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Krakkles posted:I don't have another receiver or set of speakers, unfortunately, so I might have to start looking for one/both. Is one or the other more likely? I'd prefer not to end up buying both if I don't have to, but obviously I might not be able to figure it out on the first try. I did turn it up pretty/very loud - the change happened when I had it up the loudest I've ever had it, probably 75-80% of max. Sounded really good, until it didn't. Blowing out your speakers is way more likely than your AVR having problems, especially with the "underwater" sound as your main symptom. But yea sounds like you blew out your towers  At least your center channel seems fine.  I'm kinda surprised that your AVR was able to deliver enough power to blow out your towers, or that your towers couldn't handle the 80% power of your AVR. If it's still under warranty, you should get that replaced. Or a different set of towers that can play that loud(you may not regularly listen at that volume, but if you are doing home theatre there can be dynamic volume changes of 10dB or more where it gets really loud and you don't want a repeat). e: if you want to confirm that your AVR is fine, you can just unplug your towers and then hook up your center channel to the left / right output, one at a time. It should sound normal. Well, as normal as it can for just having output from a single channel. CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Aug 30, 2023 |
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Aug 30, 2023 01:23
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qirex posted:I think the Topping MX5 might be a good place to start looking.In a lot of cases from these Chinese companies the solution is separate DAC/headphone amp with an outboard power amp. CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:If you are looking for an all in one solution, the Loxjie A30 has a 6.35mm headphone plug in the front and more than enough power for your speakers in the nearfield (max of 18W into 8ohms or 40W into 4ohms. Thanks for the advice! That took me down a really fun rabbit hole learning about Class D amps and the (for me) confusingly cheap variants out on the international market - albeit not in Swedish retail stores. Seeing the Fosi Audio v3 recommended above with its "300Wx2 @4Ω" for 90$ made me think it has to be a piece of poo poo that'll melt speakers or sound terrible, but reading a review of it, it seems to be a neat little thing. I'll need to dive a bit more into it before I make any decisions, but thanks for pointing me in an unexpected direction. I'm used to amplifiers being these bulky units, so seeing them be these tiny itty bitty boxes is quite the discovery. My current one is 5.5 kg. The A30 is 0.52 kg. 
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Aug 30, 2023 01:27
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Lamquin posted:Thanks for the advice! That took me down a really fun rabbit hole learning about Class D amps and the (for me) confusingly cheap variants out on the international market - albeit not in Swedish retail stores. I have the Fosi TB10D, the previous version, and have nothing but good things to say about it. The source is a Wiim mini, and it does swimingly with my Wharfedale bookshelfs in my bedroom.
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Aug 30, 2023 02:13
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Blowing out your speakers is way more likely than your AVR having problems, especially with the "underwater" sound as your main symptom. I'm going to give replacing the tweeters a whirl. I was able to test it with some (inappropriately sized) drivers that I had laying around, and it sounded correct. A tweeter that looks like it'll fit( ... ish, whatever, I have a hole saw) and has the correct ohm rating was on eBay for ~$30 for a pair. Thank you so much for your help. Especially the "it's probably your speakers" bit, I needed that shove.
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Aug 30, 2023 04:53
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:But yea sounds like you blew out your towers IME, the most common reason for a speaker to get blown is not that the amp is overpowered. Sure, that can happen. The amp pushes/pulls the speaker element too far in/out, so it rips it apart. I think that's a pretty rare case though, as you'd normally hear "hm, this is starting to sound like poo poo, I'd better not crank it any louder". A good feedback process. The limit for when a speaker will be damaged by over-extension is what's usually labelled on the back of the speaker. The more common way to "blow" a speaker is to have an underpowered amp and cranking it too loud. Say you're trying to play really loud on speakers that a not super-sensitive. An amp with low wattage rating will struggle to extend the cone far enough to produce a loud sound, which means the user cranks the volume knob higher, and finally the amp will start to clip. The clipped signal is constant at the peaks and troughs:  When a speaker coil is fed a clipped signal, it is very likely to get damaged - especially the tweeters. Simplified, an amp that's clipping will feed more power than the amp is rated for through the speaker coil, which overheats the coil and can melt the insulation, shorting it out. (There's a longer explanation involving how a clipped signal has a huge amount of high-frequency overtones, which explains why this mostly impacts tweeters and not woofers.) So, what likely happened is that Krakkles played louder than the amp could handle, which melted the tweeters in the L+R speakers which is why they now sound like crap. The woofers are a bit more likely to survive but might also have suffered damage.
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Aug 30, 2023 08:29
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:The more common way to "blow" a speaker is to have an underpowered amp and cranking it too loud. Neat. Thanks for this explanation.
