Birth Of A New Home Theater and AV Setup!

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Carhole

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  • #121
    continuum said:
    With a room that large I am honestly surprised two SB-1000's are enough.
    Click to expand...

    The listening position is about 11’ from the fronts, and 10’8” from the center. The speaker system is devastatingly loud at that range, though when listening to music throughout the home there are two nulls for clean bass (behind the listening position and near my kitchen counter closer to the back wall) where lower end notes get a bit watered down, and peaks about 26’ and 40’ from the subwoofers. Audio gets messy behind the sweet spot if I try to enjoy multichannel stereo or any surround which is no surprise.

    I do have them set positionally for cinema with a small sweet spot, but even with earlier tests sans toe-in on the speaker wall, two 10” ported subwoofers were fine for ‘loud’ but not ‘house party’ listening levels throughout the space—room gain was quite noticeable with those and I ran them at about 30% or less gain, whilst the two 12” sealed subs require their respective full output to compete with the more efficient speaker cabinet design. I don’t know the decibels for comparison but too loud in either scenario while still sounding quite natural and quite reasonably distortion free, though more speaker wall resonance with ported subwoofers.

    Looks like Friday evening I may get to try the ported variants from SVS.

    Oh, pro tip: if your SVS subs aren’t looking like they’re pairing with one iDevice or another, check each one you’ve installed the subwoofer app on all as their app seems to run background handshakes over WiFi and one sub may decide it wants to cling to an iPad while the other(s) might only appear on you iPhone. Boot them from your network to force them both over to your desired device.
     
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  • #122
    Got the right side SVS to clip rather badly last night with no changes made other than bumping from 62% to 65% volume rewatching a few scenes from Dune. I was very surprised that I had to drop the gain on that channel from 0dB to -20dB before the woofer stopped crashing itself. It seems to have survived that bit of auditioning unscathed but proved @continuum and my ear right in that they’re just not enough sub for the large fronts and room volume for cinema; the listening volumes weren’t quite at shout-to-the-person-adjacent-to-you, as a friend and I were eating dinner together and running through all sorts of audio, generally marveling at the sound quality until the LFE from Dune was overpowering whenever “the voice” was used by one of the characters. Disappointing, even if I don’t normally put that much pressure on my eardrums, it’s disappointing that it was already maxed when the rest of system could go so much farther in output.

    We’ll see how the ported variants compare today.
     
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  • #123
    Has anyone here been able to compare the LG G4 77” to the Sony A95L? Crutchfield has my Sony order out of stock until the 21st, and Costco has the 77” G4 available to import for a pretty good deal. Seems like I’d miss out on some color vibrance when going with LG, gain a faster panel for gaming, and otherwise just be a lot cheaper compared to the Sony in similar size.

    How’s the motion processing on that LG G4 compared to the Sony? I can live without over saturated colors that some Sony sets trend towards, though I’m having second thoughts on downgrading panel size after using the S90D for a couple of weeks as it’s quite immersive.

    TIA for any insights based on personal anecdata.
     
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  • #124
    Rtings.com says:

    The Sony A95L OLED and the LG G4 OLED are both incredible TVs, but there are some differences. The LG gets a bit brighter overall, so highlights stand out a bit more in HDR content, and it overcomes a bit more glare when watching SDR content in a bright room. The LG also maintains its brightness better in Game Mode, so you don't have to trade in brightness for performance. The LG is better for gaming overall due to its HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on all four ports, up to 4k @ 144Hz, and lower input lag. On the other hand, the Sony can display more vibrant, lifelike, and brighter colors due to its wider color gamut and better color volume, and there is less banding in most colors.
    Click to expand...

    Looks like the Sony is generally a shit ton more expensive upon quick glance. I would save the $1200 or go with the bigger screen and buy the LG.

    I doubt you could tell the difference in color unless you had them side by side.
     
    Carhole

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  • #125
    Semi On said:
    Rtings.com says:



    Looks like the Sony is generally a shit ton more expensive upon quick glance. I would save the $1200 or go with the bigger screen and buy the LG.

    I doubt you could tell the difference in color unless you had them side by side.
    Click to expand...
    Yeah, I’ve read this comparison summary a bunch of times over the past days and just the past hour again alone and am still not convinced. It sure would be nice to be able to preview the gear before having to make the decisions, and Ratings has been terribly wrong in my experience WRT to things such as overall quality of LG VA panels (which I bought, vomited on due to color and contrast falloff, then returned) so I’m not so sure how well their methodology is holding up in the face of manufacturer incentives, or other testing bias. I have also seen Sony TVs come factory calibrated with hugely exaggerated color saturation levels so it’s a tough call.

