Building a "Reference" Home Theater 215
An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad has recently written a 14-page article on building a 'reference' home theater. They go through step-by-step and define all of the issues you need to think about when going with a new home theater setup. Exceptionally detailed but also easy to read."
Does not compute. (Score:5, Funny)
One of these things is not like the other. One of these things does not belong.
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Re:Does not compute. (Score:5, Informative)
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Worse, it's
I guess it's an apt name for the web site though.
$60 (Score:2)
Who cares? It's all about the speaker cables (Score:5, Funny)
The speakers themselves play little role in your sound system, so it's fine if you get ones so cheap. A real home theatre environment, however, depends entirely on $200 speaker cables [amazon.com]. Good (= expensive) speaker cables can compensate for lesser stereo equipment, as well as for a small penis.
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Pffffff, without a few thousand dollar tube amplifier [stereotimes.com] no compensation.
Home theatre. No tubes? Lame!
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Re:$60 (Score:5, Informative)
The way you do it is you take a CD with a couple of songs you typically listen to (also maybe a sample from a movie soundtrack). Important is that it should be something you're familiar with and preferably uses natural instruments (not synthesizers).
Then, compare speakers in your budget two at a time, make notes on which sounds closest to what the recording should sound like. When doing this make sure of two things:
1) the receiver base and treble settings are set flat
2) No other speakers (or subs are on).
Listen for how clear each instrument (and voice) comes out on each speaker.
When you get your two main speakers you need to get a matching center, you can switch between dolby pro-logic and stereo to compare the sound of your mains vs your central, or better, if they'll let you, hook up one the center channel in place of one of the main speakers and use the L/R fade on the reciever to compare the sound between the two (your music should be pretty even on both channels for this to work well). If you got bookshelf speakers you may want to really consider getting a 3rd identical speaker as your main (you probably will have to buy a 2nd pair since they won't sell them solo but in some cases it's worth it and you have a spare if something goes wrong in the future).
Don't assume the center channel provided by the manufacturer is the best matching center for your mains either. Get the best matching speaker period. When sounds pan across the front you don't want the quality of the sound to change too.
Rear speakers should be reasonably close matches to your fronts. When they're in your room they'll sound different anyway (since the quality of sound we hear is different when the source is in front of us vs the rear). You can also get dedicated surrounds (with drivers facing in different directions) vs traditional speakers for the rear. Always audition the rear speakers as you did your mains. Make sure they're good quality as well.
Last but not least, higher model number, more expensive *does not* mean better sounding. Louder.. maybe. But there are alot of considerations that go into balancing the sound from a speaker and some manufacturers get it right with their mid range models but lose it as they stray from that design.
Oh and if you're gonna listen to a Bose offering (typically not the best value for the price), really listen to the alternatives, you'll be surprised.
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Have to agree with that. People tend to think Bose is top-notch, but judging by the Bose systems I've listened to, they really don't sound all that great for the money...there are usually much better alternatives at any price-point.
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Indeed. And don't listen to Bose in their sound-room -- that room has been rigged specifically to make audio sound way better, and it's not a fair indicator of how it would sound in your home.
And if you want to build a sound-proof room that's acoustically sound (pardon the pun), it is going to cost you a fair penny.
If you want something that isn't too expensi
Don't forget to take room volume into account (Score:2)
The sound of speakers varies greatly based on the size and shape of a room. If at all possible, do home trials of the speakers you're thinking about buying (most locally owned audio retailers will let you do this), or at least listen to them in a comparably sized room, at a similar distance to what you'll be listening
Re:$60 (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, because everybody knows that if the receiver is tilted, nothing is going to come out straight after that, no matter what angle you place your speakers at.
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And Bose... don't get me started. As
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I regularly watch FatWallet for deals and occasionally run across a refurb high quality 5.1 receiver for ~$100. Occasionally they have the old nasty noone wants them anymore 480i projectors for My TV. Yes. I'm using my TV Speakers.
