AVRant #141: Custom Love
August 20th, 2009
Dina’s back and is around for a long while. All you wanna-be guest co-hosts, we’ve got plans for you too. Tom STILL hates Microsoft. He’s not all that fond of California either. Custom installers and the games they play. Tom needs to clean up his wires (not as much as these guys). PS3 is cheaper (and smaller), get it while it’s hot. Hulu wants you to own up. How to know if an older receiver will be better for you than a newer one. Dedicated center or bookshelf – Tom weighs in. If speakers that look like rocks aren’t for you, would these be? Thanks for listening and don’t forget to vote for us at Podcast Alley.
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I tried a matching center in our setup: a single 5.25″ mid and 1″ tweeter DefTech ProMonitor 1000. Even my wife commented that dialog and dynamic passages were distractingly thin.
We switched it out for a dedicated-center MTM DefTech ProMonitor 2000 (dual 5.25″) and we are much happier.
Hi all,
About PS3 slim, it seems to new model is alot quieter and I’ve read on blu-ray.com that it is capable of bitstreaming DolbyTruHD and DTS-Master HD.
Here’s the link :
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=3301
Hey, Tom. I think you forgot about Dina. Here’s the link for the 10 worst wiring jobs.
http://www.cepro.com/slideshow/image/5298/
Hey, Tom. Do you think “Nigel” from “the UK” would let you forward the details of his setup to me? I’d love to have a look and read about his problems. I might be able to help 🙂
When it comes to the front 3 speakers, personally, I cannot stand it when there is any sort of shift in tone/ timbre/voice/etc. as the sound pans across the front – drives me batty!
So I am in total agreement with the idea of using 3 identical speakers across the front. Naturally, the problem is that the ideal placement for the centre speaker is directly in front of the TV screen! Other than an acoustically transparent front projection screen, the only viable option is to place the centre speaker either above or below the screen and then angle it to aim it at the listener as necessary. Of course, with a regular bookshelf speaker, it looks kind of odd and unwieldy and it’s basically impossible with a tower speaker. So the “dedicated centre speaker” came to be as a compromise. It was never envisioned as being ideal or preferable. It’s basically just a regular bookshelf speaker laid on its side. But it looks better and it’s easier to place, so we live with the compromised audio quality.
If you have the capability and you don’t mind the looks, I far prefer using a regular bookshelf speaker as the centre speaker and having 3 identical speakers across the front. In my own living room setup though, I have 3 identical front speakers, but the centre speaker is laid on its side. The Energy RC-Mini Centre speakers are a MTM design and were engineered to sound virtually the same whether upright or on their side, but there is still a slight shift in the sound – it’s unavoidable really.
Listened to this show today. It has been a while since I have been able to listen and it was great. Thanks you all!
So Dina says, “Now, go listen to something!”, and I thought Something else?
listened to the music bumper and then realized that I am not the only one with these thoughts 🙂
Jeb