    That mentioned, there really is a lot to be said for the immersion factor on the larger displays, so I think the the motion smoothing processing would ultimately be what would skew my decision following HDR standards compliance.

    Yep, the A95L is very overpriced and shows no signs of coming down because the QD-OLED panel is apparently kicking some ass with their IQ driving it. But…anyone can get the 77” G4 for the same price as the 65” A95L today, plus get the Costco experience and warranty add value.

    Damn shame that I can’t see all three display along side one another but I feel that some time lost settling on a piece of tech that I can really enjoy is worth it given the island life restrictions on part selection.
     
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  • #126
    My last experience with a Sony TV was an LCD four or five years ago, before HDR really started to get big. My general impression was that, for an LCD at $900ish, the quality was astonishingly good as a TV. But it had lots of design decisions that were very poor for using it for anything else, like gaming or as a PC monitor.
     
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  • #127
    Mental Gear Reduction said:
    My last experience with a Sony TV was an LCD four or five years ago, before HDR really started to get big. My general impression was that, for an LCD at $900ish, the quality was astonishingly good as a TV. But it had lots of design decisions that were very poor for using it for anything else, like gaming or as a PC monitor.
    Click to expand...
    Sony really makes some head scratching industrial design decisions in their product stacks then goes and pulls staggeringly good design out of their withering departments from time to time. I sure wish that it had kept the same level of leadership as a company harkening back to its dominant edge of its late 80s and early 90s consumer electronics.

    Well that was a fortuitous change of mind and I appreciate you and @Semi On for chiming in when you did. My day was just about to get busy and I called Crutchfield right as their warehouse guys were loading the Sony onto their outbound freight for the day and had put the hold on my card between my last post and this one, a full two weeks before they were supposed to get more A95Ls back into stock. Order cancelled effortlessly (they are a pleasure to do business with, really), and the monster LG G4 will supposedly be brought to my living room and even wall mounted in about two weeks, so that worked out great.

    I suppose in the meantime is trying to decide if he big Samsung should be left around as a gaming monitor or brought back to Costco for a refund. I should probably take it back as I’d like to step up my 3D printing game this year and have pretty much destroyed my fun budget for the entire year by upping a few components in the HT buildout. Oh well. A few more movie viewings won’t hurt before it gets repacked.

    Blam, just got the date for the company who’ll be hanging the LG. I better hurry up and build a back board to my little makeshift audio hutch. Cheers!
     
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  • #129
    Well goddamn, the ported versions of the SVS subs are so profoundly more powerful from an SPL standpoint that they really shouldn’t be in the same product tiers. A single PB-1000 Pro is impactful yet tight, with some higher cabinet bass you’d expect from such a large speaker. First pass on Audyssey last night I got slightly loose EQing out of a pretty good, dead silent run at room correcting to the right sub, though I think that these subwoofers take a bit more work to blend well into their upper hundred hertz range. They’re not boomy but hey just keep extending up if you let them, so your LFE frequency is critical as a first step when integrating them.

    Two running is beyond cinematic LFE needs and the home is shaking into my shop, some 80’ from the speaker wall. They’re nice and gut-churning subs, musical, not quite as perfectly tight as the SB-1000s for normal musical notes at higher volumes, but very close, however their extension is night and day deeper and immediate compared to my Klipsch sub and the SB-1000s. For movies they’re most certainly what you want. Music settings will likely take a second preset to lighten the sub gain a tad.

    Ultimately I’m happy that I tried both of these offerings and that someone actually shipped them here (they’re huge and heavy). I have a feeling that I’ll be integrating the sealed box version as soon as I get a more capable AVR where I can assign presets to the sub pre outs, and get room correction working on lots of low end. Fun stuff. What? Huh?
     
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  • #131
    jarablue said:
    I have an svs pb 2000 pro ported sub (comes with port plugs for sealed use) IN MY APARTMENT.

    Needless to say, it, without question, does the job. Now whether my neighbors appreciate at that.....I don't know. SVS makes good stuff.

    I hope you enjoy your setup and blast away!
    Click to expand...
    I have a 10 year old SB 2000 that's still kicking. Other than the amp dying about 4 years in and replaced under warranty it's been great. Also have a couple of the drivers on my SVS front towers that were damaged when I dropped them during a move. SVS is pretty good about selling relatively cheap replacement parts so it was a quick swap out.
     