Why does everyone think of a $10k system with 1080p and $500 hand made speakers when they hear "Home
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I regularly troll thrift shops and picked up a 4 channel Sanyo amp from the 70s or 80s for $35. To my great shock and amazement it decodes 4 channels from current DVDs just fine. I'm an audio idiot and have no idea what to do about a sub though. And it's not like some slashdotted article is gonna help.
Re:$60 (Score:4, Interesting)
You have to hand it to those Dolby guys, they really figured out a good system with Dolby Stereo. We still do Dolby SR/Stereo printmasters the same day we do the 5.1 printmasters, with the same mixers, and generally with the director present; it's just as authoritative artistically as the 5.1, and it's still just about the most compatible format there is for a wide class of room types and playback systems. It lacks a little awesomeness in a large room, but for any 800sq/ft or smaller room, or any overly long or broad room, I think it's the best compromise you can have. Split surrounds are a waste unless your head is at least 5-10 away from the closest one, IMHO.
Re:$60 (Score:4, Insightful)
If the room you watch movies in is a fairly standard 12'x12'x10' box there's really no need for much more than a $60-$80 system. The components in such a system are superior in frequency response and isolation to expensive Hi Fi systems of a half century ago. AF electronics are cheap. High strength magnets are cheap. Precision machining is even cheap.
The law of diminishing returns kicks in quick for audio equipment, and the only reason you'll need to spend more is if you want to damage your ears by listening to an hour-long movie at jet-engine volume levels. In which case, you won't need high fidelity equipment for long.
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I generally agree with that, but that's because Bose is overpriced, and geared more toward making small speakers that sound good enough for idiots who don't know any better. There is a noticeable difference between a high-quality system a
You can read the printer-friendly article... (Score:5, Informative)
Too much wire/cable BS (Score:5, Insightful)
www.partsexpress.com has excellent Dayton-brand cables for a fraction of the price of Monster-cable. (And by the way, MENTIONING moster-cable among audio pros is a faux-pas in and of itself). Expensive digital cables are a HUGE ripoff, because jitter is largely a consequence of the source, rather than the transmission... and a well-made (yes, just look at it) $10 digital cable is going to sound no different from the $1000 MIT insanity.
Analog cables need to be well-made, but again... no need to spend more than $10-15 per channel. As long as they are well-insulated and shielded, they'll work just fine.
Trust me - on my multi-thousand $ system (Aragon, B&K, MSB, etc...) I could detect no audible difference between the most expensive cables I could borrow ($1000 MIT), and the $15 set that I soldered myself.
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Re:Too much wire/cable BS (Score:5, Insightful)
For some reason people seem to turn off their brains and start appealing to voodoo magic when dealing with audio technology. Let's put it in a more familiar context: computers.
Suppose you're downloading a digital representation of music -- an MP3, say -- from the Internet. Now, we all know that an MP3 is just a series of bits, and as long as those bits arrive unmodified the song is going to sound exactly the same. Suppose I were to claim that you needed some super-high-fidelity Ethernet cable in order for the MP3 to sound its best after being downloaded, because otherwise the inter-edge arrival time in the digital signal will be distorted, and this, in turn, would map directly into harmonic distortion in the analog reproduction.
Anybody with half a brain would simply laugh at me. The bits either arrived properly or they didn't, and single-bit errors in the MP3 are going to produce pops and static, rather than anything so clean as harmonic distortion. Harmonic distortion is an analog problem, there's just no plausible way it can occur with a digital signal. Furthermore, we all know that you can hook your computer up with pretty much any old Ethernet cable, and unless the cable is seriously crap it's going to work perfectly even at gigabit speeds (far higher than anything you encounter in audio).
The same is, for the most part, true with digital audio as well. You're either going to get a perfect signal or horrible pops and static. There really isn't an in-between, and you're certainly not going to get harmonic distortion. Admittedly digital audio does not feature error correction, so marginal connections are more likely to give you problems, but it's not going to be subtle.
For the record: I have a home theater with a 160" screen and $15K worth of speakers and audio gear. And I use the absolute cheapest generic (but still quality) digital cables I could find, just as I hook my computers up with the cheapest (but still quality) Ethernet cable I could find. I don't think I spent more than $5 on any of my digital audio cables, and the sound from my setup is still awe-inspiring.
