AV Rant #484: 25 Percent of Nothing
Thank you to our Listeners of the Week: Dipan and Brandon for their donations, and Nelson W. for letting Accessories4Less and SVS know he bought his Marantz SR7010 and Prime Series speakers because of recommendations from AV Rant!
Lots of News Headlines: The CTA has defined the term Wide Color Gamut Display, Sony adds HDR10 compatibility to their VPL-VW365ES 4K projector, and Antoine alerted us to the new $400 subscription-free TiVo Roamio OTA 1TB DVR. Speaking of TiVo, Rovi is buying TiVo for $1.1 billion. Pioneer Japan is partnering with Dirac, Tyler F. & Chris Heinonen remarked on The Martian: Extended Edition as the first Ultra HD Blu-ray double dip, and The Punisher is getting his own series on Netflix.
Efrain finally received his crowd-funded LH Labs Pulse Infinity Headphone DAC and Amp, Bob G. installed a sliding glass door to help him pressurize his theater with bass, Bill S. is impressed with the Chromecast Audio, and Cliff Heyne gives a big thumbs up to the RBH Sound SI-760 in-wall speakers.
Jonathan F. asks whether dynamic metadata is really necessary for the best High Dynamic Range video when we already have dynamic backlighting systems. Tom K. is interested in the forthcoming Emotiva XMC-1 Pre-Pro Immersive Audio upgrade. He asks about 9 speaker vs. 11 speaker setups and positioning. And we suggest the Focal Bird or Ascend Acoustics HTM-200SE as ceiling-mounted speakers.
Srini wants to replace his Squeezebox Radios, and we recommend the Fluance Fi50, Creative Sound Blaster Roar Series, AudioEngine Powered Speakers, or Bluetooth speakers from Accessories4Less. Brock R. gets into the nitty-gritty details of Yamaha vs. Denon Receivers. And Jim W. gets our thoughts on Height speakers and troubleshooting a popping sound in some of his speaker channels.
Jeb. B. & Jeff G. both had some additional thoughts on setting up four subwoofers. Infinite Gary asks about cable vs. disc video quality, older headphone models vs. newer replacements, LG’s newest OLED TVs, and Joe Kane’s appearance on Home Theater Geeks where he dug into HDR signals on front projectors, Dolby’s new “I Ct Cp” color subsampling system, and bias lighting.
Adriano M. found the Polk Audio PWSK1 Wireless Subwoofer Kit, which is probably fine, although we know for sure the AudioEngine W3 Wireless Adapter works well. Dipan is very impressed with his Calibrated UMIK-1 from Cross-Spectrum Labs. He’s still on the lookout for a 13 speaker Processor, but in the meantime, he wants amplifiers with a low noise floor, so we recommend the Monoprice Monolith 7, Outlaw Audio Model 7700, and checking out Classic Audio Parts.
Brandon G. asks about horizontal vs. vertical Center speaker design. James M. asks for ideal room dimensions. And Allen G. gets some further clarification on Reference Volume and how to get the readings on his Radio Shack SPL meter to match Room EQ Wizard.
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