the Interceptor's general AUDIO thread

Don't hang your hopes too high. I bought those new around 1985, right before CD became major. The Saturn Hansa store in Hannover used to be the biggest record shop in Europe at the time. If you were looking for a certain record and it wasn't in the shelves, you could be sure they still had it in storage. And I mean every bloody record... in the world. It was at least ten times as big as the store in the picture above.

I spent complete days there. People today cannot imagine the excitement and sensual experience of browsing for vinyl records in such mega stores anymore. New ones, mind you, not secondhand! They all disappeared. Music has become such a cheap, throw-away product since then. It's a shame really. Even the biggest CD stores today only are tiny, poor substitutes for that.

Three of those Bond soundtracks are Japan prints, btw. The "For your Eyes only" soundtrack sounds awesome. I have no idea, if they have any collector's value but I won't ever sell them anyway.

And while we're at James Bond soundtracks: Rest in peace, John Barry :( He was my favourite movie music composer.
 
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finally did some real work and got my subwoofer to a useable state... will finish it off after my exams:
P1010294.jpg
 
So as I said I got the Marantz amp, also went and got a cheap Onkyo centre speaker and Yamaha sub. The sub is small (16cm cone 50W) but basically just fills out the bottom end and is all I need for such a small room (I worry about the neighbours below).

Had some trouble getting the computer to output 5.1 through HDMI but it's all working now.

Quick question; the high frequency filter on the sub is 130hz (claimed 30-200hz) so should I set the front and centre speakers to 130hz~ or a bit lower?
 
Very difficult to say, because that depends on many things. Generally, you want to set this as low as possible. The lower you set it however, the more bass will your satellite speakers get, which in turn will reduce their power capacity and thus the maximum volume. If this ain't a problem, set both equally to 100 Hz (or below if the speakers can cope with it). If it is a problem, stay with 130 Hz and set both to it.

There are ways to optimise this crossover point further, but it's a bit complicated.
 
MacGuffin said:
Don't hang your hopes too high. I bought those new around 1985, right before CD became major. The Saturn Hansa store in Hannover used to be the biggest record shop in Europe at the time. If you were looking for a certain record and it wasn't in the shelves, you could be sure they still had it in storage. And I mean every bloody record... in the world. It was at least ten times as big as the store in the picture above.

I spent complete days there. People today cannot imagine the excitement and sensual experience of browsing for vinyl records in such mega stores anymore. New ones, mind you, not secondhand! They all disappeared. Music has become such a cheap, throw-away product since then. It's a shame really. Even the biggest CD stores today only are tiny, poor substitutes for that.

Three of those Bond soundtracks are Japan prints, btw. The "For your Eyes only" soundtrack sounds awesome. I have no idea, if they have any collector's value but I won't ever sell them anyway.

And while we're at James Bond soundtracks: Rest in peace, John Barry :( He was my favourite movie music composer.
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Living Daylights was his best though
 
the Interceptor said:
Very difficult to say, because that depends on many things. Generally, you want to set this as low as possible. The lower you set it however, the more bass will your satellite speakers get, which in turn will reduce their power capacity and thus the maximum volume. If this ain't a problem, set both equally to 100 Hz (or below if the speakers can cope with it). If it is a problem, stay with 130 Hz and set both to it.

There are ways to optimise this crossover point further, but it's a bit complicated.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

The bookshelf speakers are 4ohm, the centre 6 and the amp rated for 6-8ohm speakers. I've been told that it won't matter much with a new amp if I don't push it too hard but will setting the crossover higher help reduce load on the amp? The front bookshelf specs I posted on the previous page, they're rated 50hz~. Usually front speakers are set at "full-range"?

I guess I should do listening tests to check what difference it makes.
 
hansvonaxion said:
Thanks.

