HTPC Golden Age? Reducing Component Count - Page 4

Well, I don't believe I've ever read a basic thread about room acoustics and sound treatments as it usually always devolves into a long drawn out affair. That said, head over to the Dedicated Theaters Forum and read around over there.

Further, once you get a quick primer on some of the discussions, feel free to ask there or in the General HT Room forum as that is mostly where the room treatment gurus hang out.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forum...aysprune=&f=19

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forum...sprune=30&f=15

That said, as you can see in the picture below, I made some DIY acoustic panels out of 2 thick OC 703 insulation and hung them at the first reflection points for the basement TV and it did make a noticeable difference.




-Suntan

I like how you call that your "basement TV". Master of the understatement.

The point everyone is trying to get you to understand is that when sampled at a high enough rate, D/A converters have no sonic limitations. Basic calculus tells us that sampling at twice the highest desired frequency will give us all audio information up to that frequency. Since even cheap D/A converters now can sample at up to 192KHz, I think the human hearable audio will be preserved. Bit depth is another field, but 24-bit recordings give 16.7 million possible ampltiude values. Can the human ear pick up more differences? It's accepted that the human ear can hear between 0 and 130 dB (SPL), and that a 1dB step is the smallest increment the ear can consciously differentiate. Basically 130 steps versus 16.7 million possible values. I think that's plenty.

Does analog music sound better? Yes, in most cases. But it is not due to the digital to analog conversions that happen along the way with digital music. It's the horrendous modern mixing and mastering practices that suck the dynamic range out of music ("Loudness War").

What can I say?

(Although in reality, my basement is pretty tame compared to a lot of them found in the dedicated theaters forum.)

One thing I will comment, jumping from the limitations imposed by using a livingroom with a TV measured in inches, to a dedicated room with a TV measured in feet gives you an appreciation for the things that *really* make an impressionable difference to the media viewing experience.

Let's just say I don't waste too much time worrying about the advertised sampling frequencies of this component vs that component. ...or the number of wall warts plugged in over in the mechanical room.

-Suntan

I built my one and only dedicated HTPC last week. I've experimented with temporary setups in the past.

It is my only source component now.

I use it as a HDTV DVR,Bluray/DVD player, and a Netflix/InternetTV client. I'm using Windows 7 Media Center with Total Media center 3 as my only add-on.

I set this up for my live in elderly father, who is very technology challenged. Now it's no longer required to switch inputs on the tv and the receiver. It now just works ,which my father really appreciates and makes my life easier as well. No more calls at work for "tech help".

So far I'm pleased at how easy Windows 7 made it happen!

Never heard of a disturbed network..........

Is it the kind that is always pissed at you or something?

Hey, I'm running the same case and tuner card. I must say you have good taste. I only run one of the case fans and its more than enough, as soon as I get my zacate mobo/cpu I'm guessing I wont need to run any of the case fans. My power source sucks air from beneath the case and shoots it out the back so it doesnt move any air inside the case at all. I agree the case fans run at to high an rpm.

Holly crap, now thats a home theater. I might be buying a townhouse that so far only has the basement pored. If I do it I will be able to run all of the home theater wiring in the walls before the sheet rock goes up. It would be a cool opportunity for in wall speakers and a home theater setup with no visible wires or protruding speakers anywhere. Plus I can run gigabyte per second ethernet cable from the router to the computer room and the HTPC. Being a townhouse the room is small enough to where I cant pull off what you did though, very cool. One thing with a smaller room is that you sit closer to the TV so you can get aways with a smaller tv and have the same effect, the downside is I wont be able to seat many people in the room.

P.S. is that a false ceiling?

The light going into a video camera and the light coming out of the TV is analog.

They don't degrade sound quality. See my post #87.

But conversion to and from digital 16/44 brings no audible change. So if there is a "startling increase in sonic realism" it must be from some other source.

Maybe there is a new approach to amplifiers here. It isn't explained in your link as I can see, but maybe it relates to what Sony came out with with a few years ago, a type of class D amplifier that combined DAC and poweramp functions, bypassing a line level signal. (Something like conversion to a 1-bit signal, and switching at that rate. It was related to its SACD format.) The amplifiers that it produced were OK and better than many but worse than good modern class D amps that use line level signals (line level input to power output); these Sony amplifiers had rather high output impedance (it should be close to zero).

In any case amps shouldn't be outside the speaker, they should be inside the speaker after a line level or digital crossover. So all of these approaches to amp design are really second best. (Although if you really wanted to, you could build a speaker with a digital input, a digital crossover, followed by this "power-level dac" type of amplifer. It would be rather pointless though.)

Thanks.My build thread is here if you want to see more: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1183349

If you do go for a HT in the basement of a townhome, take solace that you are not the first person who had plans to do big things with a small space. Have a look at this thread for a good listing of inspiration: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...0#post13163330

Have a look around in the dedicated theaters forum if you're thinking about building a true "home theater" to put with that "HT"PC. As I said, mine is actually quite tame compared to a lot of others shown over there.

Lastly, yes they are drop ceiling tiles available online at ceilume, but they are mounted flush to the rafters with ceilinglink grids.

Anyway, not to get too far OT. I believe the conversation was talking about the merits of digital-this and wall-wart count that...

-Suntan

Depends on the "use". It would be really difficult for me to place all 7 of my QAM tuners inside the PC case so 4 of them are from two dual HDHRs. No tuner-sharing/tuner-not-available issues here.