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Aug 30, 2023 14:04
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Neat. Thanks for this explanation.
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Aug 30, 2023 14:16
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And people wonder why I used to feed my desk speakers with 2x95W each 
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Aug 30, 2023 16:10
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Lamquin posted:Thanks for the advice! That took me down a really fun rabbit hole learning about Class D amps and the (for me) confusingly cheap variants out on the international market - albeit not in Swedish retail stores. there's is a very good chance you will never pump more than 2W per channel before it gets too loud for you
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Sep 1, 2023 06:03
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I made do with a Trends TA10.1 (2x5W) for many years. It did fine, especially combined with a sub with high level inputs and crossover (SVS SB12+). The NAD D7050 that replaced it does sound better when I really crank it...
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Sep 1, 2023 13:37
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SVS is having a sale this weekend, you can get the SB-1000 for $350 and they’re doing outlet discounts.
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Sep 1, 2023 18:24
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Looks like someone put together a list of a few companies doing labor day sales Some of those Elacs look like a steal. The JBL A190 too. The monoprice B5 for 50bux each is ridiculous. qirex posted:SVS is having a sale this weekend, you can get the SB-1000 for $350 and they’re doing outlet discounts. Fair warning: those are the old versions, not the pro ones that have app control if that's important to any potential buyers.
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Sep 1, 2023 19:02
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Looks like someone put together a list of a few companies doing labor day sales Has anybody here tried the Triangle Boreas? I know everybody online seems to hate them now, but that was before their big general price drop. I want to get new speakers for my dad, but they have to pass my mom’s visual aesthetic standards or else she’ll get angry about them.
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Sep 1, 2023 19:48
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Ok Comboomer posted:Has anybody here tried the Triangle Boreas? I know everybody online seems to hate them now, but that was before their big general price drop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNBWQGv2-SM Erin just did a review on them with measurements. Seems like some of the negatives(sibilance) might actually not be a problem, or even a benefit, for older people.
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Sep 1, 2023 20:11
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Is there some sort of "Your room is so bad acoustically that you shouldn't spend more than X amount on audio? My living room Is basically this:  There's only one feasible location for the TV, the wall that the TV is on doesn't really allow for space to the sidewall, ultimately meaning that one of the speakers is forced to be right next to the window. Do the windows and inflexibility of placement mean that I have a maximum audio quality level? Like I could spend $300 bucks on speakers and I'd reach max potential. If I spent $1000 on speakers I'd still get $300 worth of audio quality? Is the only way to really know to buy both and see if I can notice a difference?
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Sep 2, 2023 04:31
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Sudden Loud Noise posted:Is the only way to really know to buy both and see if I can notice a difference? Better speakers almost always sound better. e: I don't know if you are talking about 5 speakers, but two speakers at $300 -> two speakers at $1000 is a huge upgrade, and I highly recommend that. Fozzy The Bear fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Sep 2, 2023 |
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Sep 2, 2023 04:39
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Better speakers almost always sound better. Right now I've got roughly $400-$500 bucks into a 5.1 Sony setup over the last...7 years? It's nothing special but functions in producing sound. We're doing an aesthetics focused living room update, and are trying to figure out if we'd get any actual benefit from "Good looks and good performance" money (max we would consider spending would be 1.5k for L and R channels combined, and then upgrading center once we see how we like the two new speakers) or if "Good looks and bad performance" money would get us the same result due to our floorplan. Doing more research, it sounds like any front wall issues can likely be solved with DSP, but the issues caused by the windows is still a mystery to me. It's really fuckin' annoying trying to figure out where actual good audio advice ends and audophile BS begins online. I watched an hour of videos about how "putting your speakers too close to your front wall will ruin your bass completely and you should probably just consider a new room if you can't put it 3 feet from your wall" before someone just said "Yeah, DSP is really good at solving this, if you're really worried about it, put a sock in the back of your speaker and see if you like it more." Sudden Loud Noise fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Sep 2, 2023 |
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Sep 2, 2023 05:41
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Sudden Loud Noise posted:Right now I've got roughly $400-$500 bucks into a 5.1 Sony setup over the last...7 years? It's nothing special but functions in producing sound. We're doing an aesthetics focused living room update, and are trying to figure out if we'd get any actual benefit from "Good looks and good performance" money (max we would consider spending would be 1.5k for L and R channels combined, and then upgrading center once we see how we like the two new speakers) or if "Good looks and bad performance" money would get us the same result due to our floorplan. depending on your budget you might benefit from getting a set of Q350 or Q150 when they're discounted (if not this weekend then definitely Black Friday and the Holidays) or better. Not sure if the Boreas would also be enough of an improvement, but they certainly are pretty for being "budget" speakers
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Sep 2, 2023 06:02
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Better speakers will sound better regardless of the room. Good DSP can let you get more out of any given space from the same speakers. If you see anything that catches your eye, just check for reviews on the Audiosciencereview forum and post the model here and we'll give you our takes. I'm not up to date with what's new and current right now so I don't have a list or whatever.
