What have you bought lately?

[Queen Victoria]

Less and less

['andersom']

 Two frozen pizzas and bottled carbonated water.

[renaeden]

$100 up front college fees.

[odeon]

It's useful to do the EQ more than once. I usually run a reel of test material I know intimately to get a sense of what the RTA isn't showing me.

And yet, it is never more than approaching adequate. You still hear things that make you want to jump out of your seat, if not your entire skin, to correct things once again.

This modern era of actual real time digital/figital analysis has gone a bit over the top, so to speak.
In all honesty, I had a hard time learning to let one instance of "not quite right" go.

Then you go from an empty house to one filled to the brim with screaming fans. Thank god I had time to do the ring out and set the problem frequencies to the notch filter as you turn it up and up and up to offset the crowd noise.

Rock and roll, baby!!
 


Time for "protective"  headphones.

I'm so glad I never had to do concerts. It must very, very different from doing a house EQ for a cinema where people sit fairly still in a well-controlled environment.

In a cinema, the RTA is desperately needed as you're not looking for flat, you're doing a Dolby curve (also known as X curve) so Dolby mixes come out right. They still control the market.

The RTA is also essential when doing the A chain--optical sound is tricky to get right without one.

Concerts were fun for me. I sometimes felt like I was doing "rocket science" in a cowboy bar fight half the time, but I had fun, mostly.   
Set up lots of curves but never the Dolby standards. I kept decent records on my own and returning to a familiar venue was much easier to set up the second or third time.  Not so hard with established standards.

I might also suggest that optical sound follows no established, industry standard, adhered to without fail at all times,  "curve"  at all. At least not in the beginning.

Even though all my old movies are on either DVD or Blu-ray, the sound was originally optical and if I did not own a fairly cool (tube based, BTW and switchable, in or out of the audio chain) way to alter the tonal qualities of some of those old soundtracks, with my fairly flat sound system, my satisfaction when viewing older movies would suffer greatly.

We watched "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington"  a few nights ago. A problem sound track for sure, but tamed a bit with some tonal controls in the sound stream.

I have never set up a system requiring adherence to the X curve. As I mentioned all my video content is disc oriented with encoding "built in"  and except for certain variables such as LFE channels or possibly the new  "Atmos"  configurations allow for a very forgiving, flat sound system which I have worked hard and long to accomplish in room, here.
New Atmos movies still sound good to me, though.

My speaker system is finally all vintage JBL with Denon AV receiver  (4312 model, getting old now. Looking at a more modern Marantz reciever for the future) and all Crown subwoofer channels (bi-amped, BTW).

Mr Smith was originally mixed following the Academy recommendations. IIRC, the 35 mm print I screened a couple of years ago sounded decent with Dolby's standard Academy mono filter. I think they've handled that part in the transfer because home AV receivers can't actually run it--I'd expect newer transfers to have a Dolby Digital soundtrack with a single centre track.

BTW, aren't Marantz and Denon still mostly the same, hardware-wise? If memory serves, they share the same basic components.

I think that you are right as far as any top tier movie following the standards of the day, but I feel that some of those standards do not transfer well to modern all digital reproduction systems.
Now you tell me that the average home receiver can not even follow that curve? Makes sense as to why I had to use my  glorified tone control to be able to watch it with my wife.

Now, I can tolerate questionable sound while enjoying and older movie, but my wife is basically a giant tin ear and anything not perfect (read "perfect" as that which is not annoying to her distinct set of sensibilities), she blames my "expensive" and extremely "visually invasive"  surround system. So I have this little box hidden behind the video monitor that often helps quite a bit.

The reason I have been looking more toward the Marantz is a newish one I saw has a far cleaner look, like a typical Marantz product and I have heard that the power supplies are a different/better. As far as hardware-wise, referring to the decoding capabilities, I am not sure. More research necessary. 
I do know that for a while all the Blu-ray players actually used the same set of chips.

It is time to replace my older receiver, anyway. BTW, I got the model number wrong on my receiver. It is a Denon 4310. 
4312 is the model number of my vintage JBL audio monitors I use in the bedroom with my SET dual mono tube amps. These are not bad speakers at all if you enjoy vintage sound (meaning no "subwoofer" needed or welcomed) and tube amps.

There's no Academy filter in a modern receiver because the assumption is that a) you and me cannot push the button to select the right format and b) they've done the work for us when doing the transfer.

And I love an old-fashioned speaker where the response is king. I think that has somehow been missed when designing the tiny little things they claim to be 5.1 or whatever the current buzzword is.

[Queen Victoria]

4 pairs of shoes for The PR for when she starts the new day center.  (She's hard on shoes - no socks = stinky shoes.  Hoping this will make them smell better longer by switching daily.)  Also some tops and shorts.  Thank heavens for Walmart. 

[Phoenix]

A crap ton of paint. Okay, technically *I* didn't buy it, my painter did. But I had to go into the paint shop and pay off the tab since he's done the house.

[Gopher Gary]

A crap ton of paint. Okay, technically *I* didn't buy it, my painter did. But I had to go into the paint shop and pay off the tab since he's done the house.

You physically went to the store and paid for it yourself, so I'm pretty your painter didn't buy it. 

[Phoenix]

A crap ton of paint. Okay, technically *I* didn't buy it, my painter did. But I had to go into the paint shop and pay off the tab since he's done the house.

You physically went to the store and paid for it yourself, so I'm pretty your painter didn't buy it. 

Okay, you're right in that. I guess I did buy it in the end even though I didn't lay a hand on a single tin of it.

[odeon]

Bought another book.

[Phoenix]

I bought boxes, bubble wrap, packing tape and permanent markers

[Gopher Gary]

I bought boxes, bubble wrap, packing tape and permanent markers

 

[Genesis]

I bought boxes, bubble wrap, packing tape and permanent markers

 

 
 

[Phoenix]

I bought boxes, bubble wrap, packing tape and permanent markers

 

 
 

You guys better hope I'm not trying to hide a body. (apparently a well labelled body, nicely wrapped but whatever)

[renaeden]

Chocolate covered aniseed rings (blech) and socks for my stepdad and a coffee pod holder for my sister. It was their birthdays on the 27th of June. I will be seeing them and other family tomorrow.

['andersom']

 

You're brave, buying presents you utterly dislike.