# North American power in Europe



## zarkdav (Jan 29, 2010)

Background history:

I started in my teens more than 20 years ago with a small Rotel stereo amp and an assortment of loudspeakers from companies long gone (Mercurial, Ellipson, ...). My first HT setup consisted of 4 Infinity Ref21i loudspeakers, with a Video 1 center channel driven by a DPL receiver from Sansui. At that time I did not have the money for LDs, but some VHS were DPL encoded, so I enjoyed fair cinema sound from that setup.

Then digital came, and DVDs, so I had to invest in an Harman Kardon AVR 4000 DD/DTS/Logic7 receiver and a Toshiba SD220E DVD player. I found the HK sounded nice with the 5 Infinity, and replaced the Infinity Video1 with a slightly better Ref100mkII. To complete this first real HT, I added a modest Yamaha YST-SW320 subwoofer. It's about that time that I also invested in my first VP, a Sharp PLV-Z1. After the Toshiba breaking down just a few month out of warranty, I decided to buy an Oppo Digital DV-981HD DVD player.

Since my wife and I enjoyed the HT very much and wanted to improve on it, I kept visiting friends and shops with better setup, and found I really liked the North American sound.

Last year, I finally put all the pieces together, and invested in some serious (for me) sound that I bought off eBay:
- full Atlantic Technology 6200E THX Ultra speaker system
- Bryston 8B-ST (4x120W -- more actually, according to factory measurements), bridged for the front left and right channels
- Lexicon 312 NT THX (Bryston OEM 5B-ST 3x120W) for the surround and front channels
- Onkyo PR-SC886 Pre/Pro
- SVSound PC-12NSD subwoofer

Of course, I feed that mostly from an HTPC that I built on the side. But the Oppo is still very much used for DSD & multiple channel audio.

The sound of this lot is fantastic. Now I need to upgrade the video part of all this.


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