Our Listeners of the Week are Bill for his PayPal donation, our 28 Patreon Patrons, and Steve from NextGenHomeTheater.com for telling SVS that we are the reason be bought two new SB-2000 subwoofers.

In the news, Rob begins the podcast with a rant about HDR video. And LG’s 2017 OLED TVs support lossless Atmos after a firmware update that provides Dolby TrueHD decoding capability.

Lee Overstreet, our AVRant Co-host Pinch Hitter, realized that its his 5th anniversary of appearing on AVRant. And Nathan D. heard Gary Yacoubian, President of SVS, talking about some upcoming products on the Beginner Audiophile Podcast, including: bringing 16-Ultra Series tech down to lower price points, introducing DTS Play-Fi products, and showing a prototype Prime Wireless speaker at CES 2018.

Jonathan F. wants to understand the meaning and purpose of Mark Henninger’s AVS Forum article, “How To: Converting Passive Speakers to Active Speakers“. And he also gets our thoughts on TickBox being sued by…well…everybody for copyright infringement. And Daniel A. wants to expand his whole house audio system to his outdoor hot tub, so we recommend the RBH R8 Outdoor Rock Speaker or Yamaha All-Weather Speakers, connected with Direct Burial Outdoor Speaker Wire to a Dayton Audio APA102 amplifier if the rest of his whole house speakers are already self-amplified, or to a Dayton Distribution Amplifier.

Brandon M. wants a Kodi or Plex Server that’s easy to maintain and can handle some light transcoding for accessing his content library remotely over the internet, so we recommend an NVidia Shield TV as his server and playback device, and suggest a Synology J Series NAS device for his storage needs. And Ronnie S. lives in Alaska, and he plans to move to a larger house next year. He wants an amplifier for 11 speaker Atmos now and with the headroom for any future setup while considering shipping costs and potential repairs in the future. Tom thinks he should spend as little as possible on an Audio Source AMP100 and only add more amps later if necessary, while Rob thinks an Emotiva BasX A-5175 strikes the right balance of power, price, and size.

Antonio T. found a used SVS PC-Ultra subwoofer and wants to know if he can pair it with his SVS PB10-NSD. Patrick P. understands our previous recommendation to get open-back headphones, but he wants them to be wireless and support Bluetooth. We urge him to still consider the Sennheiser HD 559, but we mention the Sennheiser RS 120, which are wireless, but not Bluetooth, and the Sennheiser PXC 550, which are wireless, Bluetooth, and offer a Talk Through feature with a double-tap of the ear-cup, but they’re expensive. And Rob G. is struggling to get his dual subwoofer bass to integrate well with all 11 of his speakers, so we talk about phase settings, and our suspicions that his Front Towers are set to Large or a low crossover frequency.

Adam K. double checks the way he goosed his subwoofer output level, and he’s noticed a noise floor hiss for the first time, and he wants to know if connecting more speakers will only make it worse. Robert F. wants to know if his 2016 LG OLED can provide better audio via HDMI-ARC vs. TOSLink, and also whether his Marantz SR6010 requires HDMI-CEC to be active in order for HDMI-ARC to function. And David B. elicits our thoughts on the latest Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer.

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