 If you ever get a cool shiny new toy and you know you should really wait a little while and set it up when you're ready to do it properly, but you're just like, screw it, I'm gonna play with it right away. That's this video. All the home theater stuff arrived for my new place. And yeah, there's no drywall, there's no insulation, there's no carpet, but we're gonna try it out anyway. And it's sponsored by OBSBOT, who's got this cool little dongle that's gonna help track us as we're going around the room setting things up so that we can never be out of frame. I mean, I could have a camera operator for that, I guess, but this is a lot cheaper, right Brandon? Yeah. Yeah. Dude. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whether you're designing a theater room from scratch or just upgrading an existing space with a surround sound setup, it can be an extremely daunting undertaking. I mean, there are options in quite literally every price point, all the way up from cheap virtual surround soundbars to speakers that can cost as much as an actual house. Each. Now, for most people, the aforementioned soundbar with wireless rear channels or a combo receiver and speaker set from the local big box store will probably suffice. But for me, well, I wanted something a little crazier. Hoo-wee! Wait, holy crap. Are these the subwoofers? Yeah, those are the subs, man. You can pick it up, right? Oh! What? There's two? Yeah, there's two. Of course there's two. How about these towers? Oh my God. These are as tall as me. I was just about to say, they might be taller than you. If you watch WAN Show, you'll probably have heard me talk about wanting to buy a micro LED TV called The Wall. And that display is on a completely different playing field than anything that you would find at Best Buy. Even when you ignore all the glaring issues, like the crazy power requirements or the fact that the heat output is so much that you need a dedicated AC just for the room that it goes in. Compared to that, this seems downright normie. And that's for a good reason, because in audio in particular, the law of diminishing returns hits hard and it hits fast. Yeah, we could spend literally 10, 20 times this amount on the audio setup. But once you do that, there are so many other variables you have to control, like the environment that the speakers are gonna be in, the sound treatment, how clean the input power is. And if we aren't gonna get all of those things on the level that 50 or $100,000 speakers would demand, especially cause this is a space primarily for watching like movies. Blue Rays don't have the craziest audio quality anyway. And I really think that these are gonna do a great job of filling up such a small room. Why are there two subwoofers? Well, when you have a bigger room like that, it basically gives you more even base so you can have a wider optimal seating position. Cause usually in a home theater setup, you have like one spot. Having two subs means maybe you'll have those three spots are a little better, you know? Now we just gotta carry this all inside. Yeah, no problem. We got this. Whoa! Why do I have to go backwards and carry the heavy end? Life isn't fair Linus. I am so excited to hear these man. These are what the internet pretty much agrees is your great balance between spectacular sounding audio and not sending a fortune. So the fact that SVS sent these over for us to check out, it's pretty exciting. Okay, you ready? How about you do this by yourself? How about you gotta make up for the rest? Do it by yourself, smart guy. I think I'd have a better chance of doing it by myself than you would. I could do it by myself. Let's see here. Man, this is not the ideal room setup to audition speakers. We're gonna do it anyways. Yeah, we're gonna, I couldn't wait. Oh, it's big. I know, I thought it was gonna be way more packing material in here. This is freaking, this is not what I told Yvonne. The wife approval factor. It's coming out boys. So basically the idea is this sub gives you the same sort of output as you would have in a big ported sub, but while taking up way less floor space. Cause if we got the, you know, kind of cube version of this sub, it would be like that. Right. Like big. So they take that like horizontal box space and then just go up in a cylinder. Yeah, that much I knew, but when I pitched this to Yvonne, I was like, yeah, it'll be taller, but the footprint is gonna be way smaller. I had imagined like 60% of this. Like you gotta realize the equivalent boxy sub would be like huge. Right. So this gives us the benefit of, we can put it in more places. We have more flexibility. And with the sub, that's really important. You wanna be able to move them around to get an optimal position for them. This is not what I pitched to Yvonne. Let's have a look at the towers. Well, how about you open the towers? All right, let's have a look at the towers. Oh, God, it's central. This edge right here. Don't worry, everything's fine. Oh, Jesus. No, no, it's actually- Did you already break it? No, no, it's actually fine. Everything is actually fine. It's gonna go kadoonk one year. No, it's fine, it's fine. See, I got it. Why didn't you just cut this whole thing and then pull this piece up? Ow. Give me that, give me that. Stop, just stop. What are you doing? I'm good, I'm just gonna. Oh my God. Oh yeah. Wow. Holy speaker, Batman. So what we got is their Ultra Tower Surround Kit. This kit retails for around $4,500 US dollars, which sounds like a lot to some people, but in the world of professional audio, that's cheap, like so cheap. Wow. Those are sexy. Now I've got a question for you, Jakka, and