneer, but much more expensive. As you can probably tell, I'm not a big fan of all-in-one home cinema systems. But in fairness, you'd be hard pressed to put together a seperates system for the price of the Pioneer.

So I would either go with the DCS-313, spending a bit of time working on speaker locations, or else start looking through the buy and sell for second hand kit! This can be a risky move though, and you will most likely end up with larger, less wife-friendly speakers if you don't go for an all-in-one. A friend of mine put together a really amazing sounding home cinema system that meets all your listed requirements for €550 by trawling through the buy and sell. But the kit wasn't the prettiest.

In my opinion this Pioneer unit is streets ahead of most other all-in-one systems. If you've heard somebody else's other brand all-in-one system, you'll be delighted with this one.

Thumbs up brands: Pioneer, Sony, Yamaha, Denon.
Thumbs down brands: Philips, JVC, Panasonic, anything sold by Argos or Lidl/Aldi.