The bookshelf speakers are 4ohm, the centre 6 and the amp rated for 6-8ohm speakers. I've been told that it won't matter much with a new amp if I don't push it too hard but will setting the crossover higher help reduce load on the amp?
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Technically yes, but not as much that it would matter in any way.

hansvonaxion said:
The front bookshelf specs I posted on the previous page, they're rated 50hz~. Usually front speakers are set at "full-range"?
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Again, that depends. If you used your front speakers as fullrange stereo speakers before and don't exceed the maximum volume you ever generated with them in your new setup, you can as well leave them on fullrange.

There is no correct way in general, this needs to be decided from case to case. I however found most people being happiest with letting every kind of front speaker which is big enough to survive on its own run on fullrange and set up the sub accordingly. Usually, this gives a more complete and rich sound.

hansvonaxion said:
I guess I should do listening tests to check what difference it makes.
Click to expand...
This is never a mistake, you can only learn from that.
 
Hidden_Hunter said:
Living Daylights was his best though
Click to expand...

Well, his music set the mood for all James Bond movies and "Living Daylights" came rather late. For me the one soundtrack, which defined all James Bond movies to me, was the soundtrack to "Thunderball" but I guess that's a matter of taste and personal experiences.

Some other really brilliant soundtracks I like from him:

- The Black Hole
- Out of Africa
- Dances with Wolves
 
Anybody know anything about the Lemur Input Device? Stumbled over that company's website and found it strange that after clearing their stock, they're closing down. So, was this something like a limited run device?
 
the Interceptor said:
There is no correct way in general, this needs to be decided from case to case. I however found most people being happiest with letting every kind of front speaker which is big enough to survive on its own run on fullrange and set up the sub accordingly. Usually, this gives a more complete and rich sound.
Click to expand...

I've set the fronts on full-range, the centre to 130~. The sound really starts to improve as volume increases, the fronts sound good on their own when listening to music - some TV/movies have really low(tone)/muffled dialogue (which led me to look at the crossover setting) but there's nothing I can do about it.
 
I am by no means an expert in audio, although I do enjoy listening to my music (I listen to music 90% of the time I'm awake and when not in school :p)

So I'd like to ask you guys with a bit more expertise for some advice,
I'm looking in the ?50 - ?100 pricerange for either a collapsible headset (like the Marshall Majors -just within pricerange) or a good set of earbuds.

I'm looking for good portability and good sound quality, will a headset in the same pricerange give me better quality sound than earbuds? I would certainly want to give up some of the portability of earbuds if a headset would deliver noticably superior sound.

Thanks in advance :)
 
So...I'm trying to decide whether or not to buy this sub:
Dali Concept
It's going to be paired up to most probably this amp/receiver:
Yamaha RX-V367
Accompanied by some wharfedale floorstanding speakers I have.

Now, the bass is pretty good on the wharfedales already, but it's sorta noisy and no where near as crisp as the Dali produces, also the Dali goes much deeper than my current speakers.
The reason I'm thinking about it is that I'm buying the amp and if I buy the sub too I can get a pretty good deal. $1200 for the pair ($270 off the total) whereas the best price I could get them individually would be just about $180 total saving (individually I could get the sub for about $850 and the amp for about $450 this counts quite a lot when you're on a pretty tight budget)

I'm thinking I'll expand and get some rear speakers further down the track (probably just some fairly cheap but nice bookshelf ones) to complete the 5.1 experience but I just wanted to get some of your opinions as to if it's indeed a good idea or not to get the sub.
 
Jens said:
So I'd like to ask you guys with a bit more expertise for some advice,
I'm looking in the ?50 - ?100 pricerange for either a collapsible headset (like the Marshall Majors -just within pricerange) or a good set of earbuds.

I'm looking for good portability and good sound quality, will a headset in the same pricerange give me better quality sound than earbuds? I would certainly want to give up some of the portability of earbuds if a headset would deliver noticably superior sound.

