dblue

Howdy, long time no post. I just thought I'd pass along some helpful info regarding the Audyssey system. I bought an AVR 2808Ci a few months ago (Denon) and was excited to set up with the Audyssey system I'd been reading so much about. I have an odd room, and have some serious bass dips that I have been unable to correct. So, I ran through the instructions, and set it up. I placed the mic in 8 positions around the couch. The first thing I noticed was that my low end problems were solved! I now had a nice, even bass response. It also smoothed out the midrange quite well...and my imaging was better than ever. BUT, I noticed that the highs seemed to be out of control, even more so with stereo listening. Looking at the EQ curves it generated, I could see why. It boosted some pretty harsh frequencies pretty high. I messed with it for a while, to no avail. Then I started reading some forum posts made by Audyssey engineers. They stated that if you have speakers that are directional, such as horns, you do NOT want to place the mic in any seating areas outside a 30 degree angle from the direction that the speaks are firing, or it will overcompensate for those seating positions by boosting the frequencies that they were missing by being outside the tweeter's effectve area....so I followed their instructions, and took 8 readings from within this range. One in the 'main' listening position or sweet spot, one in the seat on each side, then one in fron of each of those positions about 3 feet. All of these are within the tweeter's influence. Then I did 2 more right beside the main position between it and the other two. This put 8 readings, all around the man position, for about 3-4 seating areas. The results were FANTASTIC. I never dreamed my system was capable of such clarity and imaging. Pans sound amazingly coherent, and imaging from all is crazy, even in stereo. And my low end is SUPER tight, lots more detail...I highly recommend this receiver (or any with the Audyssey system). Here is my setup for reference, 7.1: Denon 2808Ci RC3-II 2 RF3-II 2 RS3-II 2 RB35 SVS 25-31 PCi

I completely disagree the 247 is not enough. HK's amps are very conservatively rated...unless you have a huge room, the 247 is more than enough to power the EXTREMELY efficient 35's. I know 2 guys with this setup, and the sound is great. Goes very loud, nice rich sound, not distortion. The HK has more real wattage than any of the other receivers you listed. Just check the weight specs. HK rates their wattage 20Hz-20Khz, all channels driven. Just my 2 cents. I've got an HK AVR525 (65 watts by 7) powering an RC-3 II, 2 RF-3 II's, 2 RS-3 II's, and 2 RB-25's, and it is WAY more power than I'd need, and I like things loud.

Sounds good...I'm looking at HK's receivers. They have HDMI 1.2 and I love their amps. I'll take a look at the Denon's also.

Hey guys, long time no post. This is a question for Damon...I am probably going to be picking up a PS3 now that the price is coming down and some games I am interested in are on the horizon...plus I am interested in the blu-ray player, there are movies on blu-ray that I'd like to watch that are not on HD-DVD. So...my question lies with the HDMI audio...how does the PS3 handle high resolution audio from Blu-ray discs? Does it decode the audio and then output it as multi-channel PCM over HDMI? I can't seem to find out how this is done...and what receivers it will work with...HDMI specs are all very confusing. I am looking at the HK AVR 347....but I don't know if it can handle multi channel PCM (or whatever the PS3 outputs). Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Dave Blue

I played the beta extensively...it was AWESOME. Can't wait.

I don't know if anyone's posted this yet...but I just go The Beatles:Love, dual disc set. The 5.1 mixes on the DVD are unbelievable. Amazing re-creations of songs from across their catalog, some are similar to the original versions and some are completely new takes. George Martin, the Beatles' career long producer and his son did the arrangement. I was skeptical at first, but it is great. A nice, Beefy 5.1 mix (I'm listening to the DTS mix, not even the DVDA one). Highly recommended for Beatles fans (or even just HT enthusiasts). Back to listening.

Just bought this game...great fun. It's an open-world game like Grand Theft Auto, but you play a genetically engineered supercop. You power up as you play, at this point after a few hours of play, I am jumping 30 feet vertically, leaping from rooftop to rooftop and am able to pick up and throw cars at the bad guys. A great sandbox game.

No problem... I find it extremely helpful when I have to stop right away and I don't want to leave everything on.

Here's a link with instructions on exactly how to 'suspend' your games: http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2006/11/19/how-to-save-or-suspend-your-wii-virtual-console-games.htm

Actually, in a way, you can save your progress...I've found that if you pause the game, then exit to the wii menu with the home button...you can come back to the game and pick up right where you left off. Not exactly saving, but a neat feature nonetheless.

Xbox 360 for sure, second choice Wii. The 360 experience, online and off, is super slick. Stream music/video/hd video from your PC, stream music to replace in-game sountracks, voice-chat with any of your friends whether in the same game or not, see who is playing online with the touch of a button in any game, rent HD movies and tv shows, and excellent online playl capabilities. Wii is also awesome, if you want a cheaper price tag, access to classic Nintendo, Sega, and Turbografx titles, and a super-innovative controller. It's also great for getting non-gamers involved. Plus there's Zelda...which is the best one in the series in my opinion. The PS3 has nothing on the 360, besides a $200 higher price tag (which does get you blu-ray, if you're interested), and a bigger hard drive. It also has HDMI 1.3, which will be nice in the future.

Oldman wasn't in Pirates...I assume you're talking about Geoffrey Rush? Anyway, haven't seen it yet either, although I enjoyed the first one for what it was. I was expecting crap and I was pleasantly surprised.

