AV Rant #371: TuckerTues
George Tucker of the AVNation (and other) podcast joins Rob and Tom on this episode. He has a background in live shows, audio engineering, and custom installation. We are way behind on listener questions so we start with left-overs from last week. We answer Matt’s question about dual HDMI outputs, Gabe’s about binaural recordings and “Master Set” speaker setup procedure, and Michael’s about speaker driver material and what “small” vs. “medium” vs. “large” means in reference to room size. George talks about some of the big AV integration companies and why they aren’t reaching out to more mainstream customers and also what are the first steps in getting integration into your home theater from a DIY perspective. Look for a second podcast this week because we just have to catch-up. Thanks for listening. Now, don't forget to:
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Our thanks to AV Rant Listener Gary M. for showing us yet another “point and laugh”-worthy set of products!
Here we have The Mapleshade Store where they sell RCA interconnects that are completely unshielded, have a “hand applied” clear plastic outer wrap over ribbon-style conductors, and the price goes up as those conductors get thinner. It’s like every possible mistake and worst design choice you could make when it comes to an RCA interconnect. But, hey, at only $300-ish per meter, aren’t they a bargain?
Yeesh.
http://shop.mapleshadestore.com/products.asp?dept=87
Shout outs to AV Rant Listeners Ray and Niclas.
They’ve both offered up some firsthand experiences and recommendations for the affordable miniDSP boxes. These are very cool, highly programmable, user adjustable DSPs that you can use as customizable crossovers, high or low pass filters, programmable EQs, and a number of other functions.
Very cool, and recommended by our AV Rant Listeners here, so they’re definitely worth a look!
http://www.minidsp.com/products/minidsp-in-a-box
If you’re looking to measure the sound in your room, we mention Room EQ Wizard a few times during our TWO podcast episodes that we recorded this week!
REW is a free program. You need to be a member of the Home Theater Shack Forum in order to download it, but joining the Forum is also free, so there’s really no monetary reason not to check it out!
http://www.roomeqwizard.com/
You’ll need a microphone, of course, and we’ll point you to our good friend Herb over at Cross Spectrum Labs:
http://www.cross-spectrum.com/
Cross Spectrum is even selling calibrate UMIK-1 USB microphones, which work perfectly for the miniDSP that we just posted below! You can actually use REW to create custom EQ curves that it can then upload to the miniDSP. So this can be a very powerful and affordable solution.
AV Rant Listener Gabe wanted to hear our takes on the “Master Set” speaker positioning and setup process. Tom, Rob, and special guest co-host George Tucker from AVNation.tv talk all about it in Episode #371 (hopefully posting tomorrow or earlier )
You can read through a description of the process here:
http://www.myspeakersetup.com/master-set-process.html
and check out the discussion of it over at audiocircle.com
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=60819.0