Little help on a 20,000 Home Theater System please

[ImcLoud]

Im thinking wait for this baby.. cant be more than $5K
Panasonic 103" Plasma HDTV

 

[jostenmeat]

Im thinking wait for this baby.. cant be more than $5K
Panasonic 103" Plasma HDTV

Hm, seeing how the 85" is already ~$20k . . .

They've been making +100" for many years. If you're trying to keep it at 5K, maybe you should consider electricity costs, the last big one I checked out had at least 4 sets of fans on the back.

Maybe what you want is the 152". Here ya go, maybe you can talk them down to half a million:

Panasonic - TH152UX1W - 152 Plasma Display Authorized Channel Partners Only

 

[FirstReflection]

jostenmeat,

I really appreciate you going through my lengthy posts and adding some much needed correction, addition, options and alternatives!

As you pointed out, I put up a whole bunch of posts at once, and I tried to cover a lot of ground. I'm sure you can appreciate that I missed a few things and oversimplified at times.

It was a pretty big info dump, and I wanted to be comprehensive, but I didn't want to completely overwhelm the OP!

So in regards to the room treatments, I tried to keep it somewhat easy and just go with the basics of where to place panels and general sorts of guidelines. Your additional thoughts are great! But one nice thing about acoustic panels is that even if placement isn't optimal, just having them in the room is still a help It's all about reducing reflected energy so that the ratio of direct sound waves to reflected sound waves is higher.

Part of my placement suggestions went hand in hand with my speaker recommendations though. The Sierra Horizon speakers with the NrT tweeter have very tall vertical dispersion, so the ceiling and floor coverage ideas are a part of that. If speakers with more controlled vertical dispersion are chosen, you're right, the floor and ceiling coverage will be less of a concern.

I'm not sure what would account for our differences of opinion about the Focal speakers. Did you say the ones you heard were an older generation though? That could definitely have made a big difference. Focal has really improved that Aluminum/Magnesium tweeter. I think it might have come from their studio monitor efforts. The CMS studio monitors are very good for the price, and the current Chorus speakers in the Focal consumer line now use the same tweeter. I can't say for 100% sure, but I think if you heard the current Chorus models, they might sound markedly different from generations past. The old Chorus speakers weren't great. So I wouldn't be surprised at all about your opinion if it was the older models that you heard.

The cable/wire Bluejeans recommendation was definitely a case of me simply getting to the end of a 40,000 character post and rushing things a bit Anyone who's read my other posts around the forum knows how often I recommend monoprice to everyone! I did NOT intend to say it has to be Bluejeans or nothing! But I will say that I do like to support North American made products when the budget allows. And there's something kinda nice about using literally the same cable stock that's used in broadcast studios But yeah, I completely agree that other brands are just as good from a performance standpoint and make more sense for things like short connections from an AVR to an amp. I think you'll agree that BJC is still great quality stuff though! So I never regret recommending them highly! And they are quality through and through. Great people in that company, too.

As for the whole pixel and screen door effect thing:

completely agree that it's LCD that's the culprit in most cases. I do tend to start to see the pixel structure with 1080p DLP up around 40 degree or larger though, although I actually think it's the other artifacts in DLP reproduction that I notice more. The dithering being the biggest note. But then again, DLP artifacts are largely reduced with a 3-chip design, so I very well might be off base with that one.

The thing is, the JVCs are just so darn good! So I wasn't really even considering alternatives, to be honest. Again, just me rushing a bit because of how much I wrote. But I don't really see a reason to stray from the black level and contrast king Under $10,000, the JVCs just really can't be beat in those areas. But it DOES take a "bat cave" type of darkness to truly get the best out of them. So a brighter DLP might make more sense. I just think the JVCs are pretty spectacular though. And the new X55R/RS48 brings the JVC blacks and contrast, brighter output than last year (by all early accounts, anyway), AND pseudo-4K to the $5000 price point! So it was really a case of "why not?!" In my book. OP was showing a 12 foot diagonal screen from under 10 feet away in the original drawings. I'd take 4K for that sort of massive viewing angle. That's for sure

