AV Rant #396: Pump Up the Sub
Short one for us this week – less than 2 hours! This week, Paul and Rob mostly finish their BUD conversion and Rob announces his opinion on whether it was worth it. Drew and Raul weigh in on the AIX high-rez audio challenge we discussed last week. Michael has a possible correction for us about why Lior’s Onkyo was getting hot – something that we confirmed AFTER the podcast in the hangout. Turns out that while the amps are almost always the culprit with excess heat in AV receivers, in this case it was inadequate heatsinking on a video processor. We learn something every day. Andy weighs in on banana plugs (he likes these – LINK) and Tom finds a one in/two out HDMI splitter that will work with any two displays (LINK). Michael needs subwoofer buying advice plus he’s having a problem with his speaker settings, Gary has a follow up question about an overdamped room, and Leighton is going to reposition his subs and wants to makes sure he gets the settings right for the best bass. Happy to help! Matthew’s questions about his electrostatic speakers were lost and for that, Tom apologizes. We talk about adding more Martin Logan speakers to his all music setup. Monty has a NAS question for Rob, Jason is looking for wireless headphones (Rob’s suggestions – LINK), Nathan wants to know if he can manually make adjustments to his sub to recreate Audyssey Dynamic EQ, and Gaylen has another receiver replacement option and wants our opinions. Bob upgraded his surround speakers and is now thinking of adding more. Which would we suggest? Oh, and Tom wrote a little article about Atmos (LINK) and Rob had some things to add (LINK). Thanks for listening. Now, don't forget to:
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Our discussion of Dolby Atmos —
1) Tom wrote an article on Audioholics: http://www.audioholics.com/audio-technologies/5-reasons-dolby-atmos-is-doa
2) Rob wrote a counterpoint on Audioholics’ Forum: http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/general-av-discussions/91637-5-reasons-dolby-atmos-may-doa.html#post1046074
3) Geoffrey Morrison posted his impressions on CNET: http://www.cnet.com/news/dolby-atmos-at-home-ears-on/
4) Thomas J. Norton posted his impressions on Sound and Vision: http://www.soundandvision.com/content/dolby-atmos-moves
5) Josh Zyber posted his impressions on High Def Digest (thanks to AV Rant Listener Jay for the link): http://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/dolby-atmos-home-demo/
6) Scott Wilkinson and Mark Henninger from AVS Forum posted there impressions (including some photos by AV Rant Listener Ray Coronado): http://www.avsforum.com/forum/286-latest-industry-news/1646937-dolby-demos-atmos-cinema-home.html
7) Here are Dolby’s rather restrictive specifications for deploying Dolby Atmos in cinemas (notice the total lack of “speaker mapping”!): http://www.dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-atmos/dolby-atmos-specifications.pdf
8) And here’s where DTS seems to at least mention the idea of “speaker mapping” when it comes to their object-based audio solution, “DTS-UHD”: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/dts-demonstrates-dts-uhd-decoder-130000624.html
News item: Transformative Engineering Introducing HDS-12i HDMI 1×2 Splitter
It will for sure let you connect one source to two different displays – even with different resolutions and EDIDs, while remaining fully HDCP compliant. It’s also $300 :p
http://www.gspr.com/transformative/te-hds12i.html
AV Rant Listener Monty —
Asked which Network Attached Storage (NAS) device Rob uses for his media center setup. And would he recommend it?
Rob uses Synology DS411j and DS413j units and recommends them highly for their relatively low price points, excellent capabilities and selection of apps, and stability.
Synology has recently introduced the latest model in the lineup: the DS414j: http://www.synology.com/en-global/products/overview/DS414j
AV Rant Listener Jason T. —
Wants to purchase some wireless headphones for watching movies. He was leaning towards the Sennheiser RS 180: http://en-ca.sennheiser.com/digital-headphones-wireless-home-audio-rs-180
And we would certainly back that decision since Sennheiser’s wireless headphones are consistently at the top of every shootout and comparison review.
However, if you’re a gamer who could make use of a chat microphone, or you’d like to experience Dolby Digital soundtracks decoded and emulated in Dolby Headphone surround sound, Astro Gaming offers a very good alternative in their A50 headset:
http://www.astrogaming.com/a50
Marvel and DC Movie Release Dates through 2020 in a handy graph:
http://ign.com/articles/2014/08/15/marvel-and-dcs-upcoming-movie-slate-infographic
Microsoft’s “Hyperlapse” Video Smoothing technology is extremely impressive:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/hyperlapse/
They mention that they are working on developing apps to bring it to the public.
If you can get past the cringe-inducing fake Italian accents, this is a pretty good free demo of binaural audio:
http://www.qsound.com/demos/virtualbarbershop_long.htm
Please note that since this is binaural, you must wear headphones in order to hear the effect!