Video, of course, is a different story -- none of the video cable standards were really intended to span the 30' run between my equipment room and the projector, and video runs at a much higher bandwidth than audio. I found that I had to buy relatively expensive video cables in order to get a good signal (but we're still talking $100, not $1000), and again with the digital hookups it's nothing subtle. With good cables, the signal is perfect. With lousy cables, it's covered with white and black snow.
And I'd like to echo the comments of a previous poster: if you are looking for high-quality cables / connectors
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Ummm... okay.
First, I'm using optical cables. Since they're safely wrapped in an opaque covering, I'm not really sure how you imagine interference would come into play. I'm also not at all sure how an optica
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That's funny, because that's pretty much exactly what I said in my original post, for which you called me "staggeringly ignorant"...
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Or do these flaky digital cables somehow warp time, and slow down the bits flowing down them?
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First, lots of audiophiles use digital audio. Ridiculously expensive CD / DVD / etc. players wouldn't exist otherwise.
Second, who said I was talking about audiophiles? Audiophiles are pretty much by definition insane -- then spend huge sums of
Re:Too much wire/cable BS (Score:4, Insightful)
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Except that I don't "download" my movie soundtracks from my DVD player to my receiver and then to my speakers before pressing "play" - this has to happen in real-time and reach each of my six speakers in the proper order and without interference at any level.
People
Good digital cables (Score:2)
As for analog, one of my university professors used to say - audio frequencies are practically DC. While he might have been stretching things a bit, given the low frequencies involved ( < 100Khz) and the existing technologies available for decades I'd say there's some truth in what he's saying.
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There is no such thing as a "digital cable". Cable is cable. Digital signals in a well designed system use + and - wires, which cancels out much of the external interference. If a signal gets through at all it works pefectly. If they don't use +/- wires, they modulate on a carrier (hence the coax.)
the inter-edge arrival time will be disto
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There's some misinformation here, all right, but it is you who are the source. You're confusing things across domains.
The digital signal is coming in at a rate much, much higher than the reproduced signal. For instance, if we were dealing with 8-bit audio at 20 KHz, then for every analog sample there are 8 digital bits of a bitstream that have to be recovered. In an uncompressible signal, this requi
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On the off chance that you are capable of educating yourself on this topic, I
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Jeff, Jeff... The electronics don't give a hoot about the zero crossing. There is no information to be recovered at the zero crossing. They also don't care if the sample window moves a fraction of the window in time one way or the other. The whole point is to sample in the middle of the window, threshold the signal at a rate far higher than the recovered audio, and tak
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You're confusing two different things. (Score:3, Informative)
A S/PDIF representation of a "zero-crossing" would be a series of PCM frames where the binary value in a channel goes from >0 to 100 or so "electrical" zero-crossings. This is by design. Even a completely silent audio signal (all numerical 0) is encoded by a repetitive, square-wavish mark/space sequence on the channel.
There is ZERO harmonic correlation between the encoded S/PDIF signal and the logical analog
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Datasheet, which you have obviously never read [cirrus.com]. Please see page 55.
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Re:Too much wire/cable BS (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone has fed you a load of nonsense.
Yes, frequencies are high in a digital cable. Considerably higher than in an analog cable that is trying to carry the same data. However, there are only two states that have to be reliably detected in a digital signal: Is the thing ON, or is it OFF? This means (generally speaking) that at the sample time, which is in the optimal place to catch the change, if the signal simply manages to be in the correct 50% of the range it needs to be in at the right time, it'll be interpreted correctly. Once converted back into a digital one or zero, there is no, repeat no THD or anything else that is a consequence of any distortion that the cable might have introduced. And that conversion happens at the very first digital input the signal is fed to.
The analog cable, however, has no such leeway. Any change in the analog signal comes right through as a change - the black level moves, the dynamic range decreases, images get auras, shadows, high frequency components ring and create repeating echos; analog interference, such as AC signals, CB radios, your local AM station and the crud in the AC lines when you run your vacuum cleaner or air conditioner can all get into the signal and distort it, even when only a tiny bit manages to leak through the shielding. With a digital signal, in order for those same interfering signals to have an effect, the digital signal has to already be degraded to almost 50% or there will probably be no effect at all.