I'm sure this is gonna be a stupid question for the home theater nerds out there, but this has two separate inputs. Is that to drive it separately? You can drive like the mid and the tweeter separate from the woofers. So if you want your receiver to handle the crossover, instead of having the speaker just be dumb about it. It's got a really aggressive stance, hey? That's crazy. So supposedly everything about the design of these is for acoustics. Got it. It is this shape because testing indicated this was a good shape. Yep. Just don't drop it. It almost just railed those nails. No, no, no, no, it's okay. Okay. Oh, they look kind of pinner in here actually. Well, see, that's why I told James I wanted to go with the towers. The thing is, in a room this size, you do not need tower speakers like that because you don't have to move that much air. It's actually gonna be a really small room by the time we put any acoustic treatment on the walls, on the ceilings, we carpet it. But I just felt like with the size of the screen up here, it was gonna look really stupid. These will sound better than the bookshelves would. I guarantee it. In fact, the real pro way to do it, rather than having a little center channel, well, the center channel we have is like two feet wide, it's pretty big, would be to actually have a third tower as a center channel. Yeah, I know, I know. Behind a screen, but yeah, whatever. Yeah, that's fine. Screw that. I wanna be ready for the micro-led upgrade in the future. While we get everything positioned, this is probably a good time for us to set up the OBSBOT. Oh yeah. What's really cool about this thing is just like their previous product that we featured before, it uses their built-in camera, but only to power their AI tracking. So you throw your phone into the mount here, this camera will actually track you and make sure that your phone is pointed at you. And then whatever you're doing, whether you're teaching like a fitness class or shooting a video where you're setting up a whole bunch of speakers, it'll just follow you around and make sure that you're always framed correctly. So we're just gonna set this up. Why don't you put it on top of the sub? Oh, actually, yeah, that's perfect. Let's throw it in the corner, throw this on top of it, and then we're good to go. Just pick the thing up, come on. Oh, it's heavy. It's not that heavy. It's pretty heavy. All you gotta do, hold the button, turn it on. Okay, now hold up your hand. Okay, now walk around. Oh, okay. Oh, look at that, that's so cool. Like if we're shooting videos in the workshop and stuff like that, this would be a viable alternative to having one of the camera guys stuck shooting for like six hours while they work on CNC. Hey, don't open that yet. But I want to. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Surround's first. No, I want to open the receiver. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's like- Okay, mom. It's like working with a child. Wait, so if I walk into the frame, it's not gonna track me now, is it? I have no idea how it's gonna respond to that. No, it just tracks you. So if I, hold on, if I hold my hand up. Wonder if it just hates you. Oh, there we go, I think I was actually out of the frame. Yeah, it grabbed you. Wow. Hey. It's pretty quick, eh? It's legit pretty cool. Okay, here now, you can have it back. These surrounds look sick and they're crazy heavy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my God. Well, I told you they're heavy. Holy. You don't listen to me. Are we going grills or naked? Oh, definitely naked. You think so? Yvonne's not gonna like it. I tried to take the grills off our old tower speakers. This is the home theater. It's like the man came. Here's the thing. I've already withdrawn a lot of goodwill from the bank to get this room to be dark and to have all the doors like closed. And so if she says the grills go on. What if- Grills might go on. A sneaking, a little bit taller than you dude came in in the middle of the night, stole the grills. I mean, I wouldn't call the police. You're too close to the camera, damn it. Oh, sorry. Hey, ObSpot, how you doing, buddy? Here's where it gets a little bit complicated. Your intended setup is meant to be seven channels, right? Yes. So we don't have a back wall. So there's not really any way for us to set up the back channels. So for now, we're just gonna set up a five channel. Got it. Now, when you have a five channel speakers like this, you can actually set them up in what SVS calls duet mode. Oh, there it's even labeled. You put them a little bit further back behind the optimal listening position and it bounces off the back wall. So these would effectively give you a seven channel setup. Right, but if you don't have a back wall. We're just gonna leave them. You wanna basically put them beside the couch. Are we just gonna sit them there? That's probably not ideal. Oh yeah, yeah, that's not gonna fall. Hey, it might, but. It's not gonna fall, Jake. Look, it's really hanging off like this much. It's really heavy on the back too, so. Everything's fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Yeah, it's gonna be fine. We got this. All right, I'm gonna open up the other tower. Okay. I'm gonna clean up some cardboard. Or well, not clean it up, move it. Okay, I'm gonna open this one up right. I think this is the correct way. Don't damage it this time. I did not damage it. I think you're supposed. Oh, I see what you're doing. Yeah, I think it's like this. Yeah, whatever. I believe in you. They're your speakers anyways. Oh, the grills on the towers are little ones. Yeah. I've actually, that might be how I talk my wife out of putting the grills on, because these grills are gonna look super stupid, like half grill. I mean, here, we can put one on and see what it looks like. Yeah, I'm gonna go with. Oh no, honey, the grills disappeared. Yeah, they did. I'll just tell her that SVS said we had to leave the grills off. And you keep stealing my OBS bot. Oh, hi buddy. It's my friend, okay? That looks freaking awesome. There's no way I'm putting the grill on this. Yeah. Well, there's no way you're putting the grill on anything. Yeah. Grills. They didn't come with grills, honey. