Lip-smacking goodness: HK AVR 240, Bose 301s

Today was almost unbearable … the stereo equipment that I’ve been waiting for for over 9 years (OK, at least 9 days now) finally arrived at my office in Bellingham in the morning, and I had to wait all day to take it back over the border, get it home, and set it all up:

I did end up going for the Harman Kardon AVR 240, HK’s The Bridge product for my iPod, and the Bose 301 reflecting speakers.

I also picked up HK’s FL 8385 5-disc CD changer for when sound quality is paramount, and those moments when you’ve just bought a new CD and want to toss it in right away. I rip my CDs at 160 kbps, not 128, but the straight CD, especially any new HDCDs, is going to be a little bit better, I think. Besides, Teresa likes putting CDs in more than flipping through the iPod interface with the HK remote.

I haven’t been able to turn up the volume too much, since by the time I got everything hooked up and set up, it was a little after 8:00, and the kids were already in bed, but I’m looking forward to tomorrow …

And I’ll need to buy or build a better enclosure … the speakers do not fit properly, as you can see above, and I need a slightly deeper shelf for the components. The AVR 240 is only 13.8″ deep, but the FL 8385 is a little over 15″ deep, and that’s a bit bigger than this bookcase can really handle.

I can already hear the vast quality improvement from our previous mini system (a Yamaha), and I’m looking forward to hours of future music enjoyment.

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BTW, I got the AVR (audio-visual receiver) which can do 5.1, 6.1, and 7.1 surround sound in a vast variety of modes since this may eventually become our home theatre receiver. But right now it’s only pushing the two Bose speakers in stereo mode. The AVR 240 is 50 watts x 7 channels, but 65 watts when you’re only using the two.

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Another addendum: I kept searching online for any information about duty/tariff rates for taking stereo equipment or other home electronics back to Canada from the US, and couldn’t find any. Well, finally I phoned, managed to get on the line with someone, and asked.

The answer was that electronics have no special duties – and this turned out to be true at the border. So all I had to pay was GST and PST, just like in Canada. And since I bought all my equipment for a little under $700 Canadian (minus the speakers, they were about $500), I basically got the Bridge and the HK CD-changer for free … since Future Shop had the HK AVR 240 “on sale” for $799 last week, and has it listed at $899 right now. Yikes – can you spell r-i-p o-f-f?