starting out fresh and again and out after a lot of expenditures in audio. decided to go back to ht. i rediscovered what made ht the hobby we all love.
the magic of a movie is that it captures the emotion, stirs the mind and just simply amazes you.. for 2 hours, more or less (4 if you go for the lotr extended editions), you are usually captivated by the idea of the script writer, the director and of course, the producer filled, with beautiful people (actresses and actors) all who have gone through gruelling days of hard work, stunts, months of preparation and memorization, sound mixing which is another several months of preparation, special effects, etc.
we like to capture this "performance" in as much glory as we can... by spending as much as we can on the gear - audio - video. some people have this down to an art.. some people spend too much :p. some people get down to the technicals and try to build a system in an unorthodox way but.. hey maybe the results are actually quite amazing. of course after, or even before, we go to the setup we go through the process of preparing the room.. sometimes we build rooms to house our equipment, or in some special cases, build houses that will give us a better room that in the end will gives us years of enjoyment (it would be nice to take this into decades but that's just looking too far ahead
.). some of us just take whatever's available and make it into some thing special
.
this is my project.. to build an ht around my DRC software (audiolense) - it is actually quite ahead of what we have in our receivers right now (it cost quite a lot.. the price of a receiver), with a receiver just doing channel leveling and ampification and source switching duty, a decent 5.1 setup (working on that).
the brain of my system - my htpc. it's a 2 year old workhorse. lovingly put together and gone through so many iterations - i7, i3, i5, 5850, 6850, 6570, modded soundcards - x-meridian, xonar, x-fi xtreme audio. (these soundcards and the way i set them up sound, to me, quite a bit better, than a lot of cd players i've heard out there.. or maybe the room just sounds great.. for more info - audioasylum's pc audio section is a warehouse of information).
the amp - just a denon 2307 that the well esteemed electrohaus_lp suggested to me.
the speakers - just a bunch of stuff i put together. most of them on "loan"
the room - a spare 25 sq.m. room in our house that i just rescued from being a stockroom of papers and other miscellaneous stuff. it is a square room with standing waves that cause a huge null in the bass between 80 and 120 hz. only a sub can fill that but subs are only good with a crossover at 80hz. thecableco.com suggested i get their cathedral wall panels - these fix standing waves. only 600$ for a set of 4.
as you can see, it is a work in progress..
problems - "spider sense". a ringing in the ear caused by too much high frequency from another setup. this is problematic and helpful in choosing speakers. normally i'd pick any speaker. now i have to find a speaker that is relatively easy on the ears, non fatiguing, non harsh.. just smooth but of course, detail, good tone, and work well in 2 channel as well as 2.1.
others - etc. the usual.
good luck to me.
best,
les
