My apologies for the clipping a generally crappy sound quality on my end! That’s what I get for downloading updated versions of Skype and Audacity right before recording 🙁 Things looked fine while Tom and I were talking, but afterwards, we discovered all the clipping and distortion, but we weren’t about to rerecord the whole hour-plus show!

So my bad there entirely. And sorry to anyone with sore eardrums now!

Anywho, this was a fun ep and I hope people still enjoy it despite the sound quality problems. Lots of good info, I think 🙂

Sound quality was far better than a telephone line, so no worries!

It was hilarious how far you guys went off topic with AVRs, but then again it’s not possible to discuss audio without riffin’ on AVRs at some point. My new philosophy on AVRs is to let the technology get our ahead of you a year or two, then upgrade to an upper-tier model that was out of your price range at the time, but is now being clearanced at a price closer to the lower end of the current model price range. While you may be behind on the latest features with this approach, you will otherwise get better quality amps and DACs for the same or less money.

I tend to favor the idea of good-quality two-way left/right speakers that can play down to 60-80 Hz and a very good subwoofer to provide well-controlled, deep base. By good sub I mean a unit that can play clean and loud to 25 Hz or lower.

With 2-way speakers, there’s just something about having one less crossover in the mix that appeals to my ears.

@Rob

Here’s an idea to spiff up the Blu-ray image shortcuts folder. I found a free online utility called ConvertIcon http://converticon.com/

Starting with a .jpg or other image file of a Blu-ray movie case, you can build a .ico file. The utility lets you pack several different resolutions into one .ico file. I tested it with a 500×500 source image and packed in everything under 500×500. Then I right clicked on the shortcut itself and selected “Change Icon”, browsed to the .ico file, and bingo the shortcut assumed the image of the Blu-ray case.

Now when I browse to the shortcut directory with Windows Explorer, I can Choose Extra Large Icons and get a fairly decent visual presentation of the available content.

I have a few comments…

1. The DVD trade in program at Best Buy is different than you guys described it. You can trade in any DVD. It doesn’t have to be the same DVD as the bluray you are trading it in to get.

@Downtowner

Thanks for the comments!

I was doing something very similar to your convert icon suggestion; changing the shortcut image to cover art and such. But I got lazy after about 100 manual image changes and sort of gave up :p Plus, I just run my NAS as a JBOD (just a bunch of discs) rather than a RAID. I do that to get maximum space. The problem though is that I have no redundancy this way. So I manually spread the movie files over the various hard drives so that if I lose a drive to a failure, it’ll be easy for me to know which movies need to be ripped again! The thing is, by moving files around, I have to update the shortcut list. So I’ve found the easiest (laziest) way is to just multi-select the movie files and create all the new shortcuts at once. After that, manually changing all the icons again does NOT appeal to me :p

Like I said, I pretty much gave up on a pretty interface in favor of simplicity and functionality. It CAN be done…I’m just too lazy to do it :p

@Rob
“After 100…”!! Wow I’m a piker compared to you as far as # of Blu-rays. If I say I have 25 I might be stretching the truth. I kinda lost momentum on the HD disc thing when HD-DVD died.

But wow does backinh up these things eat hard drive space! I stopped filling my 1TB RAID1 NAS when it got to 750GB…figure I ought to leave some room for family pics! Then I started filling up the 1TB drive in my HTPC. I have two more discs to go and I’m already at 700GB on that one!

I can already see that if I want to back up my DVD collection (much, much larger) I am going to need a couple of 2TB or maybe one of those newfangled 3TB drives.

Regarding Tom’s characterization of you “geeking out” on the podcast, I say release your inner geek! I am geeky enough that I enjoy all the talk about speaker efficiency, the doubling or trebling of power required to achieve a certain sound pressure level at a certain distance, etc. Approaching AV from a scientific perspective is what separates an Audioholic from an Audiophile! 🙂 I was amazed at how ingrained the science of AV is in your brain, to the point that you are able to speak about it off the cuff like you did on the podcast – impressive!

@jedrgy
That’s good to know, thanks for the tip!

comment 2… well this is more of a rant to be honest… It is about buying speakers from an ID vs retailer. There is an endless number of threads out there of people complaining about retailers usually BB or Magnolia in BB. The argument is always the same people claim you are being ripped off. But it’s not just speakers it’s anything that people think you may be making a profit on.

