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prom candy posted:When you say jankier sounding what do you mean? Noise, channel imbalance, issues with consistent/uniform behavior as you raise and lower the volume, etc. They’re dependent on the quality and isolation and power output of their power supply, which is invariably a third party generic laptop brick. Stuff like control pots, etc are usually bottom-barrel quality unless specified otherwise (and then you’re paying for that additional quality). If anything happens, you have virtually zero customer support unless you’ve bought from one of the bigger producers (SMSL, etc) either directly or from a big, reputable distributor, and your issue has happened within a reasonable amount of time from delivery—at which point your solution will invariably be “send it back”. As a counterpoint, I’ve recently-ish purchased Denon receivers from Goodwill and gotten replacement remotes and antenna parts by calling their service department. Within the last decade I’ve gotten technical service documents from Yamaha for a receiver manufactured in 1978. Personally I try to push for a minimum of quality/trustworthiness/cost simply because, to my mind, a basic/entry level stereo amp/receiver from a reputable manufacturer with the “lowest common denominator” of inputs (ie, like RCA and TOSlink) is one of those things that can run and do its job of “play music and make TV loud” for like 30 straight years without requiring replacement or servicing.
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Dec 31, 2022 07:41
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Ok Comboomer posted:Noise, channel imbalance, issues with consistent/uniform behavior as you raise and lower the volume, etc. They’re dependent on the quality and isolation and power output of their power supply, which is invariably a third party generic laptop brick. Stuff like control pots, etc are usually bottom-barrel quality unless specified otherwise (and then you’re paying for that additional quality). Makes sense. Since I got this SMSL literally for free I'll probably run it until it breaks, but I'll definitely keep that in mind before spending money on another one. In the meantime I need to decide what colour Q150s I want
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Dec 31, 2022 15:24
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prom candy posted:Makes sense. Since I got this SMSL literally for free I'll probably run it until it breaks, but I'll definitely keep that in mind before spending money on another one. In the meantime I need to decide what colour Q150s I want yeah, I mean, obviously try it for yourself and see what you think. Those mini amps are definitely having a moment in the hobby space and they’re very fun to mess around with. my TLDR is basically: you can spend $60-150 on a class D amp or you can spend $100-400 on a new-in-box low tier 2-ch receiver from Yamaha/Onkyo/Sony/etc (or possibly something better used). I wouldn’t necessarily trust the former to be working more-or-less flawlessly after a decade (but I wouldn’t put it past possibility either), but I absolutely would the latter assuming nobody dumped a juice box into it. “buy once, cry once” = easy to use, peace of mind, no headaches or surprises also you want graphite Q150s. Maybe wood print.
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Dec 31, 2022 20:24
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nine16thsdago posted:i hope someone finds this as entertaining as it was absolutely terrifying for me. Closest thing I've experienced to this was a baby playing with the remote enough to get the Yamaha room calibration test tones running down in the basement while I was mowing the lawn and the spouse was watching him. She came outside and was semi incoherent and panicking about someone hacking the TV. Not sure about troubleshooting this but this is a solid solution if you're in the US and want a new one: https://www.accessories4less.com/ma...warranty/1.html
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Dec 31, 2022 23:19
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Ok Comboomer posted:also you want graphite Q150s. Maybe wood print. I went with white after finding out the wood grain was unavailable. They'll match the coffee table (and the ps5)
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Jan 1, 2023 00:27
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For what it's worth, I used a Trends TA10.1 for a few years and it sounded fine with my tannoys. That's an older type of reasonably cheap t-amps  The NAD D7050 I use now sounds better, but also retailed for 7x the price of the trends amp...
