AVRant #41: Bipolar Music Disorder
Today, Tom and Clint tackle listener questions including one on room acoustics and what to do with bipolar music speakers. Tom psychoanalyzes a $6 million dollar home theater system and they tackle the age old question of whether to spend more money on a receiver or get a dedicated amplifier instead – they’ll tell you what they think and why. Wiring up your house? Terminated cables or roll your own? Sooner or later everyone has to make this decision – and sometimes you’ll do a little of both. Planet Waves has a nice little kit that might be the home theater enthusiast’s dream come true. We’ll try to do these special AVRant Q&A podcasts more often from here on out. Thanks for listening.
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I noticed the same sound drop-out, stuttering thing on USA on Comcast with a repeat episode of NCIS in HD. It was very annoying.
I’m hoping that one day soon the Comcast in my area (Little Rock, AR) decides to carry Discovery and Scifi HD. I can only imagine how much dirtier Dirty Jobs will look. I just hope it’s here before Deadliest Catch starts up.
I just got Discovery and Scifi. I’m having similar (not as bad) problems on Scifi but Discovery is awesome. I can’t wait for the new season of deadliest catch.
Do you think Comcast is doing something shady to squeeze more and more HD channels into the existing pipe? I’m down with MPEG-4 compression. That’s fine when they manage to roll that out, but I wonder if they are doing something now that is causing these hiccups in the feed. I have seen images of the new Motorola DCX set-top box that is MPEG-4 compatible with 250 gigs, care to take bets on when we’ll see a massive roll out of that one?
I’m looking into it right now. I imagine it is going to take quite a few calls to Comcast to get it sorted out.
I just turned on the TV, and I now have Animal Planet, Discovery, and Scifi in HD! New Mythbusters in HD tonight, woohoo!
Luckily we have quite a few channels in HD from Dish. I’ve resided to only channel surfing HD channels. If it isn’t in HD, I don’t want to see it. I can only think of one show I watch that isn’t HD, Survivor, and I’m not sure if I want to see hairy armpits and legs in HD…
Man, I am sore from being thrown under the bus the past few podcasts…. I will be back. Watch out…
I love the ads that have been spawned down at the bottom right of the page from this podcast title, by the way!
Just a quick note on Toole’s most recent research that wasn’t mentioned in the podcast – reverberant first reflections were shown to be perceived as more enjoyable in situations where off-axis response of the loudspeaker was near identical to the axial response of the loudspeaker. Nearly all commercial/DIY loudspeakers do not fall into this category making treatment of first reflections ideal.
Also, Toole and Olives previous research has shown that audibility of resonance is increased via reflections which means that non-treated first reflections should be considered mainly with speakers that have inert or very low resonance cabinet – another area were nearly all commercial and DIY loudspeakers fail.
Austin – Congrats! Jim – I totally agree, Ava – good points.
Oh yeah! Great show. Man did I learn a lot. I have nothing but a “bad room” acording to what I just learned from this show!!! I have hard floors nothing on my walls.
Thanks for the technics on what to do. I will buy a small rug for my flor, and do the mirror thing on the walls to put,… something? What is a basstrap? and what about sound defusers? whats that and a trick to know where to put them?