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  • #132
    Carhole said:
    Yeah, I’ve read this comparison summary a bunch of times over the past days and just the past hour again alone and am still not convinced. It sure would be nice to be able to preview the gear before having to make the decisions, and Ratings has been terribly wrong in my experience WRT to things such as overall quality of LG VA panels (which I bought, vomited on due to color and contrast falloff, then returned) so I’m not so sure how well their methodology is holding up in the face of manufacturer incentives, or other testing bias. I have also seen Sony TVs come factory calibrated with hugely exaggerated color saturation levels so it’s a tough call.

    That mentioned, there really is a lot to be said for the immersion factor on the larger displays, so I think the the motion smoothing processing would ultimately be what would skew my decision following HDR standards compliance.

    Yep, the A95L is very overpriced and shows no signs of coming down because the QD-OLED panel is apparently kicking some ass with their IQ driving it. But…anyone can get the 77” G4 for the same price as the 65” A95L today, plus get the Costco experience and warranty add value.

    Damn shame that I can’t see all three display along side one another but I feel that some time lost settling on a piece of tech that I can really enjoy is worth it given the island life restrictions on part selection.
    Click to expand...

    I got my A95L 77" for way below the advertised price by contacting a local seller directly. You can do Greentoe for a more streamlined version of the same, but I knew that this vendor was on Greentoe and they were local so I just emailed them directly so I knew who I was getting it from.

    Also, it's gorgeous.
     
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  • #133
    Ubiquity said:
    I got my A95L 77" for way below the advertised price by contacting a local seller directly. You can do Greentoe for a more streamlined version of the same, but I knew that this vendor was on Greentoe and they were local so I just emailed them directly so I knew who I was getting it from.

    Also, it's gorgeous.
    Click to expand...
    Must be nice! I'm out in Hawaii so my options are extremely limited.
     
    Carhole

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  • #134
    Minor progress note in optimizing audio and thoughts on UltraHD Blu-Ray vs 4K streamed content:

    Getting the bottom end crossed over into the fronts took a bit of fiddling with both Denon’s individual channel crossover frequency choices for each speaker, as this fade seems to sweep a good range of frequencies, and secondly, programming the EQs of each sub to roll off fairly aggressively above 80Hz to -12dB at 200Hz. This melds them very well with the large fronts, which have been set to dump LFE into the subs at 80Hz and lower. The Denon is not super graceful at crossing over a low pass without also affecting the midrange of the speakers that you’re cropping, as there are some diminished response curves that shouldn’t be happening and sound wrong. It’d help if I could define the slope and curves of the crossovers inside of the AVR but Denon doesn’t allow this, though the SVS app does a pretty good job of picking up where you pass a chunk of Hertz above your speakers’ low-end response curves, then cross-fade with a long sine into it from the bottom of the frequency response curve upward. It’s a cheap way to tune by ear.

    They sound very much like single speakers once you get it dialed in and cabinet boominess of the ported subs can be almost entirely nullified for very clean bass. The best part is that your LFE in cinematics will still shake your bowels, airways, and sofas.

    I still have problems with different Dolby codecs outputting different sound profiles as to be just noticeable enough to be annoying, so the second speaker preset of the AVR needs to get used if doing a bit of switching between DD surround to Atmos content. Enabling dialog enhancements for some content sounds more natural, with no adverse artifacting that I can hear over movie effects. Additionally the Restore function in the AVR is pretty clean at Medium for really smoothing out crisp highs in compressed content where the waveforms are chopped. It does a decent job rebuilding without exaggeration. Going to the high setting for reconstruction can be slightly tinny.

    UltraHD content on the 77” screen looks so good it is astonishing that at over six feet of TV one can still see individual leaves from a forest scene, or minute particles tracking across the screen. Compared to purchased digital content pushed from the Apple TV 4K, there’s a bit of an improvement. Is it worth having an expensive player and collection of media? Not really IMO, and yes, you can see the improved fidelity, but the compression of streamed 4K from Apple is very hard to pick up while a motion picture is in …motion. You’ll lose a bit of sharpness, so sci-fi settings and highly detailed landscape scenes lacking film grain will look a bit lower in fidelity. As such, I’m keeping my UltraHD setup for standout blockbuster films and will add a few more every year just because the technology looks soooo good. Maybe purchase someone’s used library to save a few bucks.