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Jan 1, 2023 03:36
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prom candy posted:Makes sense. Since I got this SMSL literally for free I'll probably run it until it breaks, but I'll definitely keep that in mind before spending money on another one. In the meantime I need to decide what colour Q150s I want I have a SMSL SA-50 that is absolutely not up to even my large-bookshelf (monitor 40 series II) speakers, if I'm not very careful about the input line volume or the amp gain it sounds pretty bad. very audible distortion any time the system is out of its ideal sweet spot of line inputs and power outputs. I have a SMSL SA-98E that sounds relatively ok on my downstairs floorstanding version (monitor 50 series II?) but I think it's notionally a bit beefier and I think I had this set on the 40's earlier and maybe it was more acceptable there. I wish I'd had the money to grab the S760H for $400 from costco last month, maybe I'll wait and see what happens with the X1700H and X1800H and any sales on the onkyo/pioneer ones.
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Jan 1, 2023 10:58
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I have a big reel of Monoprice Access sleeved (CL2) 12G speaker wire, I bought a bunch to potentially do some stealth runs, longer runs to other rooms (Zones) and some other whole-house wiring, as well as do some in-wall runs of low-voltage 12V supply for in-wall power for vr lighthouses/similar (legality aside, I don't mind using good stuff when it's affordable). But since I have a bunch I decided to cut some nicer speaker wires for my current setup, so there's not gobs of ancient nasty old speaker wire everywhere, and I put banana plugs on them.  I was worried my SM-50 amp might have blown a channel... when you are plugging in a barrel connector to a live power adapter mine has started sparking pretty good, which is worrisome. After that it seemed to have lost (part?) of the right channel... but the speaker wires were janky as gently caress and I wanted to check it with a new cable anyway. And it seems fine with the new cable. Come to think of it I have also observed this behavior with my thunderbolt enclosure's adapter, which is 12V (vs the amp at 19V). Could something be wrong with my power, or just a common factor of lovely power supplies? Obviously don't touch the barrel to a frame that's grounded, I guess that's bad design, but I don't like seeing arc when I plug things in, and I try to do it the other way around if possible. My UPS hasn't shown anything unusual really... 114-122v depending on how heavy my load and grid load is, 60 hz ish +/- 0.1. Built another one for the other side, it's nice, one sleeved cable, it's white, banana plugs for ease of plugging. Nice QOL improvement, way neate. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 11:06
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Paul MaudDib posted:I have a SMSL SA-50 that is absolutely not up to even my large-bookshelf (monitor 40 series II) speakers, if I'm not very careful about the input line volume or the amp gain it sounds pretty bad. very audible distortion any time the system is out of its ideal sweet spot of line inputs and power outputs. Good to know. If I'm not happy when the Q150s arrive I'll look at upgrading the SMSL. I'm not super discerning though, I was actually surprised that my TV speakers didn't sound as bad as I expected. I was a lot fussier when I was younger, I think years of listening to compressed Spotify music over Bose wireless speakers has badly affected my baseline for acceptable. Although that said moving these T300s to my desktop setup has been really nice, and they're just being driven by a lovely logitech 2.1 system.
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Jan 1, 2023 16:18
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I have a hand-me-down Samsung Bluray HTIB (the HT-BD1250 I believe) that I got years ago that sounded fine, no complaints even though its pretty old. So, after moving and never setting up the speakers, we've since switched to a Firestick HD for streaming but now I realized I have no way it seems to actually use the speakers anymore since I'm no longer streaming off the god-awful Netflix app that was built into the Bluray player. And because its an HTIB, its all built off those little proprietary ethernet-like ports. Do I have any options here at all to somehow use the speakers and the Firestick? If there's no way to connect them, is there a way I could still salvage the speakers and just get a new receiver (there's some apparently high quality ones just sitting at my parents house)?
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Jan 4, 2023 01:55
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Oysters Autobio posted:I have a hand-me-down Samsung Bluray HTIB (the HT-BD1250 I believe) that I got years ago that sounded fine, no complaints even though its pretty old. If your TV has audio out it looks like the BD player/receiver has both digital and analog audio inputs. You would run the appropriate cable from your TV to the BD player and set it to that input to pipe TV/fire stick audio out of the speakers.
