High Power Dude
Member
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2020
- Messages
- 21
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- 44
Hi, seven years ago on the 4th of July while playing a bomb of a movie (King Kong) in my townhouse basement home theater, the output of my two 15" woofers resulted in unexpected visitors on my deck knocking at my sliding doors. Initially, the lights shining through my curtains were thought to be flashes from fireworks, but it wasn't. It was the cops. My neighbor had called the cops on me to turn down my music when his call to me went unanswered. Being a law-abiding and neighbor friendly neighbor, I turned off the system and never let that happen again. Instead, I cashed out some stock, had the basement completely ripped out, and built a sound-proof room specifically designed for home theater. Extreme, yes, but I'm a Home Theater/Music Audiophile who treasures the excitement, thrill and joy of visceral high quality sound and astounding visuals (initially via Epson projector, and now via Ultra Short Throw 4k Laser Projector).
My evolution towards higher fidelity began almost 5 decades ago after my aunt introduced me to an engineer who placed a speaker in a wooden horn baffle that intrigued me. Years later, in the Marines, I strolled down Stereo Street in Tokyo -- the heart of 70-80s HiFi and was amazed. I purchased Kenwood separates, a high end Teac cassette deck, Pioneer straight tracking turntable and Bose 901 Series V speakers and shipped them home where they would sit for a few years until I left the service in 1985. Later, I learned the value of buying high end used or refurbished at massive discounts. That is the #1 Audiophile Hack I can pass on.
I wish to impart some of my journey to all of you, my music loving brothers and sisters in the hope that it may enhance your experience as it has mine. With the introduction of JBL's new AV receiver line, this caught my attention: "While room equalization can help to reduce problems with listening room acoustics, it is usually far better to try to solve these problems with the room directly. Proper loudspeaker positioning, acoustic wall treatments and moving the listening position away from walls should produce far better results overall. However it may be difficult to do this in a home environment, so Room EQ is your next best choice." And the Room EQ JBL chose is Dirac Live. The point of this is that all Room EQ places a light mask over the sound by processing the signal. This is why turning off Room EQ moves one closest to the actual sound. Hopefully, one day we can measure the qualitative difference in EQ over No EQ. In any event, for those seeking to build a real home theater constructed from scratch, I provide these tips as my contribution in thanks to Amir for his tireless work and his amazing website. When ASR tops Google product searches, that tells me the entire audio industry has not only taken notice but is on notice that value = quality + price. When critics attack ASR, I just laugh. Are they choosing to be ignorant? Most of us here are the type that seek to learn and, although hard, will discard our biases when faced with the truth and embrace the truth. So, to me, ASR is the "Burning Bush" of audio. We know that numbers are important and listening is important and that, although we may lean towards numbers, we also acknowledge that none of it matters except what you think of it. And nothing's wrong with that, as long as you don't use a snake oil reason. Lastly, a friend of mine who is blind once called me up to enthusiastically share how amazing his speakers sounded, when, get this ... another friend hooked up high end speaker cables. C'est la vie.
My evolution towards higher fidelity began almost 5 decades ago after my aunt introduced me to an engineer who placed a speaker in a wooden horn baffle that intrigued me. Years later, in the Marines, I strolled down Stereo Street in Tokyo -- the heart of 70-80s HiFi and was amazed. I purchased Kenwood separates, a high end Teac cassette deck, Pioneer straight tracking turntable and Bose 901 Series V speakers and shipped them home where they would sit for a few years until I left the service in 1985. Later, I learned the value of buying high end used or refurbished at massive discounts. That is the #1 Audiophile Hack I can pass on.
I wish to impart some of my journey to all of you, my music loving brothers and sisters in the hope that it may enhance your experience as it has mine. With the introduction of JBL's new AV receiver line, this caught my attention: "While room equalization can help to reduce problems with listening room acoustics, it is usually far better to try to solve these problems with the room directly. Proper loudspeaker positioning, acoustic wall treatments and moving the listening position away from walls should produce far better results overall. However it may be difficult to do this in a home environment, so Room EQ is your next best choice." And the Room EQ JBL chose is Dirac Live. The point of this is that all Room EQ places a light mask over the sound by processing the signal. This is why turning off Room EQ moves one closest to the actual sound. Hopefully, one day we can measure the qualitative difference in EQ over No EQ. In any event, for those seeking to build a real home theater constructed from scratch, I provide these tips as my contribution in thanks to Amir for his tireless work and his amazing website. When ASR tops Google product searches, that tells me the entire audio industry has not only taken notice but is on notice that value = quality + price. When critics attack ASR, I just laugh. Are they choosing to be ignorant? Most of us here are the type that seek to learn and, although hard, will discard our biases when faced with the truth and embrace the truth. So, to me, ASR is the "Burning Bush" of audio. We know that numbers are important and listening is important and that, although we may lean towards numbers, we also acknowledge that none of it matters except what you think of it. And nothing's wrong with that, as long as you don't use a snake oil reason. Lastly, a friend of mine who is blind once called me up to enthusiastically share how amazing his speakers sounded, when, get this ... another friend hooked up high end speaker cables. C'est la vie.
