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  1. Terry St

    Subwoofer potentiometers

    The first control that is in terms of frequency is probably a crossover, although it's a little strange for a sub crossover to go up into the kHz range. This dial will control the frequency at which the sub starts kicking in. If you hook up your sub using a y-cable from your mains then you...
  2. Terry St

    Speaker wire termination

    Terminations are primarily for convenience. If you move your speakers around a lot and have to unhook/rehook them frequently then some form of termination is a big time saver. If you mostly just leave your speakers where they are then bare wire is pretty much optimal. Oxidization is heavily...
  3. Terry St

    Droning subwoofers.

    Is this all happening in the same room? Some rooms have really strong modes at exactly the wrong frequencies. A parametric EQ might help if that's the case.
  4. Terry St

    Details on signal to noise ratio(snr)

    I'm not an audio pro either, but SNR pops up in a lot of places. It typically is just a ratio of signal strength over background noise. Higher is usually better. e.g. If you had an amp with a very low SNR, it would not be able to produce signals you want (like a guitar) at volumes that are a lot...
  5. Terry St

    Do I really need Expensive Speakers for Home Theater?

    I've seen many speaker lines where the gap was a lot smaller, but I'll agree that you have to examine each lineup individually. There is one other problem with bookshelf speakers to consider though. If you have a significant other who has different priorities for space usage, it may be difficult...
  6. Terry St

    Do I really need Expensive Speakers for Home Theater?

    I'll second the notion of concentrating on the center channel first as well. I've seen a lot of speaker-lines that have massive tower fronts and a puny little center that's meant to sit on top of your TV. You really do want your center to be able to go down low enough to mesh with your sub...
  7. Terry St

    ***Official Blu-ray insiders thread

    Here's a somewhat technical question: Is Sony planning to issue an API so that open source players can start supporting Bluray discs properly? Now, I know the knee-jerk reaction is going to be "No", since this could potentially open up the format to piracy. However, I must point out that...
  8. Terry St

    is trueDD and DTS-HD worth the upgrade?

    I'd just like to point out that full bitrate DTS (i.e. 1.5kbps) has been shown to be acoustically transparent in double blind ABX testing. (i.e. You can't tell the difference between it and uncompressed PCM) It follows that DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD won't sound any different than a full bitrate...
  9. Terry St

    Universal & Paramount's HUGE Catalog!

    With the format war raging you would think that both sides would be bringing out the best catalog titles they can come up with to get as many "gotta have" titles on their side as possible. Neither side is doing all that great, but the HD-DVD side has made some supremely screwy choices. For...
  10. Terry St

    Creating "true" full range 7.1 speakers using multi subs..?

    I mostly just skimmed your post(s), but my initial reaction is that you'd probably run into problems with the subs canceling each other out and creating some rather odd nulls and nodes. Still, you might get lucky. Also, have you tried moving your SVS around to see if you just had it in a bad...
  11. Terry St

    Cables turning green

    The copper may also be reacting with the housing. Either way, replacing it won't hurt.
  12. Terry St

    Optimal placement of subwoofer?

    Stick the sub in your listening position and then crouch down in the places where you think it might fit and see what spot sounds best. Then swap places with the sub.
  13. Terry St

    Best small "full range" speakers?

    The Totem Mani-2's are actually the first speaker I thought of when I read the thread title. They go substantially deeper than the Arro's. Extension of +/- 3dB to 29 Hz is nothing to sneeze at for a full size tower, but the Mani-2's are bookshelf speakers! Still, they're a bit pricey and have...
  14. Terry St

    Question about Sub performance

    When you were watching the movie, did you have the volume set such that explosions, etc. were much louder than the volume you normally listen to music at? If so, then the sound you're describing could either be port chuffing or your sub bottoming out. The former only happens with ported subs...
  15. Terry St

    A case study on how speakers work

    Let me try again... Let's say you have a fistful of 10 dollar bills. You can think of these bills as each being the equivalent of a five dollar bill, 4 one dollar bills, 3 quarters, two dimes and a nickel. That sort of thinking is useful when you're paying for a chocolate bar and working out...
  16. Terry St