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Jan 4, 2023 02:13
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I've been loving around with speaker cables for like 20 years, how did I just find out about banana plugs last week
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Jan 5, 2023 19:26
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prom candy posted:I've been loving around with speaker cables for like 20 years, how did I just find out about banana plugs last week Big Screw Terminal is trying to keep you down.
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Jan 5, 2023 19:47
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Q150s arrived today and sound great. I got my sub working again too. I'm pretty sure what I've got now sounds a lot better than a Sonos Arc and I've spent less than half as much. Really appreciate the advice! My friend was telling me today he's disappointed with his Sonos Beam that he just got and that at the volume he watches TV it barely sounds better than the TV speakers. Just theoretically let's say I did want to add a center channel to this setup down the line, am I locked in with KEF or could I get by with the center channel from my old setup?
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Jan 6, 2023 06:04
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You’d typically want your center channel to be at least as good as your L/R, if not better. People mix brands and models all the time, it just takes more tweaking to get it to sound right.
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Jan 6, 2023 07:21
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qirex posted:You’d typically want your center channel to be at least as good as your L/R, if not better. People mix brands and models all the time, it just takes more tweaking to get it to sound right. On that topic does the same thing matter as much for the surrounds? I plan to look into getting nicer front l/r speakers eventually and then replacing the center too, but if not replacing the surrounds with them is gonna be a problem then it turns into a whole thing.
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Jan 6, 2023 08:41
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qirex posted:You’d typically want your center channel to be at least as good as your L/R, if not better. People mix brands and models all the time, it just takes more tweaking to get it to sound right. My Center speaker is a Pure Acoustics Noble C. I know nothing at all about this brand or if that speaker is good or not. My dad's friend used to manage a Brick and got me an insane open box deal on the whole set. Has anyone heard of them? There's a bit of info online but not a ton. I've had it since 2008. I still have the rears and sub as well but I sold the towers when we moved since I had no space for them.
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Jan 6, 2023 15:26
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BrainDance posted:On that topic does the same thing matter as much for the surrounds? imo not really, no. Surrounds can basically be anything as long as they make noise Feel free to use your current surrounds when you replace your front speakers. Just make sure to run the speaker calibration setup on your AVR so they aren't too quiet or loud in relation to everything else.The next level of effort would be to try to make sure that they tonally match your L/C/R speakers. By that I mean if your L/C/R speakers are voiced neutral, try to make sure your surrounds that are neutral too. If your fronts are V shaped, do the same for the rest. Or if you have a fancier AVR, just fiddle with the EQ for your surrounds until they sound right. If you still end up noticing that your surrounds sound different from your front speakers and it's distracting, then you can buy the matching surrounds from the brand and product line, but it probably won't come to that.
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Jan 6, 2023 19:33
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Yeah, get whatever for surrounds. There is really only one situation where matching is important: multichannel music. My first surround system was five of the same speaker and it sounded good but I mainly did that because the speakers were on closeout.
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Jan 6, 2023 20:08
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prom candy posted:I've been loving around with speaker cables for like 20 years, how did I just find out about banana plugs last week speaking (heh) of, what's a good source for banana plugs? paying $8 for 8 from amazon seems like a ripoff. If the answer is to just put in an order to mouser/arrow/digikey... any suggestions for model?
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Jan 6, 2023 21:05
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A dollar apiece seems like a ripoff? Unless you’re selling cables that seems totally reasonable to me since you’ll never need more than 20 or so.
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Jan 6, 2023 21:17
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I paid about the same from Monoprice, seems about reasonable.