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Mint, bud. Did you almost just drop the TV? Nope. Oh, well. Learn from the best. Everyone see this? All right. So I'm allowed to open up the receiver now, right? Only cause you ate your Brussels sprouts. Oh my God. Yeah, it's 52 pounds. Holy crap. Oh my God. No, don't look at that yet. This is second from the absolute top of the line from Denon. It's a 13 channel amp, which is capable of some crazy surround configurations. Like you could do 7.2.6. So that would be seven surrounds, two subs and six height channels. Or you could do 9.2.4, which would be even more surrounds. If you're willing to, you know, give up some of your height channels or something like that. It's 52 pounds. It has full support for HDMI 2.1 input, including variable refresh rate, 4K 120 Hertz, all this stuff we're gonna want for PC gaming here in the media room. It's got triple HDMI out, which is important because- You could have a TV or projector and you could have people out there like eating food or whatever and they get to watch it too. That's actually, we probably should have it hooked up into one of the secondary inputs in the TV out there. Yeah. Okay, we gotta make sure we let the contractors know then. So are you gonna put this in the mechanical room? I haven't decided yet. We've got the option of putting it just at the front here. Yeah. We could put it in that closet there. Yeah. Or we could put it in the mechanical room. And then we're gonna have conduit from that closet through the kind of like stage at the front here. Yeah. And then that conduit will go back to the mechanical room. So if we wanted to go from the mechanical room to the VR TV area out there, that's probably something we could do pretty easily. Peak power for this bad boy is 900 freaking watts. And of course it's got support for all the stuff you'd expect, Amazon music, title, AirPlay 2, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I probably won't really be using any of that stuff. What I'm after is just support for all those channels. And of course a nice high quality amp and HDMI 2.1 support. And how much did I pay for this? $6,000. $6,000. It only has one HDMI 2.1 input. Look at the inside. Whoa, did you get a shot of that? Yeah. Holy crap. That is a massive. High current power transformer. I can't believe the receiver costs the same as the speakers. That's like really stupid. Yes. So we're going four channels in the ceiling, I think. Yeah, so the thing with SVS is they do make height channels. Yeah. But they're like wall mounted, like angled ones. Oh, I see. So you put them at the front and they come down and you put them at the back, they come down. They just kind of look bad. Instead we wanted to go in ceiling and forgot to request them. Oh. But fortunately we have like 24 sets of Clip speakers. Right. I'm gonna work on setting up software stuff. You wanna do the speaker wire? Sure. So does the $6,000 or $4,500 US receiver still come with a remote? I know. That's quite literally an inch thick. I don't know. It's got a screen though. That's kind of cool. Receiver remotes are just an absolute meme. No offense, Denon, I'm sure it's terrible. So for the top channels, at least according to Dolby, we kind of want to go, you can see them here, behind the couch a bit, which those chairs are our stand in for the couch. And then pretty close to the front, looks like. So we're just gonna yellow it. Probably be fine. Imagine the look on SVS's face if like this is the only video that we make showing the speakers they sent us. When we do the actual deployment, we're gonna have the couch in here. We'll get everything measured out. We'll make sure that it all makes sense. The audio files everywhere are cringing. I know, they're so upset. So hard. I feed on their tears. Oh, it's a lock. Don't worry, we're gonna do it better. Everybody chill. Like better, better-ish. We don't have the ceiling speakers screwed in yet. Jamie's working on that. Sup, Jamie. But that doesn't prevent us from doing a quick sort of test drive here. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. This is going to be ridiculous. Like in the best way. So before we start the auto setup, there's a few things we need to tweak on the subs. Now they have this really, really awesome app. Like I didn't even have to go press a pair button. It just found them and I can adjust them from here. So they say you should set the subs to minus 15 dBs for these subs because they have the app. But if you have subs that have like an analog dial, usually you want to set it at the middle. And then we're also going to go ahead and turn off any low pass filtering. And then we can start the auto calibration. So our receiver actually detected on its own that our subwoofer level is too high. A lot of the time, what can happen on cheaper receivers is you do your auto setup and it sets the subs to the minimum volume, but it might even be wanting it to go below that. In this case, it detected it's too high. So we got to go in, set them to a lower volume