I have Netflix, and I have been renting HDDVDs with good success. I will say that if you rent a lot of movies, Netflix will start to throttle you a bit. I've seen long wait, very long wait on titles, but it's usually when they're new, and you're renting tons of flicks. Otherwise, I really like the service....I went to them because I was sick of Blockbuster's store rental BS. The one thing I really like about it is the way that all the movies are interconnected by ratings, customer preferences, director, actor, producer, etc. Makes browsing for movies really effective.

While live has been out for 4 years, live on the original xbox changed very little in it's life span. All games supported voice chat on day 1. If I remember correctly though, sony launched their network adapter and 'online' service about the same time as live on the PS2...I think I played online once on my ps2. The 360 introduced a whole new dimension to it, with the common interface across all games, chat across games, common interface across all games, etc. This, I will agree, has been improving over the year and 2 or so months that the 360 has been out. Background downloading has been added, a very slick video marketplace, lots of Live arcade improvements, etc... And I also realize that I pay $60 a year for the service. But what is offered, to me, is well worth $5 a month. Sony is taking a different path. Not having a standard across all games makes the service free, sure, but you get what you pay for. I can imagine developers deciding not to bother with voice chat, or requiring you to purchase their own peripherals or charge their own separate fees for online gaming. This stuff may not matter to folks who don't play online. So it is a moot point to some, but a large portion of my playtime is spent playing with a group of friends, and without voice chat I don't think we would be doing it.

Love this show...it continually blows me away. I love the Pullo, what a great character. Up there with the new BSG as one of my favorite shows of all time.

Yes, good stuff.

What, seriously? What an uninformed statement.

Oops, didn't see the Mac part.

Sure, if you're happy with the sound, you can definitely stick to what you have. 192 sounds fine for all but critical listening. You get few if any noticeable artifacts, and the only big loss is in the area of dynamic range.

BTW, I got an iGroove for XMAS, to support music in my garage while I am homebrewing...VERY impressed by the sound that comes out of this little thingy.

Colter, if you're not using FLAC or another lossless codec, the best sounding compression to my ears is to use the LAME encoder (3.96.1 or higher) along with EAC (exact audio copy). You can get Exact Audio Copy here, it the definitive CD ripping software use by people who want exact results. LAME is an open source MP3 encoder that is constantly evolving and improving, and has tons of options to make your audio sound as close to the source as possible. I use VBR compression (VAriable Bit Rate) with some command line options, that give you better quality than a 320K MP3, with about 1/2 the file size in most cases. Out of all the MP3's I've ripped (over 4000) I cannot tell the diff between the compressed song, and the original in all cases. And I consider myself a pretty critical listener. You can get the newest LAME encoder here. Extract it to a directory (I usually use c:\Program Files\Lame) Next you would install Exact Audio Copy, and in the wizard tell it you are using an external compressor, and it will search and find LAME. Finally, go to EAC/Compression Options on the file menu in EAC, and change the Additional Command Line options to this: -V 0 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d If you want to get the most out of EAC, there is a super detailed tutorial of it's features here. Hope this helps! I can email you a sample of what the encoding sounds like, most of the stuff I have is rock, but let me know.

Yeah, I'm waiting for some good games to come out for it before I think about it. And the issues to be fixed...the simple fact that it downscales 720p games to 480p if the output is set to 1080i, instead of upscaling to 1080i like 360, tells me there are a quite a few firmware updates to go before it's ready for prime time. Also, being very into online gaming, it offers absolutely nothing compared to Live on this horizon. Voice chat is sparse (which is unbelievable to me), and games that support the online are spotty, with no continuity between the different games. You acutally have to leave the game you're in and go out to the dashboard before you can see who out of your friends is online or to chat with them. No chatting accross games. As said above, if Sony is proactive, this stuff will be remedied in future firmware updates. But to me a system that doesn't do half of what my 360 does is not even close to being worth $600.

I know that when the original iGroove HG came out, there were a lot of naysayers who couldn't believe that the might Klipsch released this thing. Well, I got one for xmas, to use for listening to music while home brewing beer in my garage (I was tired of unhoooking and lugging my promedias out there). I must say that I am VERY impressed with the sound that comes out of this little thing. The sound is very clear, full bodied, and relatively accurate for such small speaks. And I am very impressed with the extension and accuracy of the bass (I wasn't expecting much, but it exceed my expectations). Granted it doesn't dig super low, but it does a good job with what it has. Nice volume levels too. Just wanted to say, good job once again Klipsch. I had some folks over for games over xmas, they were all asking what brand/how much on this item. For reference, I own a promedia 2.1, an RC-3II, 2 RF-3IIs, and 2 RS-3II's. Oh yes, and an SVS 25-31 PCi (shhhh). []

Ummmm...it should charge when you dock it with the IGroove, if it does not, then there is something wrong.

Hmmm...I don't see this same issue. I will say that I do notice MORE sound coming out of the rears (i.e. they are more active than most movies)...but they don't seem too loud. My guess is you have tuned your system by ear? The best way to do it is to get a radio shack SPL meter (about $44 ,make sure you get the analog version), and set all your speaks to the same level with your receiver at 0..usually using the receivers built-in tones or the tones from a calibration disc. This will give you the best imaging, and I have found that it works well across my videogame systems, dvd, hdtv, etc. You will see a huge improvement in imaging this way too...since object placement in the soundtage is much more accurate when the speakers are all firing at the correct levels relative to each other.