What I think people forget is that unless you are specifically a non-profit business the purpose of your business is to make a profit. There seems to be an attitude in the US today that if you are making a profit in any industry is bad. Apple seems to be one of the few exceptions to this rule… They post record profits every quarter and nobody talks about raising their taxes…

All that to say that yes retailers make a profit when the sell speakers but look at the retail industry no one is really making profits right now. BB hasn’t posted a yearly profit in at least two years.

ops… just read over my post and saw lots of typos! I had to stop my dogs from taking a piece out of each other in the middle of typing my post.

@jedrgy

Yes, I agree with you about what seems to be a spreading attitude that any sort of reasonable profit margin gets slammed as a “rip off”. People seem to expect ever decreasing prices, while at the same time, complaining about everything being made in China or North American jobs being “outsourced” overseas!

Can’t have it both ways, folks :p

That said, I see most things as a sort of pendulum. Right now, I think it’s mostly a case of the general populace waking up to the fact that for years and years, we’ve all been at the mercy of price fixing and consumer gouging. Now we want our “pound of flesh” and the chicks are coming home to roost!

On the media side, digital piracy has simply given consumers a weapon. We are no longer at the mercy of the prices set by the Studios and Labels. It seems to me that, for the most part, the majority of people ARE willing to pay for legitimate versions of music, movies, TV shows and games. It’s just that consumers now hold the power to truly set that price point based on demand and desire. Set the price too high or limit distribution and people are able to cirumvent all of those measures via digital piracy!

Personally, I don’t like the idea of everything being free. It costs money – lots of money – to produce high quality entertainment, and the people involved all deserve to be compensated for that work. But I also think that consumers having a weapon is a good thing. I genuinely believe that most people understand and agree with the idea of paying some amount for content. But there should be a balance; consumer demand ought to dictate price. And now it can! It’s imperfect to be sure, but the balance of power has shifted and obviously, the greedy piggies – who are still making record profits every year, don’t forget – are not happy about it. I’m fine with their displeasure 🙂

For retail store owners, they too are simply reaping what they have sown for decades. When is the last time you can recall genuinely GOOD customer service? When was the last time that you didn’t feel as though you had somehow been taken advantage of after a large purchase?

Internet sales have simply done largely the same thing that digital distribution has done: it’s given consumers an option – not necessarily a good option, but at least something that can shift the balance of power. Now we know the true cost of manufacturing. Now we know the sorts of ridiculous profit margins that used to be accepted as “normal”. Now we can demand better service and prices because we have an alternative!

The Studios, the Labels, the retailers, and places like BlockBuster and Circuit City – they all treated us badly for years and years, and now that consumers are finding alternatives, they’re crying fowl! Well personally, I don’t feel sorry for them. They could have adapted. They could have listened to all of the all-too-common complaints from customers and they could have done something about it in order to improve. But they didn’t. Instead, they tried to hold onto their outdated business models and now, they’re getting run out of business! Good. That’s the way the market is supposed to work.

Now, people are desperate to find an alternative to the punative practices of wireless cellphone carriers and cable/satellite providers. Basically, we’ve simply woken up to the fact that things CAN be better. We’ve witnessed what an alternative can do for us in the media and retail spaces and now we’re extremely eager to see that same sort of shift in the balance of power when it comes to service providers.

The money is still out there to be made. It’s just that now, consumers feel as though they hold to power to say “how much”, and the corporations don’t get to flaunt their monopolies in our faces quite so much. It’s good. But it’s a constant battle.

@Downtowner

Yes, those Blu-rays DO suck up A LOT of space, don’t they? :p

That’s why I put four 3TB drives in my NAS and I’m already ready for a second 12TB tank! O.o

Thankfully, 3TB drives are down to $130 (maybe even lower, but that’s the best price I found that had free shipping to my location for the Hitachi drives that I favor 🙂 )

I snatched up almost 100 HD-DVDs when they were all down to around $2 :p And I’ve been grabbing Blu-rays regularly – mostly “previously viewed” discs from various rental shops around my area. I refuse to pay more than $12 for any title, but thankfully, it hasn’t been hard to stick to that limit – which has been a very pleasant surprise!

