Philip Hamm
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Jan 23, 1999
- Messages
- 6,874
Of all the luck. The reason that I like to have my home theater meets at my house in the wintertime is that usually it's cold outside and it's a good time to sit inside during a weekend day. How was I to know that we'd be greeted with unseasonably warm weather for the day with bright sunshine and nice warm temps! Heck, if I wasn't having the meet I would have taken the bike out for a ride. Alas, it was not to be. Instead, I had the pleasure of hosting a great group of home theater enthusiasts to a meet at my house.
Someone had mentioned that today there was also an AVS meet in Maryland that they were interested in attending. If anyone was interested in that meet, they wouldn't want to come to my house! My video display system is about as far from “state-of-the-art” as you can get! A six year old NTSC rear projector doesn't exactly impress on the video front. But it does well enough.
First of all, I want to send thanks out to the forum friends and sponsors who helped out with the meet. Particularly Tom and Ron at SVS for the T-shirts and Peter Staddon of Fox for the Fox demo DVDs, which everyone will enjoy.
Unfortunately I didn't have time to set up the coax cable generously lent by Mark Austin for the meet. I picked it up at the post office in the morning, but I was busy hosting I didn't have time to get to the back and plug it in. I'll evaluate it over then next couple weeks and return it. Thanks!
Bruce Norton was the first to show up as expected with his dual SVS subs. These are very early models, unpowered, and he brought a stereo Fidek amp along with him. Thanks to the ICBM we set these two behemoths up in stereo, one taking the place of my little Definitive sub and the other set up in the other corner of the room under my “Army Of Darkness” poster. I pulled out the old Video Essentials LaserDisc and calibrated them, they were just two or three dBs higher than the L/R/C so I just left the volume unchanged.
The meet started out with a screening of the first 20 or so minutes of the Peter Gabriel “Secret World” LaserDisc. As we enjoyed the beautiful music (and grainy noisy LD picture) more and more folks funneled in. Tony Levin's bass really sounded nice through the SVS subs. Very musical. We then demoed some multichannel music for a good while, both from DVD-Audio discs (which we compared with the DD version), and DTS multichannel discs. Multichannel music as always got a very mixed response, but of course, everything sounded pretty good.
Usually at my meets we'll watch a movie that's not out on DVD. After all, it's really the biggest thing I have to offer. You're certainly not going to get wowed by the video at my house, though the sound's pretty good in its own right, particlularly with two SVS subs leading the way! In the past we watched “Toy Story” long before the DVD release, and “Fear of a Black Hat” which is still not on DVD. This time though we just demoed stuff. Featured were:
* Blue Man Group DVD-Audio – I was very impressed with this disc, I was not aware of what Blue Man Group sounded like before hearing this, but I really like it.
* Raiders of the Lost Arc – opening scene. Fantastic stuff!
* Fox Demo Disc – we watched the demo scenes and the entertaining “Ice Age” trailer. A big hit!
* Mission: Impossible – the train sequence. Ridiculously over-the-top with fantastic LD DD audio.
* The Crow: DTS LaserDisc – a couple of scenes. another very impressive audio presentation.
* Return of the Jedi: Side 5 of the CAV Definitive Collection pressing. Always fun.
* BMW Films – we watched 'em all from the great DVD – thanks Bruce for bringing the copy!
* Cannonball Adderly: Something Else 96/24 DVD-Video. As a part of the DVD-Audio demo – after all it's the same spec. This disc sounds so good it's like Miles is standing there playing in my living room.
But most of all it was great just to meet with and put faces behind some of the fine folks who frequent the HTF. Good discussion and fun with some nice gear (gotta love those SVS subs). Bruce took some photos with his digital camera that I hope to have on line some time soon. I hope everyone enjoys those CDs of my old band GUM! They have cool multimedia content as well as some good music (if I do say so myself).
I hope to attend the next meet instead of hosting it, but hosting this kind of thing really is a lot of fun. My room can comfortably seat 8 so it's a natural place for this kind of gathering. Hope to see you all at the next meet!
Someone had mentioned that today there was also an AVS meet in Maryland that they were interested in attending. If anyone was interested in that meet, they wouldn't want to come to my house! My video display system is about as far from “state-of-the-art” as you can get! A six year old NTSC rear projector doesn't exactly impress on the video front. But it does well enough.
First of all, I want to send thanks out to the forum friends and sponsors who helped out with the meet. Particularly Tom and Ron at SVS for the T-shirts and Peter Staddon of Fox for the Fox demo DVDs, which everyone will enjoy.
Unfortunately I didn't have time to set up the coax cable generously lent by Mark Austin for the meet. I picked it up at the post office in the morning, but I was busy hosting I didn't have time to get to the back and plug it in. I'll evaluate it over then next couple weeks and return it. Thanks!
Bruce Norton was the first to show up as expected with his dual SVS subs. These are very early models, unpowered, and he brought a stereo Fidek amp along with him. Thanks to the ICBM we set these two behemoths up in stereo, one taking the place of my little Definitive sub and the other set up in the other corner of the room under my “Army Of Darkness” poster. I pulled out the old Video Essentials LaserDisc and calibrated them, they were just two or three dBs higher than the L/R/C so I just left the volume unchanged.
The meet started out with a screening of the first 20 or so minutes of the Peter Gabriel “Secret World” LaserDisc. As we enjoyed the beautiful music (and grainy noisy LD picture) more and more folks funneled in. Tony Levin's bass really sounded nice through the SVS subs. Very musical. We then demoed some multichannel music for a good while, both from DVD-Audio discs (which we compared with the DD version), and DTS multichannel discs. Multichannel music as always got a very mixed response, but of course, everything sounded pretty good.
Usually at my meets we'll watch a movie that's not out on DVD. After all, it's really the biggest thing I have to offer. You're certainly not going to get wowed by the video at my house, though the sound's pretty good in its own right, particlularly with two SVS subs leading the way! In the past we watched “Toy Story” long before the DVD release, and “Fear of a Black Hat” which is still not on DVD. This time though we just demoed stuff. Featured were:
* Blue Man Group DVD-Audio – I was very impressed with this disc, I was not aware of what Blue Man Group sounded like before hearing this, but I really like it.
* Raiders of the Lost Arc – opening scene. Fantastic stuff!
* Fox Demo Disc – we watched the demo scenes and the entertaining “Ice Age” trailer. A big hit!
* Mission: Impossible – the train sequence. Ridiculously over-the-top with fantastic LD DD audio.
* The Crow: DTS LaserDisc – a couple of scenes. another very impressive audio presentation.
* Return of the Jedi: Side 5 of the CAV Definitive Collection pressing. Always fun.
* BMW Films – we watched 'em all from the great DVD – thanks Bruce for bringing the copy!
* Cannonball Adderly: Something Else 96/24 DVD-Video. As a part of the DVD-Audio demo – after all it's the same spec. This disc sounds so good it's like Miles is standing there playing in my living room.
But most of all it was great just to meet with and put faces behind some of the fine folks who frequent the HTF. Good discussion and fun with some nice gear (gotta love those SVS subs). Bruce took some photos with his digital camera that I hope to have on line some time soon. I hope everyone enjoys those CDs of my old band GUM! They have cool multimedia content as well as some good music (if I do say so myself).
I hope to attend the next meet instead of hosting it, but hosting this kind of thing really is a lot of fun. My room can comfortably seat 8 so it's a natural place for this kind of gathering. Hope to see you all at the next meet!