The screen material suggestion follows the projector suggestion, but it also has a lot to do with being acoustically transparent. Elite's original AcousticPro1080 material had fairly visible holes in the weave. The new AcousticPro1080P2 is quite a bit tighter. But the AcousticPro-4K looks almost completely smooth. You won't find smaller holes unless you go SmX. And their screens cost almost the entire budget on their own! Or at least about half of it

Perforated screens were already worse than the AcousticPro1080. So it really just came down to my feeling that the AcousticPro-4K material makes the most sense. It's affordable. It's wonderfully seamless and smooth. Again, it's a case of "why not"? It's out there. It's great. It fits the budget. So no real downside

Hope that all makes sense. I would surely hope it's evident that I'm only trying to help But I appreciate other folks making the necessary corrections and additions to what I can offer. Only human over here. I make mistakes.

Cheers!

 

[jostenmeat]

It's very apparent you're trying to help, a whole lot. No worries, and thank you.

The Focal speakers indeed were from half a decade ago, so I'm glad they've turned them around quite a bit, and I'll give them a new and fair chance if ever I run across them. Shortsighted of me not to consider that great strides can be made across some generations.

After my last post, I had to check out the pixels again just to see. The faint-light-blue-lined-grid that I used to see with my old solid screen is simply no longer discernible to me, I must assume it is due to the texture of the weave of my AT screen. Because my eyes don't have the grid as a guide for where I should try to focus, to see how much fill (or lack thereof) there really is, it honestly looks like it has 100% fill ratio from just a few inches away from the screen. I seriously cannot make out any pixels even when that close! I can however make out the weave where it's not dark. Just my little test's results, from this end.

Thanks for the response. We shall chat once again, another time.

 

[7beauties]

Speakers are most important to High Fidelity Audio

Tejay:

If you love music and good sound reproduction two thirds of your audio budget should be spent on speakers. Blind-folded you can't tell the difference between 100W amplifiers, but a change in speakers you will.
A recent Google query sent me to a review of TAD speakers costing $80K. I recall reading that Paris Hilton charges $1,500 per minute to appear at your birthday party, but what the heck, for 80 grand those speakers should be around years. But pardon me for seeming arrogant, a pair of 10" woofers in the same enclosure? Psycho-acoustically, people will prefer speakers that "color" the sound to their preference, but why so much bass? Worse, the 5-6" midrange driver incorporates a 1" dome tweeter. I don't believe in two diaphragms sharing the same magnet, for Christ's sakes! Here are some good pointers:

1). Most of our hearing falls in the middle range so this you have to get right. I would guess this to be from 1,000Hz to 10,000Hz, and for this nothing is better than electrostatic speakers.

2). Nothing is better for deep bass than a big cone woofer that's ported and tuned - yes, coloring, but ported so the diaphragm doesn't lose efficiency. A good woofer has to have good suspension, but I'd be wary of something too spongy - will rot over time.

3). Small and light diaphragm for the tweeter because the faster it is the more responsive and accurate it is; maybe Heil Air Motion Transformers.

4). Knock on the speaker enclosure. Does it feel solid? Very important because at high volume a cheap enclosure will rattle and buzz - NOT GOOD. Lift the enclosure. Does it have weight? If it's too light it'll crawl on the bookshelf at high volume - NOT GOOD.

I suggest an equalizer to tune your speakers to your room. Since you love movies you should also consider multiple (front and back) Bose speakers. My suggestions are subjective. Bring a favorite song or movie with you, something you know well, insist on cranking it up, and close your eyes. There are no better gurus than your own ears.

 

[monkish54]

But pardon me for seeming arrogant, a pair of 10" woofers in the same enclosure? Why so much bass?

The giant woofers do two things.

