How to get rid of your old-school stereo and listen to your music in your living room
“If I’m going to put the headphones on and I want to listen to music on my stereo, it has to be in the same room.”—Dan Cramer, owner of Dan Cramer Sound System in New York.
He says the solution lies in an array of different products and services, including home theater, sound bars, sound systems, and home theater receivers.
He has been looking at different options to replace his old-fashioned stereo since 2009, when he bought a pair of old-style speakers.
“I wanted to get into the living room and be able to listen through them without having to go into my living room, so I bought the $200 speaker,” he says.
“But as soon as I got it, I started having the same problem with my old-timey speakers.”
His goal is to replace the speakers with something more robust, like a $2,000 sound bar.
“The speakers are not the best quality,” he notes.
“They sound good when they’re properly set up.
But they are not a great investment if you’re buying a stereo system and it doesn’t have the best speakers.
You have to take into account the speakers are expensive, they’re expensive to set up, and they’re not very quiet.”
Cramer’s home theater system, which is based on the Pioneer A6500, a pair the company calls a “stereo receiver,” can play music and podcasts, and it is also connected to the internet via a USB cable.
But the receiver itself is not the answer.
“If you want to go to the living space and listen through a speaker system, you’re going to need a sound bar,” Cramer says.
Sound bars are great for the home theater experience, but they’re also expensive, especially if you buy the cheapest model, which can run about $1,000.
A better solution, he says, is to buy a home theater receiver and put it on the wall next to your speakers.
He’s been using one of these receivers for the last three months.
“When I put the receiver on my wall, it’s like I’m sitting in the living area and listening through a stereo,” Cohner says.
He even gets some audio from his home theater.
“It’s like a little home theater,” he adds.
But it’s so good that I would be very surprised if it weren’t the best sound system in my living area.” “
Most people would probably say the sound of my speakers is a little dull.
But it’s so good that I would be very surprised if it weren’t the best sound system in my living area.”
You might be surprised to learn that Cramer is not alone in his efforts.
A study by the National Research Council released last week found that about 15 percent of Americans believe that the way to improve the sound quality of audio systems is to put them on a shelf in the home, which would improve the audio quality in the room but decrease the sound in the hallway and bedroom.
That’s because most of us don’t have a home theatre system in our home, and many of us wouldn’t want to put our home theater up in the house anyway.
But there are some advantages to putting speakers on the same level as your speakers, Cramer argues.
“In the past, you could put your stereo on a table, and your stereo system would play through your TV,” he explains.
“Now, with home theater and sound bars on the walls, you don’t need to worry about that.”
Cohners home theater is connected to his TV through a cable, and he says it can play podcasts and videos on his sound system.
“What I love about it is I can play all my music on it,” he recalls.
“And I can still use my speakers.”
The speaker system also lets him stream music from his iPad.
“My iPad can play audio on my TV,” Cerners says.
Cramer thinks that with home theaters on the shelves, the next time you want a stereo, you can simply put your headphones on it and listen in.
“So I’m not going to make my stereo a separate thing,” he concludes.
“This is not about me making the house look better.
This is about you making the home look better.”
Cerner says he is using the speakers for personal use and not as a home entertainment system.
His home theater does have a built-in speaker, though, and that allows him to enjoy some music on his iPad, but not his stereo.
But he does use his home stereo as a personal audio system, and while the speaker system does make listening to music sound better, Cernier says he can hear a lot of music on the iPad.