The home theater image itself would tell you instantly if there is effective distortion (meaning, it's changing the bits being detected) that is getting into the signal even if the cable was just carrying visible image data (it isn't!) Because if errors were getting in there, there's no particular reason for them to be bits of low significance; they would be a random mix of all significance, and so you'd see bright spots in dark areas and dark spots in bright areas, errors as high as 50% as the most significant bit errored out. Audio would be the same - there wouldn't be a "little" THD, it would be a freaking mess. Ever watch digital satellite? Notice the huge errors, complete loss of the image frame? That is what happens when you lose bits in a digital transmission, not "increased THD." If the image data is compressed, then the visibility of errors is even worse - that's why satellite images lose partial frames, key frames, and image regions, not just individual pixels.
Clock jitter can introduce THD, sure enough, but that is so easy to avoid it is pitiful. And it isn't a consequence of cables unless the clock itself is carried on the cable, which it generally isn't anyway. No matter if the signal is "buffered" or "re-clocked", in the end, some input takes it as either a one, or a zero and outputs a stable one/zero result, essentially re-thresholding it. If this process works you get a fully reconstructed digital signal of ones and zeros with extremely rare errors (like, one a day.) If it doesn't work, you get an unwatchable, unlistenable signal. Remember that those errors aren't correlated to the data; they can be bits of any significance, they can be lost encryption bits, they can be lost framing or format bits... boom, wreckage.
I run a cheap HDMI cable ($60) 30 feet (the HDMI spec says 32 feet, no more) carrying image data to my 1080p projector; and similarly cheap ($6) but shorter HDMI cables carrying audio and image data from satellite, DVD and a PS3 that also serves as a Blueray player to my receiver. The only signal we ever see any errors on (and they're a huge mess, sure enough) is the satellite signal; we're not at a strong point in the footprint (NE Montana) and we get some pretty good cloud and precipitation combinations, not to mention some solar issues at certain times of the year. These errors aren't a consequence of digital cables.
One more thing: The audio THD in a system can usually be characterized by the THD of the speakers. Most even decent stereo gear has THD
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Jeff, as I explained to you in my other post, phase noise at 700 KHz - higher, actually - isn't going to produce THD at your speakers. It'd flip bits well before it produced a phase error significant enough to make it past the low pass filters. You're simply wrong.
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Intersample slew on a D/A isn't a cable issue, Jeff. Signals aren't coming in from a cable and going right into a D/A. There's tons of switching, signal processing (Dolby, EQ, DTS, etc), etc. going on before the D/A ever sees the signal, and by that time, the digital data is clean as a whistle. Intersample slew error is an issue, certainly, but any D/A hardware that produced audible errors would not (just as a for instance) be a component used in a receiver that produces measured THD of fractions of a perc
Re:Too much wire/cable BS (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I read it.
First of all, closely coupled (of neccesity, because magnetic field effects fall off as the square of the distance) induced fields of 6 MHz are not in any way real-world interference for your typical home theater setup. Though I'll come back to that.
Secondly, and as the author of the paper notes, the cable impedance is 50 ohms, and so in order to induce a change in the signal carried inside, the power of the 6 MHz signal has to be fairly extreme in order to induce any change within the cable.
Third, again as the author of the paper notes, the interfering signal is a 6 MHz two volt square wave, something you aren't going to see in a home environment even if there was a 6 MHz signal source. Heck, you won't even find that in most labs unless they're trying to make it, as is the case here.
Fourth, none of this in any way implicates the cable as a source of jitter. It implicates outside signals as a source of jitter; the only related question is, does a really fine cable do a better job of keeping real-world noise (IOW, not a 2 volt, closely coupled, high power square wave) out of your home cables? And the answer, as we all know, is no, it does not. It is trivial to make a cable with a nominal 50-ish ohm impedance on a per conductor basis.
Sixth, home theater HDMI uses differential signaling [TDMS]... so induced signals like this are irrelevant anyway, as they are by their nature common mode.)