    A case study on how speakers work

    When analyzing waveforms, such as a sound, it is often very difficult to do much if you stick to the intensity/time domain, which is what is real and physical. (You've seen a car's position plotted versus time right? Plot the intensity of sound versus time and you get the familiar waveform.) For...
  17. Terry St

    Need some Ghost in the Shell feedback

    It looks like the complete 2nd season of SAC comes out in a couple weeks in the U.K.. Does anyone know when something similar will come out in region 1?
  18. Terry St

    Alexander Revisited: The Unrated Final Cut -- Due 2/27/07

    I'm a sucker for both historical epics and sword&sandal-type flicks, so Alexander should have been right up my alley. However, after seeing it I only felt it was so-so. The film... rambles. It seemed to me that Stone truly admired Alexander and wanted to convey that, but he never really figured...
  19. Terry St

    Children of Men - Discussion thread

    One thing about CoM that I felt really helped enhance the sense of realism was how it's characters paid attention to small details that are normally overlooked in most films. Theo's shoes were just one example. In most films he'd have just shown up in the next scene with new shoes and the...
  20. Terry St

    Ashes of Time

    Is the audio at least synched in the TF1 verson? I rented a R1 copy of AoT once and the audio was several seconds ahead of the action. I'd never seen a DVD cocked up that badly.
  21. Terry St

    Slightly Off Topic: New Browsing Experience...

    IE6 was a fair bit behind the browser tech curve when it first came out, and then Microsoft just abandoned it for half a decade. It's utter ubiquity, thanks to being bundled with Windows, gave it the largest install base of any browser by a substantial margin. Naturally, every malicious hacker...
  22. Terry St

    I don't understand the appeal of Harry Potter

    My sister is a raving potterhead, so I heard all about the movies well in advance and had the books thrust upon me. I decided to read the first book before watching the movie, which I did. The book is okay. It's not some new age classic. It's basically this generation's hardy boys, except with...
  23. Terry St

    The Descent - good or bad?

    The R1 cut that was in theaters was a tad lacking in character development. The majority of the cast was only there to pump up the body count. Maybe the R2 cut is better? Most of the characters are very broadly drawn stereotypes as well and what happens to them is rather predictable as a result...
  24. Terry St

    martial arts movies

    "Return of the Dragon" pitted Bruce Lee against Chuck Norris in one of the more interesting fights in both actors' careers. (The kitten parallels and hair-pulling are somehow bizarre and badass all at once.) What that list really needed was some classic Shaw brothers/Gordon Liu films like...
  25. Terry St

    Need movie suggestions for a paper

    Coming to America (If a fictional african kingdom will do...)*Any* Spaghetti Western. e.g. The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, etc..Casablanca"Give Us This Day" a.k.a. "Christ in Concrete" (Suppressed UK film made by black-listed american talent to look like it was made in the US)Leon (French film...
  26. Terry St

    JAMES BOND ULTIMATE COLLECTION

    There were Sony gadgets in almost every other scene. They must have paid a fortune for all the product placement.
  27. Terry St

    American Made Speakers

    AV123 speakers are all manufactured in China unless I am grossly mistaken. "Made in China" definitely does not mean "Junk" the way it used to however.
  28. Terry St

    The Gods must be crazy

    Actually, if you do a little reading on the Kung you'll find that this entire movie does a pretty good job of misrepresenting almost everything about them. e.g. By the time the movie was shot the Kung were actually in fairly close contact with the outside world, wearing T-shirts, working for...
  29. Terry St

    Superior audio - not always... ?

    I have a Japan R2 release that is definitely a mono spread, but it is a couple years old. For this new mix you're talking about, are the foley issues still there? (i.e. Sounds added to scenes where they clearly stand out as inappropriate.)
  30. Terry St

    Superior audio - not always... ?

    Conan the Barbarian - non R1 5.1 mix This is a great example of a remix that was done almost completely wrong. It isn't available on any R1 disc that I'm aware of at present, but is on most non-R1 releases. Good stereo recordings of Basil Poledouris' wonderful score exist, but instead of using...
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