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Sep 2, 2023 06:56
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If you don't want to spend any money, making budget speakers look nicer is also fairly accessible. I've had good success sprucing up flat black cabinets with appropriate spray paints and grille mesh fabric is super easy to replace in just about any color or pattern you can imagine.
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Sep 2, 2023 07:11
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I did the thing everyone always tells you not to do where you buy "very ok speakers that you plan on upgrading later" and, to be honest, it's worked well for me. The speakers are just straight up better than anything else I would have had, they do fine. I just bought the Yamaha NS-P41 set of speakers (another thing people tell you not to do) and they've been great. At the time I was already spending so much money on the receiver, the projector, turning a room into a theater etc. that it would have just been really hard, both in terms of money and time spent learning about another whole thing to do it right. So I feel like I definitely got my money's worth. But now I'm starting to sorta plan out some upgrades. Not right away but I'm just thinking, maybe in the next year. So my first thought, I play games on it (I got a BenQ th685 which is a great projector for games for the price. 1080p only, but 8ms latency, that's better than most TVs! That I'll upgrade eventually too because BenQs other projectors can get low latency, but that's not for a couple years) and obviously a bunch of movies. But I also listen to music with it and really care about my music sounding really good. Probably more than anything else even though I use it for that less than the other two things. So, do I upgrade the center first? Or front left and right? 2nd, I'm a ridiculous person and usually go for absolutely high end on a lot of things but I realized when it comes to home audio high end is an absolute pit that can end up costing more than a house. It just never ends and it's infinite money. So I have to decide on some point where throwing extra money at it doesn't really get you meaningfully more. So I assume I want some kind of "midrange", but I don't know where that is. I feel like I can spend 200 to 300 per speaker, I don't know if that's actually mid-range. I live in China so sometimes I just cant get the same speakers people outside of China can get, or the speakers people can get for $200 will cost me $800. But lets assume I can get stuff at the price it costs in America, are there some just straight up best bang for the money options I should be looking at? The projector was easy, the receiver was easy (after I realized it actually matters and just buying a Chinese death trap monstrosity was a bad idea), but speakers themselves, from my googling, have been complicated. Are there just some easy "well these speakers are just generally great at that price range" options out there? The theater room is a small room if that matters for acoustics. Here are pictures of the whole thing. There is not a lot of space between the wall and the screen and the picture was taken from the couch there which is the back of the room. The screen is 120 inches for scale.   I have about 70cm from the floor to the screen, 35cm from the little stands to the screen.
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Sep 2, 2023 14:01
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Adjust your projector until it fills the entire frame you monster.
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Sep 2, 2023 14:04
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bird with big dick posted:Adjust your projector until it fills the entire frame you monster. It does now, it's just so easy to whack the power cable and get it off. It's at the absolute edge of what that projector can do so if it gets pushed forward even a little bit it wont fit. I just took those pictures real quick when I got the PVM to the side and was super pumped about that. Every now and then I gotta get up there and just try to push it a little bit back, it sucks but what are you gonna do? You can see though, I think I had it right when I took the TotK picture, even though that was the same day since that was to show off the PVM too, just not the master quest picture. I think a part of that is when playing old games on it it doesnt stretch out all the way either. BrainDance fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Sep 2, 2023 |
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Sep 2, 2023 14:11
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BrainDance posted:I did the thing everyone always tells you not to do where you buy "very ok speakers that you plan on upgrading later" and, to be honest, it's worked well for me. The speakers are just straight up better than anything else I would have had, they do fine. I just bought the Yamaha NS-P41 set of speakers (another thing people tell you not to do) and they've been great. At the time I was already spending so much money on the receiver, the projector, turning a room into a theater etc. that it would have just been really hard, both in terms of money and time spent learning about another whole thing to do it right. So I feel like I definitely got my money's worth. The speakers that we always recommend here, let’s say starting between $300 per pair and roughly topping out at like $2000 per pair are the sweet spot for 99.999% of people. That will get you the best range of reasonably good and increasing performance without falling too far into enthusiast/diminishing returns/special case/“if you have to ask then this probably isn’t for you” territory. At the bottom end of that range you’ll have speakers that look and perform nicely in a Western “middle class” setting but are also clearly more budget-focused (KEF Q series) and at the top end of that range you’ll have “flagship” or close enough to flagship performance from a lot of mainstream brands and with much nicer finishes and color options (KEF Reference, Monitor Audio Silver, etc)
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Sep 2, 2023 14:14
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BrainDance posted:[...]From China[..]. There's actually a huge domestic hifi scene in China that makes great products for the money, it might be worth looking into that. Skip out on all the expensive source devices and amps and such, but the speakers can be great. Here's one with an English facing site, I'm sure they have a Chinese facing side of their business as well. There are lots of others too but by virtue of not understanding the language I can't help you there. https://www.china-hifi-audio.com/
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Sep 2, 2023 14:29
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Had amazon credit to burn and got one of the older Monoprice subs for like $60. Bigger than my old unit, which was sounding like a put-put boat after some years in storage. Fun time getting it hooked up, going "oh it's not on let me rais  "Got some OWM3s for my heights earlier this week and now I'm looking at the Sony SC3s to replace the bookshelves I'm using for surrounds. I may have a problem. The old stuff was just fine, but...
