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In Reply to: except for subs posted by petew on April 03, 2002 at 10:36:59:
Actually I used the Video Essentials Disc along with the sound level meter. It seemed pretty good. It has a sub-woofer track. I think some drug crazed ex-hippie is doing the mixing on most movies now a days.I still have the centre and I agree that the effect is less than desirable. Works OK with action flicks, but sucks on everything else. You basically end up with pure mono and no sound stage. But I bought the @#$%^&!! thing and unless I trade it for a sub-woofer, I will be out of the money. The sub, also takes up more floor space which is limited at this point.
Follow Ups:
That the center is used for so much is a reason to get a really good one. If you aren't getting good sound staging, and your speakers are properly positioned and adjusted, then it's the fault of the mix.The reason to use a center channel is if not all the viewers can sit well centered between the left and right speakers. Try turning off your center channel and using a phantom. Now, walk from the left edge of your viewing area to the right, and back again. Do this while there's some highly monaural material playing, and you'll hear the image moving across the sound stage, towards whatever side you're at. So, viewers to the left and right sides of the viewing area get a better center image, if you use a real center speaker.
yes Homer, I think Estes and cfraser and I have fooled around with this concept for a while and decided that there's a trade-off of weird audio perceptions...having a mono center channel without any sense of space, or an image shift following you around the room...of the two, we've decided we don't walk around much while engaged in the film, and anyone watching with us dumb enough to sit way over to the side of the monitor--"screw 'em".
couldn't have said it better cf..
the home theater facists are trying to sell us a whole bunch of speakers and amps and wild surround algorythms--what, they're up to 7, 8, or is it 11 speakers now, and so many processing modes the film is half over before i can scroll to the "correct" decoding program?!
I'm a bit pissed at myself for getting a sub-woofer. the main R + L speakers do plenty good at "effects", and are brilliant at LF information in the music audio band. what was I thinking?
few of us have rooms as large as those in the HT stores--with their 10-foot ceilings--so why did I buy all this gear?
i certainly don't need all these amps and speakers to get a stunningly good movie experience in "surround".
now here am i selling it off...i bet alot of us have evolved to this point...right Estes?
Until I got it set up properly I was definately thinking of selling the crap off. Now I might sell it off ;-) Lucky for me I had picked up the Technics processor for cheap & the same goes for the 3 channel amp.
What you suggest depends on the room and position of speakers etc. In my case playing "The Saint" (which was done in living mono), the voices come from the TV no matter where you sit (albeit with some slight shifting). You simply cannot get soundstage from mono, that was the point of having 2 speakers (stereo), to get soundstage and depth rather than the flat sound that is mono.
The system director (moi) sits in the middle, so screw 'em. Actually, you are quite correct, but some systems seem to do a great job of mixing the center to R and L, not bad at all for a typical home-sized room grabbed for the HT. I'm wondering if there are different algorithms (or whatever) for this, or if some systems just give you more control over the phantom setup, such as the mixed level. I'm pretty sure mine doesn't allow the phantom center level to be separately controlled.
> > > "You basically end up with pure mono and no sound stage." < < <yes, and what's the deal with that?
I put the center channel speaker back in it's box after barely an hour of life over the TV. It was too horrible, looked stupid, and caused me to buy a 5-channel amp when (at least) two McCormack DNA 0.5's are sitting in the audiophile closet (don't look in the audiophile closet--title of the new Stephen King book)
but I did buy a monster sub (18" velo) that seats six, takes up half of the family room (you don't want to put a chair or sofa near it--sub-sonic have a lubricating effect on the large bowel), and draws so much current the wife can't do her ironing until I unplug it.the horror of home theater...
I think home theatre was designed for the people who don't set up things properly, but want the "lastest" toys. The centre gives dialogue in this case. In our case, the centre is a big waste of time as our "stereo" speakers do mono just fine and sound better to boot. At least I went cheap and did not spend too much on the whole mess.
i went costly and have turned over my HT gear at least five times so far...there's no way HT is going to be as easy as 2-channel stereo was...
anyone who bought a good 2-channel 40 years ago is pretty much where we are today...better in the opion of the SET, horns, and vinyl ward
but even a 2 month old HT processor is instantly out of date--you have to have component video switching or you're DOA.
who can predict what the next instantly obsolete video technology will be?