Seventh, the paper you have there does not test cables. It tests transformers. There is no question that the recovery interface, when actually different, will provide for different types of recovery. Hence his spread of results over his spread of tested transformers.
Eighth, you should note that even in the case of this horrendously strong, not real-world induced signal, chosen specifically for its unique beat frequency against the sample rate and therefore maximal capability to induce jitter (without any regard for the likelihood of such a signal to exist in the home theater environment), the jitter he detects is +/- 10 nanoseconds. The highest frequency to be recovered out of a typical 44 KHz signal is 20 KHz, which is a signal with a period of 50 microseconds. Adding (or subtracting) 10 Ns to the center position of a 50 uS waveform (and mind you, that's absolute worst case, because 20 KHz is the fastest thing to come out of that filter, period) results in time domain distortion that resolves to 4 Hz . or .00005%, which is inaudible (and again, doesn't even hold a candle to what a speaker will do to that signal when it gets hold of it. Doing the same analysis for 20 Hz, we see that the period of 20Hz is 50,000 uS, and when we add 10 uS to that, we get 50,000.01 uS, which is time domain distortion that resolves to 19.999996 Hz, or a .0000002% time domain error. Not only inaudible, just plain irrelevant.
And all of this, of course, is reflected in the pristine visuals and amazing audio we get from high end home theater systems today - even using cheap cables.
I suppose I should own up to what I'm using, as it has become germane: I've got 30 feet of HDMI cable driving a 1080p DLP projector, which in turn produces a 17 foot (205") diagonal image. Plus a bunch of cheap ($6) short cables from various sources to the receiver. I can walk up to that image and put a finger right under a specific pixel and watch the silly thing as long as I have the patience to. I can watch it from a stable source, such as a menu out of the PS3 or a still from a Blueray disk, or I can watch it change with the signal. I can see it in context with its neighbors, and if there were positional jitter (which is what this jitter equates to in video) I'd see it if it were perceptible - and it is not. That's a 30 foot, $60 cable, laid right next to four or five AC lines, some twisted pair control signals for my alarm system, and going by several large fluorescent fixtures in the basement. This is a real-wo
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10 nS jitter, Jeff, from the paper you cited. Likewise, read up as to why they used a 6 MHz field. 120 Hz fields are irrelevant. They even explain why. Otherwise, have a nice day. Have to move on now.
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Digital data is just that. Digital: It doesn't matter whether the incoming bits would actually be
If stuff was really this sensative, we wouldn't be pushing gigabit data streams over
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Here's why: http://networkboy.net/hdjitter.shtml [networkboy.net]. To be fair, of course, there is little to gain once you have reached the "decent quality" tier.
-nB
Re:Too much wire/cable BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, B&K is really nice stuff.....(its what i have in my theater), but you are nowhere NEAR the realm of a true reference system yet.
This is starting to become a new cliche' on slashdot, making fun of people who spend a lot of money on audio gear. Well guess what guys, if they have the money for them, and it sounds better to them (because of placebo effect or whatever it is) then WHO CARES! The only reason you have to make fun of these people is your inability to drop a half million dollars on speakers, 80 grand on cables, etc.
People who's job it is to know good sound (mastering engineers) are the people out there proclaiming that these 80k cables, and whatnot are worth it, just pick up a copy of audiophile or hi-fi and read it.
Obligatory car analogy:
I can go out and buy a shifter cart that will outperform a $250,000 ferrari by leaps and bounds for about a 10th the cost. SO why do people buy ferraris? why do I want a ferrari? BECAUSE THEY'RE freaking COOL! The people out buying these things work really hard for their money (yes, being locked inside of an office for 12 hours a day , 7 days a week IS hard work), but they work really hard so that they can have the luxury of spending it on dumb crap! If these cables and speakers and pre-amps, and turntables are all so ridiculous then why don't all of you who are suddenly "experts" on the subject start manufacturing them?
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There's a lot of groupthink that goes on with both sides of the debate. Audiophiles are guilty of buying into a lot of silly myths, and using bad methodology to determine quality. But the anti-audiophile crowd is just as guilty, condemning the science on the whole because some bad companies sell snake oil, condemning audiophiles as a whole because some of them are ridiculous cartoons who buy $300 wooden knobs because they think their stereo will
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I once took a porn mag to my biology professor and got told the same thing.