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Sep 2, 2023 16:36
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Sudden Loud Noise posted:Right now I've got roughly $400-$500 bucks into a 5.1 Sony setup over the last...7 years? It's nothing special but functions in producing sound. We're doing an aesthetics focused living room update, and are trying to figure out if we'd get any actual benefit from "Good looks and good performance" money (max we would consider spending would be 1.5k for L and R channels combined, and then upgrading center once we see how we like the two new speakers) or if "Good looks and bad performance" money would get us the same result due to our floorplan. I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend Ascend Acoustic - Sierra-1 for your front 2 or 3 speakers. https://ascendacoustics.com/collections/sierra-series-pairs/products/sierra-1 I'm never going to stop recommending these, they have good base, just great overall sound. I feel you would have to spend 4x at a big box store to get the same level of quality. Plus its an American company, the owner responds to emails, so you get great customer service.
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Sep 2, 2023 18:19
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FilthyImp posted:Had amazon credit to burn and got one of the older Monoprice subs for like $60. Bigger than my old unit, which was sounding like a put-put boat after some years in storage. Buying $60 subs and $200 speakers is still super cheap and low end. You don't have a problem 
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Sep 2, 2023 18:48
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‘Bought a sub for $60, new” is the problem
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Sep 2, 2023 19:05
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Ok Comboomer posted:‘Bought a sub for $60, new” is the problem It's replacing a KLH 10 that I picked up on sale at Fry's in like 2006 and has moved with me a bunch of times. Thing was giving low-level flutters for a while and even though I replaced the pots and looked it over I haven't been able to get it stable after it got out of being in a closet for a few years. Of course, I didn't retire the KLH and now I have the 12 and 10 subs because more speaker = better. Now I'm looking at the Onkyo towers like they need to be replaced, too 
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Sep 2, 2023 20:02
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Sudden Loud Noise posted:Is there some sort of "Your room is so bad acoustically that you shouldn't spend more than X amount on audio? Curtains are a thing that exist and would help.
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Sep 2, 2023 20:05
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Aren’t monoprice subs just rebranded Daytons? The daytons are good AF
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Sep 2, 2023 22:12
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Reporting back after a few weeks of daily use - those stealthtech surround couch speakers are pricey for what you get but sound great. Most importantly, the wife has no problem with them vs my old surround system that was large and had wires running around. The speakers are completely hidden - nice!
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Sep 4, 2023 19:07
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See you gotta start from a position of bargaining power, we used to have bookshelf speakers on hideous articulated mounts so my wife was happy to upgrade to some WDS mounted directly to the wall surrounds
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Sep 4, 2023 19:40
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qirex posted:SVS is having a sale this weekend, you can get the SB-1000 for $350 and they’re doing outlet discounts. Relatedly, would a REL Strat III for $175 on FB Marketplace be worth it? Apparently it was a 100W model from 1998-2003 which by today’s standards is a joke but also I ran my HSU STF-2 no higher than 25%. Josh Lyman fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Sep 9, 2023 |
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Sep 9, 2023 03:20
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Josh Lyman posted:FUUUCK my life I was in Chicago for an EDM festival last weekend and didn’t see this post. 😭 I might be able to hold out without a sub until Black Friday though. Oh poo poo were you at North Coast? I was there too. They do outlet sales fairly regularly so don't worry about it too much.
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Sep 9, 2023 03:27
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KillHour posted:Oh poo poo were you at North Coast? I was there too.
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Sep 9, 2023 21:19
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I finally sound proofed the hell out of my home theater, should I redo the Denon Audyssey calibration? Idk if it took reverb into account in the initial setup
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Sep 9, 2023 21:52
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You changed the acoustics, so yes, redo the calibration
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Sep 9, 2023 21:56
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TY! I thought so. I'm new to this
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Sep 9, 2023 22:03
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