and then start the auto setup again until it's happy. Yeah, we're good. Okay. The subs sound like someone like wailing on something a block away. Wait, I think you, did you plug the red into the black or something? It says the phase is wrong on the front. It's right on that side. Oh, what? Depending on the environment of the room, you may see phase error even after the correct connection. So I think it's just because our room is so crappy. Yeah, it's all connected, right? Yeah. The apps that they ask you to install, Kiosk or HEOS or whatever that is has 3.1 stars with almost all the new ones, one star, two stars. This used to be great, now it's terrible. And Denon 2016 AVR remote has 2.3 stars. Hey, that's the same app I use for my $100 receiver. How do you screw up a remote? It asks us if you want to do enable Dolby vision, which is great because usually on AVRs, you have to like go in and tell it- HDMI, deep color, blah, blah, blah. Enhanced HDMI signal, it just works. Oh God. Well, worse comes to worst, it just hits them in the head, whatever. What I want to do right now is actually just double check some things. Cause the guidance usually is do the auto setup, but then verify cause it's not always perfect. And one of the main things that we'll screw up on is the crossover. A lot of the time it'll actually get set too low for a speaker. So maybe your speaker goes down to 40 Hertz or it's rated to go down to that. Sometimes the AVR might even set it below that, which is not good because it can actually overdrive the speakers and cause damage to them. Usually you want to be 10 to 20 Hertz above the rated minimum. So we're just going to go double check that. Oh, actually here's another thing. Another important thing when setting up your AVR, it might ask you during the setup and it might not depending on the AVR. But once you go into the settings, you will for sure see there's a setting that'll either be small or large for each speaker. It doesn't actually have anything to do with size. All that really means is whether the AVR should or should not be sending that speaker the low frequencies that would typically be best left to a subwoofer. When the speakers are set to large, your receiver is going to send all of the audio that's mixed in the original content to that speaker, regardless of how low it goes. Instead, when the speakers are set to small, your receiver is going to take any audio that's below the crossover frequency and set it to the sub instead, which is a good thing because your sub is really good at handling low end frequencies. Way better than basically any speaker. Even these giant SVS speakers with the super sick eight inch woofers, that sub is gonna be better. Sure enough, now that we've actually checked the settings in the AVR, the center channel is set at a crossover that's below the handling capability of our center channel, which is bad. Center is 45, so around 60 is good. And the surrounds are rated to 60, so we're gonna set that to 80. Cool. We should have just brought a rug or something. Oh, we should get the rest of those moving blankets and just lay them on the ground. I really don't think it's gonna make that big of a difference at this point. I added the top front and rear heights. All right, here we go. So now we gotta do setup again. It's time to hear what the absolute worst case scenario is for this setup. I'm ready. We got our OBSPOT, we got our Brandon. What's up, Brandon? We're not replacing you with an OBSPOT. Okay, Dolby demo time. Okay, that's pretty cool. Considering how this sounds now. Yeah. Oh my God. I think it's definitely missing the back channel. Oh yeah, we need the back channel. When you saw her swing around, it was like, I hear it here, then it's totally gone. And then hear it again. Comes in, yeah, exactly. Little jarred, but the top channel, holy crap. Yeah, they work in case you were wondering. Prepare to experience something spectacular with the sight and sound of Dolby technology. This is Dolby Atmos. Now, sound moves around you in three-dimensional space with breathtaking audio quality. Okay. It brings the on-screen action alive and immerses you in every moment. Man, the back channel is really killing me. Yeah. Whether the soundscape sits the mood of a scene. Okay, that was pretty good though. It's not as bad in this demo for sure. Yeah. Or captures the full extent of nature's fury. Okay, I think we try movie now. Okay, yeah. Okay, I don't want my neighbors to hate me. We're underground, man, it's fine. I'm gonna turn the sunset off. Yeah, maybe just a little. Wow, you hear the little rockets and stuff. Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah. It's so cool. You're right, man, the overhead is definitely the biggest game changer. It really, it's kind of the last piece that really gets you fully enveloped in the sound. Yeah. I don't really notice the back channel is missing in this, so it's not as bad. Yeah. I'm already freaking stoked though. Massive shout out to OBSBOT for sponsoring this video. Super cool tech with the way it can follow you around. It can be used for all kinds of different content, including vlogging something like this if you don't happen to have a fantastic camera operator like we do, or even if you just need a secondary cam as a backup, freaking cool. And of course, while I'm at it, massive shout out to SVS and Infinite Cables, this room is gonna be freaking awesome. Clipsh and Jake, Jake gets a shout out too, because he did a lot of the work. And James. Can you believe how good it sounds in spite of how garbage the setup is right now? Man, when we were like, really do this place up.