BrolicBeast's Living Room Theater - Page 54

Mike,

While I didn't know Focal was so prominent in the car audio shows, from my research and talks with car audiophiles, they would be the only choice worthy of upgrading to. I have to admit they sounded very impressive when I demo'd them. Since I was given a brand new set of Bostons, I had no intention of buying anything from Focal at the time.

In terms of upgrade advice, I guess it really depends how much you drive. Me personally, I drive purely for leisure, so a fancy audio system would not typically be a need. However, given that I am an audiophile outside of my car, I opted to put first class components throughout and be done with it.

I will say that the longer you hold out, the more upgraditis builds up with the little doubts you ask yourself about performance over cheaping out. With that said, I noticed a drastic improvement in sound quality over a typical stock system. The most noticeable difference was the improvement in clarity and almost no distortion to be found with playback.

Interesting FYI - CD players are already starting to be phased out. Given that there are no car stereos that play FLAC or any other lossless format natively, I opted to have a CD player in my stereo.

Thanks for taking the time to test this out Craig. I'm now scratching my head, wondering if different players affect the LPCM levels differently. I guess it is possible, just not something I've ever heard of until now.

The Be series car speakers are just crazy expensive. But the K2 and Perfomance line are much more afordable. I would need to see what stock sounds like and see what upgraded system they would offer. But let's get back to Matt's fantastic room.

Sounds like you guys had a great time and that is what its all about fun and being around others who enjoy this hobby so much.

The legacy train will pulling into the station it sounds real soon lol!!!

Life of Pi might actually be worth purchasing in 3D. I am looking forward to the reviews on that disc.

Brolic,

Will you be installing a 7.2, 9.2, or 11.2? I have speakers enough to do 9.2, but would like to see what all the fuss is about 11.2. I am really surveying my theater space, and am trying to see how to squeeze in 2 more speakers that will actually provide some sonic benefit. I am not sure at this point if I will add them or not.

Coolness. I know it will be work, but once I get everything on the server and have Jriver setup, I am sure I will very happy too. I know you can't wait for your speakers either. That will be a very nice upgrade.

My apology for not reading every post, but did you settle on getting new Legacy speakers? I think that is what I am reading above but not sure I got the context right. If so, I have heard nothing but good things.

I see you haven't fully recovered from your Viking Ax festival in Chicago

Sounds like a fantastic upgrade. I have never heard Legacy speakers in person but I know they have a stellar reputation and look fantastic to boot. I am sure you will be thrilled. And, I do love Game of Thrones so "House Frohlich" approves of your upgrade and thinks it will make your "manor" even more splendid than it already is

Let the grinning begin . . .

Brolic,

Not sure if this has been asked before, but what were your thoughts on 2-channel playback of the Oppo 105 analog vs the Integra using HDMI with Audyssey? Did you experiment with HDMI without Audyssey as well?
Edited by SergeantYnot - 2/28/13 at 1:16pm

I would like to add to that question.....105 vs your Cambridge dac?

Brolic,

This is very interesting, and not too surprising at the same time either. When I had the Oppo 95, I definitely preferred the bass management of my Pioneer with MCACC over the Oppo. However, there was no contest in 2 channel playback as I easily preferred the Oppo. I chalk this up to a lower quality DAC in my Pioneer. Since your Integra is one of the few processors to have a Burr Brown 32bit DAC, I'm guessing this is pretty comparable to the Sabre in your 105.

I'm getting ready to order an Oppo in the next couple weeks to go with the new Denon 4520 (one of the other few processors out there to have a 32bit BB DAC). Given that I'm probably going to use Audyssey full-time, I will most likely go for the 103.

Hey Matt
Been doing a bit of research on video calibration and one company that has caught my eye is chromapure. They do auto calibration packages for the dvdo duo and the lumagen mini radiance. It's just as easy as plug and play, I saw the demo and it does it all for you. Though the lumagen is the better product due to there advance auto calibration package which offers more. While it does its thing you sit back, have a beer and enjoy. I'm getting one hopefully next month, the price is $699 for my version and it saves me paying a video calibrator $650 every time I use him.

I thought I'd share as I knew you were looking at doing your own too. Looking forward to it every 100 hours I can calibrate it to make it spot on.

So it worked really well the auto calibration? The only issue im going to have is the length of USB to RS232 as my DVDO is in the next room behind me. Will a USB extension cause any problems? Need to be 100% before I buy.

Another way could be getting a RS232 extension ( null cable), but will look into an active extension USB, thanks for the tip. How long is your extended Active USB? Im hoping to get one around 10m.

Some people just like to live dangerously.

Thanks for your help.

Will have a look which will work best.

I use a different auto cal program from SpectraCal and my Lumagen XD. While it does automate a lot of the work, setting brightness, contrast and sharpness is performed by the end user, with patterns provided by the SpectrCal software.

Does ChromaPure set those items totally and completely automatically??? If so, I might consider switching.!

Brolic,

This is very much noticed on my projector as well. I have 3 global video modes that I can set. Mode 1 I have set for movies. Mode 2 has brightness boosted for 3D movies, and mode 3 is for gaming. Mode 3 is on maximum brightness, with some color tweaking since games can be unforgiving with the huge palette of colors.

On that note, I have to admit I was not that blown away with Crysis 3. Perhaps this was because it was a demo on my Xbox. Was Crysis played on your PC or console? It would be a worthwhile test to see how the console demo differs from the PC version.