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As a previous theatre buff... (Score:5, Informative)
One area that, in my experience, offers the most bang-for-the-buck is a two-part issue: room dimensions and sound-proofing, i.e. room treatment.
There are a LOT of expensive and probably useless room treatments. For me, the ultimate sound didn't come from watts or speaker power-handling but in properly sound-proofing the room against external noise. The lower the noise floor, the clearer the sound. This is key to having a good movie experience, I'd say, because you don't need it loud to be dynamic.
Room dimensions can be just as important, as certain rooms (square is the worst) have standing waves that emphasize or de-emphasize certain frequencies at certain locations. My ultimate theater had an odd shape (slightly angular walls and ceiling) but the sound was amazing. We also covered the walls in fairly cheap acoustic foam of varying lengths, and covered the foam with nice acoustically transparent cloth (red) so you couldn't see the varying foam squares. It was a slightly dead room, but it really had punch for the action films my friends liked.
Lastly, the proper bass crossover combined with the proper bass drivers is the final key for those who want action-style entertainment. I am a HUGE fan of Bag End from Barrington, Illinois. They make an ELF crossover and driver system which is just a miracle in a box. It is the flatest, most dynamic bass system imaginable, and the crossover was wonderful since it didn't overemphasize higher frequency bass to muddle male vocals or punchy sound effects.
One sidenote: I almost never focused on surround sound. Honestly, I was more happy with pseudo-surround out of low power, but dynamic speakers, than I was at have 16.5 channel surround sound. When I removed my rear channels, my visitors were always blown away by the clarity and depth of the properly positioned, amplified and mounted front 2 to 3 speakers I had installed. My current home theatre only has 3 speakers, and we're extremely happy with the install, which I did for a fraction of the overblown sound system my neighbor has. Even better, we're only driving the efficient and dynamic speakers with HEAVY 30 watt amps each, but since our noise floor is so low and our room is so quiet and dead, the sound is gorgeous, even for music.
I'm done with my theatre days, as the money is best spent elsewhere, and the upgrade bug is finally over.
Re:As a previous theatre buff... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sound-proofing a room is, IMHO, the MOST important thing that you can do for a home theater (or stereo room, if you're an audiophile). Not ONLY because it makes the experience better for you while you're watching the movie, but because it gives you the ability to listen at whatever sound level you want, whenever you want, without worrying about waking the kids.
We bought a house with a theater that the previous owner put some serious work into. One major area of focus was the soundproofing of the room. This has been invaluable. When everyone is asleep and I'm in the middle of an all-nigh code-session and want a break, I can thrown in a movie and actually LISTEN to it without having to worry about waking the 2 year old.
Have we learned nothing from Nike, Gap, et al? (Score:3, Funny)
Shouldn't the 2-yr old be coding? At least making wallets or macrame key chains or something. Kids today have it so easy ;)
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All that discussion about a reference system, and while he gets the "Bulk Monster Cable is Just Fine, as is any other properly sized conductor", he never once mentions setting up the speakers properly, i.e. Impulse Alignment, Room EQ, etc?
Oh, and if the band "Great White" taught us anything, it's to make sure your Acoustic Treatments are fireproof and properly rated for the application.
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Of course speaker watts are irrelevant - but you need to do the math, make the measurements or experience to know that. A good one watt per channel is probably going to suit far more people than one would suspect. You either need inefficient speakers, a large room or both to need sustain more than 1 Wpc. You get a little more headroom with more watts, but it's a losing game, and the amps are usually less efficient. Doubling the w
Re:As a previous theatre buff... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're absolutely correct that the room plays (IMNSHO) the most important role in an audio system, but I have one nit to pick with this statement: room treatment /= sound-proofing (i.e. sound insulation).
Room treatment (bass traps, absorption, diffusion) is all about effect of the acoustics within the room. Room treatment changes room acoustics properties like reverberation time (echoes/reflections), standing wave amplitudes, and speech intelligibility.