Technically, at the base level, everything is digital. Electrons only exist in discrete energy levels..they literally vanish from point A and arrive at point B instantaneously, not existing at the energy levels between those two points.

We know that energy is quantized. We are very sure gravity is quantized. We are starting to accept that time is quanitzed.


But all of this is, realistically, not an issue.

I too am in the process of streamlining. I've made the step and cut the cable. No more paying Dish $100 month for the 5-7 channels we actually watch. HUZZAH!

Bad side. I cut the cable before I had a complete solution to provide content to the Living room. Necessity is the great motivator. I've also been swept up in cutting clutter, remotes and components.

Question though. I currently run the Xbox, Wii, WDLive (and formerly Dish 622) into an Onkyo 702 which then feeds the audio to my Rotel 1095 via the pre-outs in the 702.

Now that the IR receiver in the Onkyo has died and my recent scramble to provide a total solution I'm at a crossroads of sorts. I was going to simply jump the Boxee Box bandwagon but now I'm considering the HTPC route. And if I do that could I realistically cut out my Onkyo and feed the Rotel from the HTPC?

See.. Now this has got the wheels turning.. I'd be spending $200 on the Boxee Box and then another $70 or so for the add on IR receiver to the Onkyo to try to get it working again. (If that's even the issue).. So do I merely add another $100 or so and build up a cheaper HTPC? If I could feed the Rotel with no loss in quality that may be the big push in the HTPC favor..

OOOoOOOOoooo.. ideas ideas ideas..

OK, I remember reading about this a long time ago. See:
http://www.audioholics.com/education...s-d-amplifiers
The author has designed some of the best class-d amplifiers and published papers on it.
This approach is several years old, has been done by several companies, and is the wrong approach to Class D amps.

On why active speakers with active crossovers are better than passive speakers with passive crossovers:
http://sound.westhost.com/biamp-vs-passive.htm

Talk about reducing component count, I went from having a standalone BD player, DVD recorder (with 2 ch DVD-A), CD changer, 360, PS3, Uverse box, needing a seperate HDMI switch, to now having my HTPC do all of that (well not the DVD-A part but eh I'm not really concerned about it at the moment). I play games on my pc, watch movies on my pc, listen to music on my pc, heck in fact there's not much my old setup could do that my new 1 component system can't do (and better). I didn't go with a standard HTPC case as I like the tower look but I'm a total convert and won't ever go back to standalone equipment anymore.

Don't forget when you cut the cable you don't have to stream everything. You can go with an antenna on the roof and get a super high quality HD signal for network channels. I do this and use hulu for cable stuff.

One thing to remember is that our android phones get their maps from the cell towers. I drive a truck and would never drop my garmin for my android phones gps, as its just not as good for gps. That being said I love how you can look something up in the yellow page app, and just click on navigate from there. I use my phone for gps when I'm not in the truck, its fine for casual use.

How's this for reduced components. I'm getting ready to buy a townhouse with a room that I'm going to dedicate to home theater. I will be using my htpc as a tuner, dvr, dvd/bray player, and will be using my android phone for the remote. There will be no switching back in forth between video inputs as the htpc will be the only component. Of coarse I will still need a audio receiver to process, distribute, and amp the audio, but there is no way around that unless you go for a sound bar.

I'm not as fancy or advance as some of you guys. But I did get take out the dedicated DVD, CD, VCR players, and cable box. Since I do like console gaming, I didn't take those out. I haven't totally cut cable yet--internet and limited basic cable. I have the HTPC, component/toslink switch (I have a ten year old 55" RP HDTV with only one HD component input), Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, and power conditioner, and external HDD attached to the HTPC or PS3, and receiver.

I haven't put the Blu Ray in the HTPC because it's a Mini, and I prefer to have it internal and very limited slot loading drives. With the PS3 having blu ray, it's not a priority. At some point, I will add NAS (maybe something like a drobo FS because I don't really feeling like building one and don't have an old PC to fiddle and learn FreeNAS OS). I never had a PVR; I did use Windows XP MCE here and there. Streaming is so easy and getting better. I do have HDHR. I have no cable running into the HDTV, but rabbits ears attached for the OTA HD signals. I do use the HDHR quickTV to watch live local broadcasts when I can't get a signal.

I do most gaming on the consoles so I prefer to a controller to the mouse and keyboard. I got tired of having to fiddle drivers and the constant hardware changes for PCs. Although, I do use OnLive service which is pretty impressive technology.

I still have a bunch of remotes. I have remotes for the 360, PS3, HDTV, universal (Pronto 2000), Logitech DiNovo Mini.

Like anything else, the usefulness and benefits derived is what you make of it. For me, I got tired of the lack of value of cable tv from my use. My challenge was getting sports. Through VPNs and EPSN3, I'm a happy camper.

Until we can download the phone gps software to our phone, it will never be completely dependable. I can use my sprint nav most of the time, but I keep my garmin on me when I business travel because I can't depend onsignal/network/sprint nav server issues.

If the gps companies were thinking ahead, they'd program there gps software for android/iphone as a sd app and sell it.

The problem they face is that Google is pretty much willing to give people all of that for free...

Pay TomTom $40 a quarter for updated maps < Google Maps loading updated maps everytimg I start it.

-Suntan