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Jan 6, 2023 23:11
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qirex posted:A dollar apiece seems like a ripoff? Unless you’re selling cables that seems totally reasonable to me since you’ll never need more than 20 or so. it's 4 plugs per cable (two per end and two cables) so 20 connectors is like 2 cables and some leftover. I have speakers upstairs for the living room TV, I have another TV in the basement, I'd like to get my office set up with some bookshelf speakers, I'd like a spare set so I can cut proper new cables when I mount the TV and move the receiver into the basement, and some spares for lithium-ion battery charging adapters/etc (eight connectors/four adapters would be fine for starters). that's basically 5 sets of cables, 2 cables per set, four connectors per cable, so that's forty connectors already. if I can get decent connectors for 50c apiece that justifies shipping from a supplier already. and I kinda wanted to get fancy and do the speaker end as biamp... monoprice makes cables with 4 conductors inside so that's easy if you have spare connectors. Just solder together the pairs at the other end if you need. granted, do I need to banana-plug them all? no, but I made the set for my living room and it looks nice and it's super convenient compared to the screw-terminals, so I wanted to make a couple more sets. and I'm enough of a nerd that I'll run through them eventually, and I wanted to order some other poo poo besides (like some powerpoles and some nice silicone hookup wire etc). and I guess persona foible: I really do not like ordering electrical poo poo off amazon/ebay/etc. Things like powerpoles or banana connectors or wire? I actually would prefer to order those from an actual hobby store or electronics supplier even if the price was equal or a little bit higher. I do not trust amazon and I don't want them to randomly fail and burn something down. Is that going to happen with speaker cables and an ordinary receiver? no, it's not entirely rational here, but I think it is for stuff like battery adapters/etc, I have batteries and 12v power supplies with enough current to be dangerous. I just strongly prefer to order electrical supplies from an actual supplier. my speaker wire came from monoprice for the same reason. I have in-wall runs planned and do not want to deal with "is this really CL2 or is this a knockoff someone tried to sneak in", because amazon dgaf. it's just not worth 20 bucks to me. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Jan 7, 2023 |
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Jan 7, 2023 00:22
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The ones I was going to suggest from monoprice cost $4 each so probably not for you.
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Jan 7, 2023 00:27
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qirex posted:The ones I was going to suggest from monoprice cost $4 each so probably not for you. actually the closed-screw ones look fine and that's 20 pairs/40 connectors for $40 which is about what I'd pay on amazon for the other ones. Not bad, thanks, I will probably get some on order here. Is solder preferable over screw or crimp, beyond the difficulty of soldering in some really inconvenient places?
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Jan 7, 2023 01:47
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Paul MaudDib posted:speaking (heh) of, what's a good source for banana plugs? paying $8 for 8 from amazon seems like a ripoff. If the answer is to just put in an order to mouser/arrow/digikey... any suggestions for model?
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Jan 7, 2023 01:57
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Nah, I mean probably not I haven’t seen the lovely pin ones for a long time
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Jan 7, 2023 02:10
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Paul MaudDib posted:it's 4 plugs per cable (two per end and two cables) so 20 connectors is like 2 cables and some leftover. wtf is this
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Jan 7, 2023 09:01
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bird with big dick posted:wtf is this the part about not ordering poo poo from amazon makes sense at least, their poo poo is hosed
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Jan 7, 2023 16:12
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Yeah sure that’s what I was going to say like just keep ordering from monoprice dude not sure why this needs a masters thesis level analysis Also maybe I’m high (I’m absolutely high) but I don’t understand why he has “two cables per cable” (biwiring?) and why he apparently wants to use banana plugs to charge lithium ion batteries
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Jan 7, 2023 17:05
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bird with big dick posted:Also maybe I’m high (I’m absolutely high) but I don’t understand why he has “two cables per cable” (biwiring?) and why he apparently wants to use banana plugs to charge lithium ion batteries That's pretty common for hobby type batteries (for drones and RC cars and poo poo) Like this: https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-reaktor-t240-us-plug-ac-dc-10a-2-x-150w-touch-screen-charger.html
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Jan 7, 2023 18:49
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bird with big dick posted:Yeah sure that’s what I was going to say like just keep ordering from monoprice dude not sure why this needs a masters thesis level analysis There's a positive and negative lead on each speaker cable so sure there's "two cables per cable" even if that's not the best way of describing it.