1. Excellent dynamics!!!

2. Since you have two very large, high power handling, 10" drivers reproducing the bottom end, compression and other very bad things caused from VCI change will be much smaller. This reduces audible distortion greatly!

http://www.stereophile.com/content/hot-stuff-loudspeaker-voice-coil-temperatures

Worse, the 5-6" midrange driver incorporates a 1" dome tweeter. I don't believe in two diaphragms sharing the same magnet, for Christ's sakes!

http://tad-labs.com/en/consumer/reference_one/img/cst_subtit01_01.jpg

If you look there, they don't share the same magnet. Regardless, coaxial drives (in this case called a concentric driver array) is a true point-source and will have excellent dispersion and great phase characteristics.

The measurements of the mini R1 are nothing short of AMAZING.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/tad-compact-reference-cr1-loudspeaker-measurements

While the TAD R1 is MUCH more expensive than the Salon 2 and KEF Blade with, maybe a 1% upgrade, it is the realization of the latest and greatest technology available to loudspeaker designers today.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I suggest an equalizer....you should also consider multiple (front and back) Bose speakers....

Bose what?

You suggest Bose speakers for a $20,000 HT system?

And how would you suggest using the equalizer?

 

[slipperybidness]

You see his status? "awaiting registration", mighty suspicious

 

[monkish54]

You see his status? "awaiting registration", mighty suspicious

He just said that Bose is great but the TAD R1 is terrible because the tweet/mid share the same magnet. :O :O

He just kicked Andrew J. so hard in the b@lls, that MINE hurt. xD

 

[ImcLoud]

Troll

 

[7beauties]

Speakers are still the most important part of a Hi-Fi stereo system

You see his status? "awaiting registration", mighty suspicious

Ouch. I don't know as much as you all do and I appreciate the criticism as it's educational to me. Forgive me my antipathy towards "concentric" drivers. Some speaker designers boasted that their staggered drivers delivered the lows, mids, and highs at the same time, in phase. I don't love Bose speakers, but I respect that professor Amar Bose taught at MIT, and he believed in reflected sound. But Nature doesn't fret one way or the other. The variety of ways to compress air to propagate sound waves is why speaker design is an art as well as science. In the end, Tejay will have to close his eyes, crank up the speakers to something he knows well, and let his ears be the judge. Because I know a Baby Face song so well, the background refrain "calling all cars...calling all cars..." is blurred on a CD. Though my eyes love what digital has done for TV enough to forgive its artifacts, my ears woe the end of vinyl. Thank you for your responses.

 

[brianedm]

Ouch. I don't know as much as you all do and I appreciate the criticism as it's educational to me. Forgive me my antipathy towards "concentric" drivers. Some speaker designers boasted that their staggered drivers delivered the lows, mids, and highs at the same time, in phase. I don't love Bose speakers, but I respect that professor Amar Bose taught at MIT, and he believed in reflected sound. But Nature doesn't fret one way or the other. The variety of ways to compress air to propagate sound waves is why speaker design is an art as well as science. In the end, Tejay will have to close his eyes, crank up the speakers to something he knows well, and let his ears be the judge. Because I know a Baby Face song so well, the background refrain "calling all cars...calling all cars..." is blurred on a CD. Though my eyes love what digital has done for TV enough to forgive its artifacts, my ears woe the end of vinyl. Thank you for your responses.

Well at least you're a good sport. You'll find Bose get's no love around here. A lot of marketing hype and overpriced products. Sure, they sound alright, but you can get better sound at half the price.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

He just said that Bose is great but the TAD R1 is terrible because the tweet/mid share the same magnet. :O :O

He just kicked Andrew J. so hard in the b@lls, that MINE hurt. xD

LOL.

I have a Bose set in my daughter's closet I bought about 20 years ago when I didn't know any better than the mass market. I offered the Bose to my uncle for FREE. He turned it down.

I might have to donate them to Salvation Army.

And in case you are wondering, my 2 daughters will probably only have speakers like Revel, KEF, TAD, B&W, etc, never Bose - especially for their $20,000 system.