Sound-proofing/sound-insulation (double-walls, double-studs, resilient channel, "Quietrock", mass-loaded vinyl, etc) is all about the effect of sound outside the room. If you want to be able to listen to your favorite action/scifi/sports program at full volume without waking up the kids in the next room, you need sound insulation. Doing things like adding egg-crate foam to the walls will change the acoustics within the room, but not outside the room.
As an example: an open window is an ideal sound absorber since is reflects ~0% percent of sound. However it makes a very poor sound-insulator since it allows ~100% of sound to be transmitted through it.
Homemade projectors (Score:2, Informative)
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But, if you're building a "reference" home-theater, you're probably going to want to lean a little more towards one of These [digitalprojection.com]....
prepare to open your checkbook though, these things cost around $50,000+ dollars.
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What? (Score:5, Insightful)
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-mcgrew
Only if the puffy cushions don't work (Score:2, Funny)
I thought you were gonna say... (Score:2)
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Did these guys ever watch the "Grindhouse" flicks? (Score:2)
Mostly Very Poor (Score:4, Informative)
It appears to me that this article was written with a lot of feedback from a big box store like Best Buy because the brands they recommend are typically what these stores carry, and in particular they push Monster stuff and power filters hard because of the huge markups.
Not included (Score:2, Funny)
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And just like evey other gearhead's guide (Score:2)
Speaker cable (Score:2)
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I would challenge anyone in a double blind test to tell the difference on standard consumer gear between this cable and anything from Monster. Standard consumer gear (the under $2000 amp stuff) has so much noise in it already, that cable won't make any difference at all.
The article's IDE cable example is moronic. (Score:4, Informative)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
80-conducter IDE cables still only have 40 pins. The other 40 pins are insulation and grounding, used to space and isolate the active conductors so there isn't any crosstalk. There's not just a performance difference if you plug a modern disk drive into the controller using a 40-conductor cable, there's inevitable data corruption. This has NOTHING to do with expensive speaker cable, or the Monster myth. It's one of the stupidest justifications I've ever seen.
AND THEN they go on about PCM jitter with a straight face. Holy god, people still believe in this?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This kind of crap has gone so far that people are buying $150.00 IDC power cables for their equipment so that the power will be cleaner and the video will be clearer. One reviewer had the balls to say "the colors are more dynamic" with this overpriced power cord that does not do squat.
Home theaters are the new
I has 4-conductor speaker cablez! (Score:2)
I'm going to rewire my house with 16-conductor ethernet cablez, then I will rulez!
Wow, this is a really, really terrible article (Score:5, Insightful)
That they top it off with a $400 receiver, and completely dodge the notion of getting into separates (other than to say that it's complicated and they haven't really listened to anything), makes it lose all credibility. The cable and power conditioning sections are a joke - they steadfastly refuse to entertain any alternatives to Monster Cable (hint: almost all the alternatives are better values for the money; just because you can get Monster Cable on sale doesn't make it a good value - their markup tends to be 3x-4x that of other cable manufacturers).
I get the feeling that they've listened to a handful of mass market pieces and decided to just suggest whatever crap it was they bought. As mentioned elsewhere, they don't even touch on room acoustics and setup factors, which can greatly influence the end results.
In short these guys don't know anything more about setting up a reference level home theater than your average Best Buy salesperson. Given their selection of brands, that's probably what they are in fact.
Re: (Score:2)
Or even the speaker kits from places like Parts Express. A speaker kit is remarkably good value, if you're not a complete schlub and can solder a simple crossover without burning your house down. Too many retail speakers are designed to look good first; to sound good second. This is a good plan for the companies involved because
Re: (Score:2)
After researching a home theater room myself, I've come to the conclusion that if you can do your research in less than two months, and don't have a permanent headache from it, you probably still don't understand it.
Example: matching the crossovers on the processor's LFE channel/subwoofer combo with the ones the processor applies to the satellite speakers. If you're not careful, you end up with a 2nd order on satellites vs. 4th order on the LFE channel.
firing squad (Score:2)
Regular home theatre ? (Score:2)
The Death Star Theater [electronichouse.com]
I once tried to build a home theater (Score:4, Funny)
matching system (Score:2)
HTPC's for HDM's (Score:3, Informative)
Atmospheric effects (Score:3, Funny)
Bean bags? (Score:2)
How about some "reference" popcorn too?
