OK!

First things first: Tom, if we ever meet in person, please do not kiss me on the mouth. I will accept a hearty handshake, but that is as far as you and I will ever go on a physical level. I just wanted to make that clear to everyone :p

With that out of the way, I was not joking in the least about the “Help Tom buy a PS3” donation link idea (for shame, Dina) :p

Furthermore, I have put my money where my (figurative) mouth is and made a donation! I used the comment section as Tom instructed on the podcast, so I hope there will be no confusion.

Now, I have started the ball rolling. I would love to see enough support from the other AVRant listeners to raise enough money for Tom to buy his PS3! I regret not being able to donate a full $400, but if we can collectively raise that amount, we can bring Tom into his rightful position among the Blu-ray owning elite!

Since a seperate link is not necessary, Tom, maybe you could put up one of those thermometer charts to show how much of your PS3 fund has been raised and how much more is needed to reach our goal!

ooh…hold up, Tom! I actually was talking about wanting some expert interviews about soundproofing! Not room treatments. But actual room construction. Soundproof drywall, green glue, resiliant channels all of that “über expensive” stuff that you mentioned.

Jon asked about room treatments and that’s another great topic and certainly worth exploring, but I really did want AVRant to tackle the subject of constructing a soundproof room! One of the hardest things to do is make an existing room soundproof. But there are modern products and techniques that can achieve good sound isolation while taking up fewer square feet and costing less than the old methods.

Soundproofing is a subject that is often overlooked and not covered extensively on home theatre websites. I would like to change that and I feel that having an expert on the show would go a long way in demystifying the topic of making a room soundproof!

Cool! Y’know, it struck me that the folks at Auralex likely have a fair bit of knowledge about soundproofing in addition to acoustic treatments. In fact, some of the earliest info I ever read online regarding soundproof construction came from the “acoustics 101” PDF found at the Auralex website!

However, the Acoustics 101 document deals with older, traditional soundproof construction and could be considered outdated at this point. New materials and techniques are now available.

Just some ideas, but maybe you could contact representatives from the company that sells Green Glue as well as someone from Quietsolution.com. Those two companies in particular have really changed soundproof construction and I would love to bring them to the attention of many more people.

You said yourself that very few people go to the expense and hassle of building a soundproof room. But I am convinced that it is merely a lack of knowledge that keeps many people from considering this important aspect of their home theatre. When people discover that a 5/8 inch thick sheet of QuietRock drywall has the sound blocking equivalent of 8 sheets of regular drywall, that usually gets people thinking!

Rob,

Sorry I misunderstood your soundproofing and turned it into room treatments! I am anxiously awaiting the Auralex results and interview.

As a happy PS3 owner, and an appreciative AVRant listener, I am glad to help Tom achieve his PS3 dreams. It will be cool to see how fast we can make that happen.

No worries, Jon 🙂

I write WAY too much in my posts, so I can easily understand how my points are sometimes lost :p

Regardless, having an interview with a representative from Auralex could possibly address both room treatments and soundproofing!

Tom’s review of the Auralex Room Analysis Plus is up at the Audioholics website. Be sure to check it out!

I was actually a little bit surprised that the room treatments did not make a larger difference to the measured frequency response, but then again, there were no subwoofer measurements made. The subjective improvement also seemed clear to Tom, so that is good news! I was pleased to read that the suggestions from Auralex did resemble the “rules of thumb” that I wrote in the last podcast reply section 🙂

It will be awesome if you can donate some funds towards Tom’s PS3, Jon!

For everyone who wants to join our donations, make sure to click on the link that says,

“Add special instructions to merchant”

after you have entered your donation amount and logged in!

Clicking that link will allow you to leave a comment and say that the donation is specifically for Tom’s PS3 Fund!

😀

Cheerleader movie = Bring It On

Guilty Pleasure #6

“Can we just beat these Buffy’s down so I can go home..I’m on curfew, girl!”

and Not Another Teen Movie gives us:

Cheerleader: You better bring it.
Priscilla: Oh, it’s already been brought-en

Can I get a donate button on there for shipping costs to Canada from the AH Store?

zing.

Excellent podcast this week.

Rob,

Would the correct forms for brought be:

bring, brang, brung, and “Have broughten”?

lol

Excellent question, Jon!

“Bring” is a deceptively tricky verb:

The past tense as well as the past participle are both “brought”.

“Brang”, “brung” and “broughten” are not words!

Any time you catch yourself saying “brang”, “brung” or “broughten”, remember that none of those are words and you should use “brought” in place of all of them!