 

[JerryLove]

Forgive me my antipathy towards "concentric" drivers. Some speaker designers boasted that their staggered drivers delivered the lows, mids, and highs at the same time, in phase.

Yep. I have a pair of GMA Europa's sitting in my front room with exactly that boast.

But you seem to have confused an apple with an orange. The argument in favor of concentric drivers (and I also had a pair of Kef Q1's which I though were beautiful but sold because I didn't like the sound); is that the location from which the sound emanates is the same, and that dispersion is the same (or transitions more gradually).

Imagine the extreme counter-example. A two-driver speaker where the drivers are 10ft apart. That wouldn't mesh well would it? How about where The tweet is on the front and the mid on the back? Similar problem.

*that* is what concentric attempts to address.

I don't love Bose speakers, but I respect that professor Amar Bose taught at MIT, and he believed in reflected sound.

I think we all respect MIT, and I think we all believe in reflected sound. (indeed: I remember long ago being the only devil's advocate opposing it... got lots of red chicklets)

But the actual gear his company produces range from "OK but massively overpriced" (wave radio) to "complete junk and overpriced" (consumer speaker line)

Though my eyes love what digital has done for TV enough to forgive its artifacts, my ears woe the end of vinyl. Thank you for your responses.

That is not digital's fault. That is the fault of overuse of bad compression. You can also destroy analog via compression and signal degredation (compare an old LaserDisc (digital storage) to any broadcast, tape, or VHS tape you like.)

 

[7beauties]

Digital signal processing

Jerry, you're right about digital and compression. I can't explain 4:2:2, but it's accepted as broadcast quality. The 4 is "Y," or luminance, and the 2:2 is the reduced chroma that won't be missed by the human eye. This compromise makes possible storing video information more compactly. My fondness for digital videotape is that it meant less work for me when I QCed thousands of Animal Planet shows, for which I used a waveform and vectorscope. Not only was the trace pinpoint sharp, but I could keep the deck in preset and found color bars spot on. Digital isn't sticky like analog which is impinged upon by extraneous RF noise. Signal to noise ratio still exists in digital, but I can't detect noise in digital. The ferrous oxide on videotape emulsion over time is always seeking equilibrium - degaussing itself - and that's why old analog videotape footage is so noticeably degraded. However jagged ones and zeroes become, that's all the heads of a Digi-Beta deck needs to show a still sharp picture after many years. Fan of digital? In TV a resounding yes. Imagine -not - pictures from the Mars Rover as an analog RF? But to me MP3 is an abomination in audio. My audio sweetener friends (in TV we have label stickers "sweetened" which means the audio was fully finished) tell me about sampling rates north of 96Khz, and higher bit rates, but...(sigh), I want to listen to popular music at high quality on a CD. Thank you all for indulging me because you're obviously much more knowledgeable than I am. I'm humble and grateful.

 

[JerryLove]

But to me MP3 is an abomination in audio. My audio sweetener friends (in TV we have label stickers "sweetened" which means the audio was fully finished) tell me about sampling rates north of 96Khz, and higher bit rates, but...(sigh), I want to listen to popular music at high quality on a CD.

I think this is another apple-vs-orange problem.

The sampling rate on a CD is 44khz. It's not entirely clear that a higher sampling rate is at all useful. Certainly: it's not useful to compress a WAV using a sampling rate higher than that of the WAV itself.

MP3 has a lot of differing amounts of loss. Some levels are clearly discernible (to downright unpleasant); others routinely pass blind-comparison testing with their original WAVs.

If you want to be safe: run lossless compression instead (FLAC for example). There's no chance of degradation as compared to the original wave.

 

[Bryceo]

Martinlogan my friend!! Marants receiver and an emotive power amp

 

[7beauties]

Thank you for the corrections and your patience

I wanted to thank you all for your remarks in the "Newbies" forum but I don't have privileges to do so. I'm grateful to Jerry for his advice. I'm grateful to you all. I was trying to enter a Fraternity of sorts, and though I found myself in Harvard and in over my head, you have all indulged and corrected me politely. That's amazing.