Our Listeners of the Week are Lemuel and Tony for their donations, Blaine D. for mentioning us to HSU during his VTF-3 MK5 HP purchase and Nathan D. for talking us up to Oppo, and Mike for hooking us up with Mark from Accessories4Less who came through big time with a Denon AVR-X4300H AV Receiver for Tom!

We know we have listeners who live in Puerto Rico, like our good friend Efrain, and we are praying that everyone is safe after the destruction wrought by Hurricane Maria. If you are able to help, PBS has information and a list of organizations to help hurricane victims in Puerto Rico.

Back in home theater land, Rob was a guest on the Entertainment 2.0 Podcast with Josh Pollard to talk about 4K HTPCs. And last year’s Denon AV Receivers have started getting the firmware update that adds Dolby Vision and HLG pass through support.

CORRECTION: Nathan D. and Earle let us know that Oppo UDP-203 and 205 Ultra HD Blu-ray players can pass 4K HDR10 signals through their HDMI inputs and separate the HDMI audio thanks to a recent firmware update. Our words last week on that topic were incorrect.

Last week, Jim asked why Denon and Marantz Receivers don’t include a graph for the subwoofer in their Audyssey results menu, and Chris Kyriakakis himself responded that it’s something Denon/Marantz decided to omit years ago, and they’ve simply never changed it. Infinite Gary’s brother-in-law shared a photo of some huge, horn-loaded, tube-amp-driven speakers that we can’t identify. And we revisit the anonymous listener who had some blown planar tweeters to reveal they were RAAL ribbons in a pair of Ascend Acoustics Sierra-2, so we’re very curious to know if any other owners have ever experienced similar damage.

Michael I. asks us to clarify which audio formats can pass through TOSLink, which formats can pass through HDMI ARC, and what sort of audio does the new Apple TV 4K support? Grant A. asks why a single Surround Back speaker doesn’t seem to work with Atmos or DTS:X, whether he should consider a speaker like the SVS Ultra Surround that can play in dual mono mode, or what else he could do to play two Surround Back channels from one speaker location. And Jonathan F. questions Andrew Jones’ ELAC Adante Seriesspeakers: why a dual-driver subwoofer, but not dual subs, why include gloves to handle the speakers, and why use something as inelegant as a “rubber wedge” to angle the Center speaker?

Bill P. wants to know if he can use his older Denon AVR-X3000 Receiver strictly as an amplifier to bi-amp his Front Towers in a 7.2.4 configuration. Jeff G. followed Dolby’s guidelines and placed his Top Middle speakers the same distance apart as his Front L/R speakers, but he isn’t hearing them as distinctly as he would like as a result, so we discuss ways to compensate. Infinite Gary wants to know what it would take for a display calibration graph to show no errors whatsoever. And Brandon G. asks about adjusting the volume levels of his subwoofers and Center speaker after having run Audyssey.

Justin B. wants a small, affordable, down-firing subwoofer, so we suggest the Outlaw Audio M8. We also talk about the new Monoprice Monolith Desktop THX Headphone Amplifier and DAC and it’s inclusion of Dirac Sensaround. Brandon N. wants an Atmos setup in his theater along with a Zone 2 setup, so we recommend a Yamaha RX-A3060 or RX-A3070 with Yamaha’s MusicCast system. And Karl R. found an HDMI cable at the Apple Store claiming to be “Ultra High Speed” with “bandwidth up to 48 Gbps, so we debunk some of the naming with the official HDMI Specification 2.1.

• Check out the AV Rant YouTube channel to watch our show videos.
• Download Tom’s FREE superhero-themed ebook Bob Moore: No Hero.
• Visit Tom's website for download links as well as links for the two full-length follow-ups -  Bob Moore: Desperate Times and Bob Moore: Hostile Territory.
• Check out AVGadgets.com where Tom is the new Editor-in-Chief!
• Download Tom's NEWEST book, Touch of Pain from Amazon now!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Liked it? Take a second to support AV Rant on Patreon!