> who can predict what the next instantly obsolete video
> technology will be?Analog video switching and I/O. First, we'll get DVI or whatever.
Also, I wonder what the solution will be to using one PVR to record digital broadcasts, satellite, and digital cable. It seems like you'd want to use your PVR to switch all those sources, but there are still some sources you want to switch with your receiver. Having two tier switching is annoying.
Anyhow, if you're going to have a proper home theater, you pretty much need to build the house around it. :)
Homer that is so truei was down at the high-end emporium last week
with the intent of solving my video switching problem once and for all:
i was prepaired to spend up to $6000 just so i wouldn't have to:
--shut the system down
--move the speakers
--move the video furnature
--find my glasses
--trace the cables back to the components
--unhook the cables
--find a flashlight
--reconnect the cables to the new source component
--push the furnature back
--pull the furnature out again to reconnect all the power cords that have fallen off (what is the deal with high-end power cords--why are the connections so loose?
--push the furnature back
--reposition the speakers
--sequentially power up the system (fingers crossed)only to discover that i got the green in the red or missed the proper rca connection entirely...
every time i want to switch from satellite to DVD...
as it turns out, none of the 8 employees at the high-end emporium knew how to solve my problem, but they did take my money.
while waiting for them to decide how much they should take, i wandered into the Magnaplanar 3.6r room. my goodness--they were doing a wonderful job of teleporting me to Lincoln Center...
and i was thinking...now why can't i get that kind of holographic depth??? and i realized that my listening room is just not big enough...I needed more depth, more width, and more height than my 8' ceilings allowed.
conclusion:
"you pretty much need to build the house around it"
that is so true.
Ooh, Homer no think beer well without.
> with the intent of solving my video switching problem once
> and for all:
.
.
.
> every time i want to switch from satellite to DVD...
I meant that people will get components (HD Broadcast receivers, DVD players, DVHS, etc.) that have DVI outputs. They'll want to switch these signals, so analog video switching & I/O will become obsolete, and everyone will have to upgrade their receivers for the 5th time in the past decade.Also, I was musing that I think there will be issues, as soon as there exist multiple broadcast sources (i.e. digital cable, HD Broadcast, and digital satellite), with digital outputs, that people want to use a single PVR to record from. Either the PVR must have multiple inputs, and these peripherals would have digital outputs, or you'd need to always route them through the PVR, which creates a two-tier switching topology. There's the additional problem that the PVR would need to control these peripherals, so whatever you hook 'em up with better have bidirectional communication capabibilities. Hopefully, the same transport will also be used for both video and audio, or that'll be another mess.
So, the future of home theater continues to be clouded by digital interconnect standards, content protection mechanisms, and interoperability issues.
The worst part of it is that none of these are particularly difficult problems. They'll be complicated by new content protection schemes, but it basically comes down to the fact that the home theater equipment industry can't get its act together, due to all the outside forces. It also doesn't help that these manufacturers profit from continual obsolescence, hence we come full-circle. D'oh!
Hi Homer,yes i understood your posts, and love the points you've made. as far as I can tell, you are the first person to recognize the issues.
I spent some hours in a very high end video store these past weekends, and was simply dumbfounded at how little the store personel knew. I talked to their "professional" video expert calibrater/technician/installer for about two hours, and came away with a clear impression that he had no idea what was going on in "home entertainment". No idea at all. He can make the parts work, but not together.
But hey, there's a light...check out the new Denon AVR5803 HT receiver. It has video conversion / switching built in! Now you can go from video composit to S-video/component, with enough component inputs to postpone obsolesence for weeks!
That's right Homer, sell all your gear and get ready for the next new technology of the week!
(read any good Japanese/English/French/German/Spanish/Italian/Farsi owner's manuals lately?)
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