AV Rant #381: Messing with Crossovers
This week, Rob and Tom thank Steve for his support of the podcast. As we have apparently answered enough questions about subwoofer purchasing and placement, we move on to your questions about crossover settings and how they work. A detailed discussion. Do you need to upgrade your receiver? Rob and Tom weigh in. A bit more on the Sharpness control on your TV, an explanation of DIN from Paradigm, and a few words about Monitor Audio. Stephan (our listener-of-the-week from last week) has some questions about his outboard video processor and his new, upgraded home theater processor. Plus, he has a new sub and wants to know how to connect it with his outboard subwoofer correction system. Michael is hearing voices from his subwoofer. Is it possessed? Rob and Tom reveal all. Dan’s got some questions about what he should be hearing when listening to audio sweeps. Kevin has some thoughts on Steve’s (from last week) 70Hz problem which leads us into a long discussion about speaker phase and what it can do for you. Nick wants a 2.35:1 screen and wants to know what speakers to get, where to place them, and what sort of screen material we would recommend. Thanks for listening. Now, don't forget to:
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AV Rant Listener Paul —
wanted to give a shout out to Heil Sound, makers of the headsets, headphones and microphones that Paul and many others swear by for amateur and ham radio usage:
http://www.heilsound.com/
AV Rant Listener Stephen —
brought up his dual screen setup in which he’s using a DVDO Duo Video Processor to handle all of his HDMI switching, process all of the video signals, and calibrate both of his displays with greater control than is often available within the displays themselves.
DVDO is just one of many video processor brands, but check out the iScan Duo model that Stephen is using. It’s a great way to get your video quality pretty much as close to perfect as possible:
http://www.dvdo.com/iScanDuo/
AV Rant Listener Nick —
wants to set up a 2.35:1 aspect ratio screen. One concern is how to go about having 16:9 HDTV images displayed on this wider format screen without leaving blank white space on either side.
One solution is a dual screen setup. Rob mentioned the Elite Screens Osprey dual screen on the podcast, but Elite Screens appears to have rebranded that model. It is now called the Elite PrimeVision Peregrine Twin. It is only available through Elite PrimeVision dealers:
http://epvscreens.com/products/electric-screens/peregrine-twin.html
Another solution for displaying 16:9 HDTV content on a 2.35:1 aspect ratio screen is screen masking.
AV Rant Listener Nick mentioned wanting a “wall-to-wall” screen. The only way to have that and still have speakers is to use an acoustically transparent screen with the speakers placed behind it.
But that could result in the Front Left & Right speakers being behind the masking when the masking is applied for 16:9 content. The solution here is acoustically transparent masking. And while fancy motorized masking systems exist, they are crazy expensive!
The much more reasonably priced option is manual masking panels that you can put up and remove by hand when you want them. Audioholics previewed Seymour Screen Excellence’s version, and it looks like a great product:
http://www.audioholics.com/projector-screen-reviews/seymour-screen-excellence-masking-panels-pre