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Jan 7, 2023 21:27
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:imo not really, no. Surrounds can basically be anything as long as they make noise Cool, thanks. Now to read the thread for months and figure out which speakers to get. I learned that you really can't wing it on this stuff. Cuz I'm in China a lot of the models are different, even from the same brands. At first I cheaped out on the receiver and got a whatever Chinese one cuz I sorta figured, what does it really matter? Turns out it matters a lot and the receiver would turn the speakers "off" after any silence and take about 30 seconds to turn back on (so movies would just go silent after a quiet scene), was spilling out electricity over HDMI well above the....8v? Somewhere around there? Spec, and would create a cloud of electric death in a radius around the receiver that would make your fingers buzz and go numb if you were too close to it. Sound quality wasn't great either, probably from all that electricity. Took me a couple months but I got a refund since it was a death trap and just bought a Denon receiver, everything sounds and works a million times better now.
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Jan 8, 2023 03:03
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i kind of want the Chinese Death Receiver ngl
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Jan 8, 2023 04:06
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I said "you need 4 plugs per cable (two per end and two cables)". Doesn't that make sense? Each speaker cable you make needs 4 banana plugs (actually jacks I guess, whatever, the male side). And you need two speaker cables for stereo speakers. Right?  so a pack of 8 connectors sounds like a lot but that's 2 cables, which is one stereo speaker setup. And if you wanna make a couple setups, it's not hard to go through a decent number of connectors. also yes they do actually make quad-wire cables so you can bi-amp with a single cable, and you'd need twice as many connectors per cable.
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Jan 8, 2023 06:06
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aparmenideanmonad posted:If your TV has audio out it looks like the BD player/receiver has both digital and analog audio inputs. You would run the appropriate cable from your TV to the BD player and set it to that input to pipe TV/fire stick audio out of the speakers. Sorry, totally wrong on the model. The bluray is actually the HT-E4530 This is what I got on the rear-panel:  So in your example, would I just have the firestick in the TV, then run audio OUT from my TV so that it goes into either the analog auxilary audio or the optical digital audio in? Is it worth getting buying an optical digital audio cable to use that second method? Like, this method shown in the manual?  edit: I also have a Logitech bluetooth wireless speaker adapter that im not using for anything. Could i connect the speakers to the Blueray player, and then connect the audio via bluetooth to the TV/firestick? Oysters Autobio fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Jan 9, 2023 |
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Jan 9, 2023 00:51
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Oysters Autobio posted:Sorry, totally wrong on the model. Yes, and get the optical cable. If you have a stereo RCA cable lying around, you can use that for testing while you wait, but the optical can potentially give you 5-channel sound so that's what you'll want. Oysters Autobio posted:edit: I also have a Logitech bluetooth wireless speaker adapter that im not using for anything. Could i connect the speakers to the Blueray player, and then connect the audio via bluetooth to the TV/firestick? I'm not sure if you'd gain anything from that - at least the audio quality might be worse, or have more delay.
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Jan 9, 2023 09:16
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So is a 5.1.4 setup at all viable if the room layout requires the couch to be up against a wall? Or does only a 5.1.2 work there since .4 is supposed to have the listening position equal distance between the front and rear atmos speakers?
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Jan 14, 2023 20:08
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It’s possible certainly but probably not worth it. Atmos really was designed primarily for theater rooms and actual theaters.
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Jan 14, 2023 20:19
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qirex posted:It’s possible certainly but probably not worth it. Atmos really was designed primarily for theater rooms and actual theaters. That makes sense. I’m no expert but I’d imagine the sound would just get all muddled in the limited physical space with the rear atmos speakers basically being placed right above the surrounds. Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Jan 14, 2023 |
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Jan 14, 2023 21:28
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