And if you torrent your movies don't forget some reference clips[1] warning against the evils of "piracy" so that you get the real theater experience too.
[1] http://youtube.com/watch?v=d82Lq2rVB_4 [youtube.com]
LinuxMCE (Score:3, Informative)
FWIW, if the project porting X and codecs [google.com] to the PS3 had more developers, the PS3 would be an excellent home media terminal running LinuxMCE without whatever Sony's planning to saddle it with.
TFA was written by an idiot. (Score:5, Informative)
The article starts off with a disclaimer in the first page. When an opinion piece has to state, "this doesn't represent an endorsement from FiringSquad, but rather our research," the opposite is generally true.
He decides the lack of 1080p content is a myth. His argument? You can convert 1080i back to 1080p. While this is fundamentally true, so is the statement that there's little 1080p content available. Converting it doesn't mean that the content was natively available in 1080p. I know, seems trivial... but this is a precursor to an argumentation style he uses that gets tiresome and downright disingenuous as the article goes on.
He has a table of data for maximum viewing distances to appreciate the full benefit of 1080p quality. He doesn't bother to cite any sources or what methodology was used to arrive at the data... but nevermind, it does get worse.
He's right about LCoS being superior, but for the wrong reason. It isn't the control circuit but rather the fact that there's a liquid crystal display element for each pixel and, in principle, support for resolutions well above 1920 x 1080. Also the fact that baseline LCD displays and DLP do not display a red, green and blue pixel simultaneously for each pixel of resolution on the final image.
Then he uses THX and SMPTE theatrical standards and applies them to a home auditorium, to support his argument that the opposite is true? What ever gave him the idea that these standards were ever applicable to small home auditoriums in the first place? Theatrical exhibition is a different deal entirely, whether digital or optical... but I'm guessing that the THX/SMPTE specs he's quoting were for 35mm which has much higher effective resolution than 2k/4k digital theatrical projection systems.
He confuses the term motion blur with the issue of print clarity. Motion blur is a side effect of optics whereby an object in motion is blurred by way of the aperture and shutter timing of the exposure. This is actually a good thing because in a motion picture format, i.e. a series of still images, it assists the brain in perceiving fluid motion from a series of still images. Motion blur is NOT correlated with effective clarity but exposure length. Therefore it's ridiculous to say that 35mm is equivalent to 720p. In fact, 35mm, depending on the film stock used and the style of cinematography (e.g. sharp, grainy, diffuse glow, etc.) used, motion picture can render images whose digital equivalent would extend up to 6000 pixels of horizontal resolution... three times that of HD 1080p.
While it's true that theatrical Dolby Digital is 320 Kbps and DVD Dolby Digital is typically 448 Kbps, he makes no mention of additional parameters in Dolby Digital home encoding (e.g. dialogue normalization, Dynamic Range Compression, etc.), he doesn't discuss theatrical DTS (an ADPCM-style format with a 1.5Mbps bitstream), nor does he observe that Dolby Digital at 448-640 Kbps is acoustically transparent relative to an uncompressed source. He also confuses the term "lossless" with "uncompressed"... Lossless refers to compression formats, but "high resolution audio" like that on a DVD-Audio recording is typically 20 or 24-bit Linear PCM, which is an uncompressed format. Calling it lossless is superfluous.
He doesn't mention that in addition to the majority of sound being in the front channels, 5.1 is actually 5.1, whereas 7.1 is not. At best, 7.1 is actually 6.1 with the two rear surround channels paired in mono as in DTS-ES. At least, 7.1 is actually Dolby Digital 5.1 discrete with the two paired rear surround channels still mono, but also stereo matrixed into the left and right surround channels the same way that Dolby Surround analog carries the rear surround stereo matrixed into the front left and right channels.
I mostly ignored his commments on power filtering and cables because that subject has been beaten to death already. H
Great, I can use this.. (Score:3, Funny)