STUART'S AUDIO-VIDEO

First, the kudos to Stuart's: The quality of the audio and video equipment has been excellent, albeit with prices somewhat above what we would have paid at a discount store. The higher price has always seemed worthwhile given the good advice we have gotten on this kind of equipment from Stuart's. Now, the problems: The controlling equipment -- that is, the remotes, the various touch panels, and the CD changer with its Escient controller -- was expensive and very quickly obsolete. The initial price was about $8000, then there were subsequent charges for repair and reprogramming. Since this was over a quarter of the total cost, and the system was designed by Stuart's, it deserves some attention. Summary of the weaknesses of the design: The CD changer was very quickly obsolete (thanks to iTunes, iPods, and Airport Express). The Escient controller for the CD changer had a rather primitive user interface and the search function was less than impressive. The proprietary nature of the interfaces has left us at the mercy of the manufacturers, and Escient has discontinued the products we have been using. We should have foreseen these problems ourselves. The trajectory of the music industry -- toward digitized, on-line music -- was already set. However, it also seems fair to expect good advice to go along with high prices, and Stuart's did not provide good advice on the controlling equipment. This is the reason for the low rating on professionalism. Stuart's should be ready to give consumers good advice on the kind of equipment to buy, and also should demonstrate good understanding of the marketplace for the equipment. They fell down in both respects. The final straw: In 2009, the touch panel that controlled the audio to speakers in the bedroom went out (this was a $2500 item) -- leaving us with nothing useful from the original controlling system. Its importance to us was minimal, so we didn't even try to replace it until late in 2011. Stuart's gave us a quote of $500 on the repair, which we approved without further questions. When the box came back, we learned that it would take an additional $75 or so to pay for disassembly of the panel for shipping and reassembly on return. Also, another $200 for complete reprogramming to match our house system. At this point, we decided to see if we could replace the panel independently, so we went on line and found several in "like new" condition on eBay for low cost, at least one available to "Buy Now" (ie, without bidding) for just $75. I checked again last week, and found a "Buy Now" for $62.99, two more for $20 or less (bidding required); and an offer of 3 for $165 "Buy Now." We believe that it was irresponsible for Stuart's not to inform us of alternatives when we brought it in for repair. Add to this the insult of the $200 programming fee -- Stuart's had done the original programming and had reprogrammed the touch panel once before, but initially claimed he didn't have a backup. Eventually, after some argument about it, they did find a backup copy, but that was apparently just luck. Because we had committed to the $500 repair, we negotiated with Stuart's to get the total price of the repair down to $564. However, when we plugged the panel in again, it had the same problem -- suggesting that the problem had been elsewhere in the system all along. We sent the panel back to Stuart's, where they verified that it was working correctly. That raised doubt in our minds as to whether it was ever broken -- shouldn't Stuart's have checked before sending it in for repairs? Since we had lost trust in Stuart's for the controlling equipment, we decided to see what we could do on our own. We were able to do quite a bit, at low cost, in just a couple of days. Here's a posting at AVS Forum, in which my husband described what he had done to provide control of a home entertainment system using low-cost, off-the-shelf products. "A couple of years ago the Elan Via! music panel in our master bedroom failed. We could live without it, so I didn't get around to having it repaired until recently. A $564 mistake! When I reinstalled the unit, supposedly with the programming restored, it failed again. When I substituted an Elan Z-Valet for the panel and swapped some cables at my Cat 5e patch panel, that Z-Valet and another one also failed to operate. I was screwed! My wife insisted that I find a solution based on off-the-shelf components that did not requiree custom installation and servicing. I suggested using our existing two Airports, plus another one (newer!) and a new Apple TV She agreed. Yesterday I did it. With my current setup I can have multiple devices playing different music from our single iTunes library simultaneously: (1) the iMac on the second floor playing Camelot through the third floor speakers, (2) Apple TV 3 in the family room playing Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra through the family room sound system, and (3) my 2nd generation iPod touch playing a Telemann trumpet concerto through the second floor office speakers. At the same time I can even (4) use my iPad 2 to play T.S. Eliot's recitation of Prufrock through the master bedroom speakers. With the Airfoil app on my iMac, I can also use my browser (Chrome) to play Internet music (e.ga., WQXR) streams through any of the AirPlay devices. FYI the family room has a home theatre, with 5.1 Marantz SR8000 audio-video receiver, Samsung D7000 plasma HDTV, an HD-DVD player, a Blu-ray player, and a Verizon FiOS set-top box. Apple TV is connected to the TV via HDMI and to the receiver via an optical audio cable. The TV also has an optical connection to the receiver. Both optical connections can be active at the same time, so the TV can be off if I just want to play music. Three other rooms are served by two three-channel B&K amps (one for the left channel, the other for the right channel). The amps' stereo inputs for my home office and the master bedroom are driven directly by Airport Express units. The third Airport Express is connected to an input of my 40-year-old Crown IC-150 pre-amp, along with a tuner, a FiOS STB, a CD player, and a turntable. All this equipment is on the third floor. The office and bedroom speakers (on the second floor) are wired to the amps on the third floor. One problem: the amps stay on, even when not getting a signal on any input. The Elan pre-amp could signal the amps to turn off, thus saving energy. My wife is delighted with the new arrangement, as am I. Now we just need to find a new home for our Elan Z-630 pre-amp, two Z-Valets, and Via! Music touch panel. I hope this report gives hope and inspiration to everyone who is looking for an alternative to expensive, high-maintenance custom home entertainment systems."Two delightful aspects of our new system: it cost us only about $300 since we already had a couple of Airport Expresses for Internet access and using Apple TV, we get radio stations off the Internet into our various speaker systems and the sound is better than over the air (no hiss). Another posting my husband put on Facebook: "It's almost 12:30 pm Tuesday and I'm listening to marimbist Makoto Nakura play Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. iTunes on my iMac is routing the music through an Airport Express connected to one input of my old Crown pre-amp, which in turn is feeding the two B&K power amps that are driving Thiel speakers. The sound is fabulous! " The bottom line is that Stuart's Audio provides high quality audio and video components, and is a fine choice if you are unconcerned about the cost and maintainability of an impressive integrated home entertainment system. Be aware that there will be recurring expenditures both when you replace components and when parts of the controlling system break. The alternative to going to Stuart's for updates and repairs will be a lot of on-line work and guesswork on your part -- you had better love playing with electronics if you want to go that route! However, if the cost matters to you and if you are willing to do a little research and consult with Apple (either the stores or on-line help), you can put together quite a nice system with similar, or even better, functionality, for quite a low price.