For the person who wanted some quick-fix, low-cost improvements for a home theatre, here are some of my favorites:

1) Pull your couch away from the wall behind it. Try to have at least three feet between the back of your head and the wall behind you.

2) Triple check your cable and wire connections!

3) Calibrate your TV. Pay an ISF Certified calibrator if you can afford it; use a light meter and test patterns if you have access and knowledge; use a calibration Blu-ray/DVD such as Digital Video Essentials or Avia; or even just use the THX Optimizer found on any THX certified Blu-ray or DVD.

Quick Tip: One of the THX Optimizer tests asks you to use a “blue THX filter”. You can buy one from their website, but if you have some of those cheapo 3-D glasses with the red and blue lenses, you can just use the blue lens as your “filter” 😉

4) Properly position your speakers. Follow the THX or Dolby setup guides available online.

Quick Tip: place your surround speakers to either SIDE of your seat and get them about 2-3 feet above your seated height. So many people think the surround speakers are “back” speakers and put them behind the seat. Most people also put them at ear height, but they are supposed to be above you when you are sitting down!

5) Do the “subwoofer crawl”. Put your subwoofer where you would normally sit. Play some bass heavy music or a bass heavy scene from a movie. Now go and listen at all the locations in the room where you could potentially place the subwoofer. Squat so that you are at seated height and try to find the location where the bass is the most smooth, even, distinct and not boomy. One or two positions will be better than all the rest, so place your subwoofer there and go sit in your normal seat!

6) DECOUPLE YOUR SUBWOOFER FROM THE FLOOR.

This will cost a bit of money, but it doesn’t have to be much. What you need is a “shock absorber” between the subwoofer’s feet and the floor. When subwoofers play bass, they shake. Those vibrations go right into the floor and shake the floor! The floor shakes the walls, the walls shake the ceiling and that is why you can usually hear bass throughout the entire house whenever the subwoofer is active! STOP THE BUILDING FROM SHAKING!

Auralex has a special riser called the SubDude or the GRAMMA. If you don’t want to pay $50 for one of those, just find some sort of “shock absorber”. Some layers of carpet underlay, some rubber mats – anything that will act as a buffer and stop the subwoofer’s shaking from reaching the floor!

7) Decouple your speakers too.

If you have towers, treat them like a subwoofer. Use a SubDude/GRAMMA or substitute some sort of “shock absorber” like the kind I just mentioned. For bookshelf speakers, squishy mouse pads work well for a cheap solution.

A great product for bookshelf speakers though is BlueTack (sometimes called FunTack). It’s a sticky, squishy, blue putty, which you can buy at any hardware store and it’s cheap!

People use it to secure all sorts of things so that they don’t fall off a table or to hang light objects on a wall. Don’t skimp. Put 3 or 4 good sized blobs on the bottoms of your speakers to that they not only stay in place, but the BlueTack can also act as a “shock absorber” and decouple your speakers from the surface upon which they are set!

8) Change your room’s light bulbs to 6500K bulbs. 6500K describes the colour of sunlight on an overcast day. It is the specific colour of “white” used to describe peak white for a display. Most light bulbs are considerably more red to make everything look “warmer” in your home, but this skews your perception of the shade of white coming from your TV screen!

9) Double check that you are hearing ALL the bass you are supposed to be hearing.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that a lot of receivers do not handle bass management properly.

I use the “Lobby Shootout” scene from “The Matrix” on DVD to test things out. There are gunshot and rumble sounds in the dedicated LFE channel, but there is a deep synth bass guitar riff in the music. The music is mixed into the Front Left/Right channels for the most part.

I’ve found that with the “proper” speaker settings of all speakers set to “small”, the subwoofer set to “on” and the cross-over set to “80 Hz”, many receivers screw things up and “lose” the bass in the Front Left/Right channels.

When that happens, the synth bass guitar riff in the music is quiet. You still hear it a bit, but when things are correct, it is loud, distinct and prominent.

So test your setup with that scene and if the synth bass guitar riff isn’t prominent, try this:

go into your receiver’s speaker setup menu. Go to the subwoofer settings. You’ll usually find three options: “on”, “off” and something like “double bass” or “bass plus”. Select the “double bass” option (you may have to set your Front speakers to “large” in order to do this). That will usually give you ALL the bass coming from the subwoofer and you’ll hear that synth bass guitar riff loud and clear!

10) Ask questions.

Don’t be afraid. There are no stupid questions 🙂

Tom’s up to $145!!

Tom: I think you should sell your HD-DVD player on eBay and put that towards the PS3 as well.

LOL!!! haaaawww good to be back after a long Podcast vacation. Funny stuff T & D