I do sometimes think I’m nuts, but I genuinely believe that Blu-ray is the best quality we’re ever going to see in our homes for a LONG time to come. Everything’s moving towards internet distribution and utmost quality simply isn’t the goal in that medium. So I’m stockpiling as much high quality content as I can while I wait for internet distribution to eventually (hopefully) catch up!

I don’t drink or smoke at all, nor eat at restaurants a lot, so I justify my crazy spending as being my “vice” instead of those things 😉

@jedrgy
Awesome post, could not agree more! I’ll see your rant and raise you double.

I am always amazed at people – especially the ones who come here from somewhere else – who hate on American capitalism. Hello? Who doesn’t understand that the USA is all about making money? That’s what we do here.

There’s lots of other places in the world where the freedom to conduct wide-open commerce is not a priority…I always wonder why people with that mentality stay here when it would be so easy to leave and go somewhere else. Actually, I don’t wonder. The reason is that it’s a lot easier to live well in our society while producing little to no value, than it is to live in a country with a low standard of living while putting forth the same level of non-effort. And no I’m not talking about people on public assistance, I’m talking about people taking a paycheck from the taxpayers, who are typically the loudest and most persistent critics of the private sector.

Interesting observation about Apple. For whatever reason, the anti-captitalist bohemian counterculture adopted Apple as one of its mascots years ago, so Apple is largely exempt from the kind of criticism leveled at Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Auto, Big Insurance, Big Banking, Big Software, Big Retail, etc.

I believe that if somebody is going to buy a center channel, it is the MOST IMPORTANT speaker in the system since most of the dialog from movies and TV’s will be coming out of the center channel… it’s amazing how little comes out of the main left and right.

HOWEVER, I agree that for most people, getting a better set of main left and right speakers will be better especially if they get floor standing speakers; there are seldomly any center channels that can match the range and timbre of the mains flat enough down to 80 Hz.

@bbf

Yeah, I kinda tried to say something similar in regards to the center speaker, but I was also trying to hurry since I’d been talking for so long :p

The message I wanted to convey was that the center speaker is the only speaker that you do not actually physically need in a 5.1 setup. But when you do get a center speaker, you have to make sure that it’s a darn good one!

I just don’t agree with all of the articles that are out there that repeatedly claim that the center speaker is the most important speaker in the whole array. They spout it off like it’s just common knowledge and an absolute truth. But the fact of the matter is, if you get good L/R Front spekaers that image well, you can totally forego the physical center speaker and get a completely satisfactory experience using the “phantom” center created by the stereo effect of your Front L/R speakers!

So I can’t abide by calling the center speaker the most important speaker when you can completely remove it and still get perfect 5.1 sound! But that doesn’t contradict saying that IF you buy a center speaker, it’s probably the one speaker in your setup that you have to worry the most about selecting.

It’s funny, the center speaker’s job is to NOT be noitced. And ideal center speaker will sound identical to the stereo image created by just the Front L/R speakers! It’s really just there to anchor dialogue to the center of the screen so that your seating position no longer matters. The stereo image of the Front L/R speakers can (and often does) collapse if you move significantly off center. And with speakers that have very narrow dispersion (like electrostatic speakers or line arrays), you practically have to put your head in a vice in order to avoid losing the stereo effect. So in situations like that, a center speaker becomes vital for anyone who isn’t sitting in the lone “sweet spot”.

So yeah, it’s a weird sort of thing that almost seems contradictory, but I stand by saying that the center speaker is actually the LEAST important speaker, at least in a theoretical sense. But once you get one and incorporate it into your system, it becomes the most noticeable speaker, that’s for sure. It’s either notiecable because it does it’s job perfectly and anchors solid dialogue to the screen for everyone, regardless of position; or, it’s noticeable because it fails to sound identical to the Front L/R speakers and therefore sticks out like a sore thumb whenever sounds pan across the front soundstage!

Personally, I’d rather have no center speaker than one that sounds different than my front pair. Anything less than a perfect pan across the front is completely unacceptable to me 😉