I always do the "well, not today, but ..." thing.
This week I have been helping a "friend" with his home theater set up. It seems like I have been busy doing a lot of things.
About ten years ago, I built an Infinite Baffle subwoofer system into his attic. Worked great.
Recently, he has dropped major coin on an update to his theater system.
Eight current Dayton IB drivers for up top, new Atmos receiver, all new mains and surround speakers and a new screen. Basically, everything new.
He had the screen and the all the speakers installed and set up (he's using all Yamaha this time). He wanted help and guidance replacing his old cheapie Citation subwoofer drivers with the new hotrod Daytons he bought. He called me, since I was the original architect of his awesome sub system. I hemmed and hawed, but showed up the next day to see the NEW and gather info. All told, on and off, four visits now, I've been by.
There wasn't really much to talk about until last night.
I had built a truncated pyramid which would support eight 15'' drivers that fires downward into his room from the attic. Kind of an ideal way to do something like this. He had the space and dollars and cents and sense, but sort of cheaped out with those Citation drivers. He bought good solid power way back then, at my insistence, so no need to change any of that.
These new Daytons are awesome!
Still a little gimpy with my left arm, but with his help, we installed the eight new drivers, braced up and re-sealed the original pyramid and connected the additional bracing to the structure of his attic this time.
This turned the whole "vibratey parts" stuff into an almost immovable object that just pumps massive amounts of air, without any voice of its own. Just low frequency air pumps!
Everything is solid and can't move even under the kind of pressure these Daytons can create. It was a good install!
He fought me on this some. "Why do we have to cut another board? It's already got one!" I know and we will need another. You need three points of structure to make something solid! Fight, argue, act wimpy, huff and puff, THEN go saw some more boards, is how half the night went.
Third night, we were listening to some music. We had "previewed" several movies (probably a couple of dozen favorites, favorite parts), during all this once things were finished. He doesn't have a stereo. He uses his HT system for music, but I was not liking what I was hearing. Movies can be more forgiving to most folks. If you can understand the dialog and the action excites, it's good enough. Music is more critical and shows more shortcomings, almost instantly. I was not happy with what his big dollar system was doing and having a degree of trust for most Yamaha equipment, I wanted more.
He was happy. His subwoofer system would blow out a candle five feet from the output panel into his room. Lots of deep lows! But I was not happy with the way music sounded at all. I had asked several times how they set up his receiver and surrounds. His response was something like, "I don't know they were here all day." I asked over and over how they did it. Did they run the onboard DSP set up?
"It took all day!"
I asked if we could just turn everything off for a while and let me get into this Yamaha receiver a little more and see how to set it up right. I spent some time reading and learned how to do the set up. We ran the whole process again. Took some time to do it right.
His wife is out of town assisting an ailing loved one and he wanted to get all this messy stuff done while she was gone. So, last night I went back over at 3AM (he's a nightowl, too) and we did the DSP set up MY way! Still using the info I gained from reading all I could get from the manual. It takes more than one sampling to get it right. You're not just sending some sound over to a chair. You are charging a three dimensional space with acoustical energy, FFS. It takes more than one or two samplings to get it right.
Over an hour, but my buddy is almost freaking out. "The neighbors! It's the middle of the night!" I tried to assure him, no one will know what is happening. They'll think the birds are up early after the storms. Don't worry, we need to do this. "But you already did this!"
And I did it again, moving the set up mic again and again.
Anyway, enough about his discomfort.
This new Yamaha system is amazing and music is so clear and full of "air" and richness. NOW, he is happy. He just thought he was before all that noise I made. Now when playing the cannon blasts in "Master And Commander" his subwoofer system will blow out a candle from eight feet away from the outlet. Trust me, we did it fifty times and he laughed every time and wanted to move it a little farther away. It will blow out a candle from a distance. It also moves my beard around if I am too close.
God Damn Right!
But the fucking Atmos system sounds so amazing, now!! You are not just watching a movie, YOU ARE LIVING INSIDE IT! You are part of it!
I felt a little put upon at first, but actually getting to "do my favorite job, I love so much and make a difference" has turned out to be almost like a vacation from all the healing I have been having to do for myself.
I want one! But I have a family that is not even comfortable with standard THX, let alone what this guy has put together, with my help.
He gave me those old drivers, but I really have no use for them. I have so many, much better drivers to call upon if I need. Not sure what to do with them.
So there was my week. I got to hear what a modern, high dollar Dolby Atmos system, dialed in pretty close to right, can actually sound like.
We had these systems at BBY when I worked there, but I did not notice much of anything spectacular.
This sytem sounds amazing!!
Sorry, I keep forgetting I have to push a button to get spellcheck. I got used to old way and depended upon realtime correection. Still can not type, but I'm using both hands again, sort of.
"Is she gone yet?"