Thanks in advance :)
Click to expand...
If you can live with the feel of in-ear-phones, I'd claim they provide a better sound quality, especially in the bass department. To be honest though, I don't have that much experience as to which model to buy in this price range. I know that there is some useful device about good earbuds for this money in this thread though. If I remember correctly, there also is another thread about headphones in this forum somewhere. So the best advice I can give you right now is to look around - sorry! Not really helpful, I know... :|

camsinny said:
So...I'm trying to decide whether or not to buy this sub:
Dali Concept
It's going to be paired up to most probably this amp/receiver:
Yamaha RX-V367
Accompanied by some wharfedale floorstanding speakers I have.

Now, the bass is pretty good on the wharfedales already, but it's sorta noisy and no where near as crisp as the Dali produces, also the Dali goes much deeper than my current speakers.
The reason I'm thinking about it is that I'm buying the amp and if I buy the sub too I can get a pretty good deal. $1200 for the pair ($270 off the total) whereas the best price I could get them individually would be just about $180 total saving (individually I could get the sub for about $850 and the amp for about $450 this counts quite a lot when you're on a pretty tight budget)

I'm thinking I'll expand and get some rear speakers further down the track (probably just some fairly cheap but nice bookshelf ones) to complete the 5.1 experience but I just wanted to get some of your opinions as to if it's indeed a good idea or not to get the sub.
Click to expand...
There is nothing wrong with an additional sub even if you already have bigger speakers. And this is a good one too, nothing wrong with it.
 
Automotive headunit:

Ok I'm looking for a new headunit for my RX-7. I'd rather not fumble around with CD's and I have a nice little ipod touch. I already bought the speakers, but now I'm on the hunt for a nice headunit. The opening is a strange one, and not DIN-standard. Something like 7"x4 3/4" or roughly, but not exactly, 2.5DIN. Anyways, I figured I would get something that looks somewhat restrained (I hate most of those god awful looking, 'look at me' headunits) and through tireless searching, I found this guy:

http://www.amazon.com/760DI-Receiver-Internal-Docking-Station/dp/accessories/B001QXDSPY

Looks like it has red buttons, which would match my interior, and the simple shiny black face with flush buttons looks really clean. It's also fairly cheap. The only problem is that I cannot find a single review or picture of the headunit installed. Compounding the issues, it looks different from picture to picture. Any ideas? Also, does BOSS make fairly decent stuff?
 
An Alpine maybe? They look reasonably restrained and sound good.
 
finally finished. paintjob's not perfect, but the thing just sits under the table anyway. looks decent enough :D
P1010322.jpg
P1010324.jpg
 
I need some advice about how to connect a sub to a stereo amp.

My situation is this: I have an HT receiver that has a mono sub out and I have subwoofer that has a mono RCA input and speaker passthrough. I am planning on upgrading to a stereo amp. The problem is I don't know how I could connect the sub to the stereo amp. I rather not use the speaker passthrough, because a) the sub has those quick release connectors (like these: image) b) the sub is kind of in a different direction than the speakers, it would mean cables running back and forth. The amps I am looking at also don't have pre or sub outs.

I tried googling and somewhere I read that it could be possible to connect the sub to the secondary speaker outs in the amp and not passing the sound anywhere from the sub. Is that possible? I couldn't find any solid answers from google.
 
Your last paragraph is the solution, except that you hook up the subwoofer to the primary speaker outs of your stereo amplifier. Basically, you draw two pairs of loudspeaker cables from the outputs of your amp: one pair to your speakers like before, and one pair to the subwoofer. Simply connect them in parallel at your amp.

The sub will not draw any extra power from your stereo amp, it will merely re-generate the signal it needs from the amplifier output. People say that this is significantly worse in sound quality than using RCA, but it isn't actually. Using the pass-through may degrade sound quality, but since you're not doing that, you're fine.
 
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Ok, thanks for the info. I will try it out when I get an amp.
 
Need advice.

My Onkyo TX-DS484 is doing a really weird thing... It keeps turning off whenever I try to raise the volume beyond a certain point, or when the music is particularly heavy bass (I was listening to dubstep) it kicks down into standby. I have it resting right now, don't want to run the possibility of killing it.

Any ideas what would cause this?
 
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