    Audio improvements are harder to pin down, as Apple’s repacking their Atmos content perfectly for 5.1.2 utilizing center heights, so you might gain a bit of fidelity in the audio streams themselves from the UltrHD 7.1.4 codec but what your AVR does with it is what matters more—sometimes it comes across remastered better for my small channel mapping and interpolation of a four channel height arrangement leaves the elevation effects a little bit diminished, almost like I feel like I’ve busted the room correction. Pretty much everything I’m describing makes me want a higher-end Denon to match the other components, but it’s a good compromise for now.

    HDMI cable quality matters when running video from the UltraHD source, as black scenes will show missing pixels in white if your cable isn’t carrying fat bandwidth. Connection ends matter as well. The S90D is also particular about signal integrity to the point that the TV will turn off for a moment if an UltraHD disk isn’t getting its nitrate fed to the screen via shitty cables.

    The LG G4 should be arriving soon so it’ll be nice to do A/B comparisons. Sooon
     
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  • #135
    Paradise tax: the 77” G4 is sitting somewhere on the island and the delivery company just called to let me know that they won’t be coming today, after three reschedulings mind you, because “I’m a little bit out of their area”. Well that sucks, though perhaps I’ll get some hefty discount asking Costco to make it right by knocking say, 50% off of the price for having me come get it and install it myself. We’ll see what happens.

    Incindentally the S90DD has been working flawlessly aside from the occasional motion handling stutter (it can be quite jarring) and is doing a nice job with Dolby Vision content, though the panel has broken in exceptionally well for the dark greys to show well and I may just keep it u til we see a generational improvement become available. hmmm, that’d put a good chunk of money either into savings or towards a Denon A10H. Yeshhhhshh
     
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  • #136
    Alright, painlessly refunded for that rather expensive fail. What a strange thing, and even their e-commerce rep was baffled that the delivery & mounting services kept scheduling and rescheduling when they didn’t even yet have the device. To be clear, Handy Services canceled on me. Furthermore, the Costco rep stated that the TV was still on a barge from the mainland so yeah, some logistics fuckups are happening here. Handy’s CSRs gave four different reasons for opting out of their contract all depending on who I wrote or spoke to. WTF, but first-world problems on The Island can get a bit tricky even with good companies such as Costco.

    After this experience I’ll wait a bit to see what price trends do in both A/V worlds, or just change projects altogether with that last bit of fun budgeting for the year. Meh. Perhaps this is enough to tide me through the trade wars, and when new panels with compelling feature upgrades hit the actual warehouse and go on sale next holiday season I can try again. In the meantime I’ll make a nice console out of some Koa that I have been hoarding for eons. Fuckers.
     
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  • #138
    Mental Gear Reduction said:
    Darn, I was really looking forward to the screen comparison.
    Click to expand...
    Me too, though I was only expecting diminished returns on picture quality at this tier and expecting to notice a greater standout in motion smoothing with the LG G4 rather than some massive wow factor that say switching from SDR LCD to HDR OLED lends to the user experience.
     
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  • #140
    Semi On said:
    Why would you notice that when you're going to turn it off like any self respecting screen enthusiast? ;)
    Click to expand...
    The S90D has issues with stutter, so I was expecting the IQ jump offered by both the LG G4 and Sony A95L over how the S90D can sometimes make “snaggy” pans. It’s quite distracting. I’m referring to regular TV content consumption at ~60Hz, not gaming at 244Hz.
     
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  • #141
    Carhole

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  • #142
    Semi On said:
    Ah, you aren’t referring to the feature called “motion smoothing.”

    https://variety.com/2022/film/news/motion-smoothing-how-to-shut-off-1235176633/
    Click to expand...
    No, not the jump to interpolated 100-120Hz for the dreaded SOE, but simply how the panel is capable of constant panning, or isn’t in some cases with low frame rates. The instant refresh makes 24-30Hz challenging on the brain as chunks refresh across the screen at inches per frame, that’s just a feature of the OLED, but the Apple TV outputs in 60FPS or 50FPS for most 4K cinematic content and the S90D disables motion smoothing in Cinema mode. The result is a natural looking image. You can force “Judder Reduction” on under image>expert setting>image clarity>custom which is similar to what is described in the article that you linked, and the SOE can be quite bad and artifact as well such as showing color displacement ahead of a fast moving object. It does a shit job at fake frame interpolation based on my trialing of different settings, at least if you’re looking for it. The stutter is a bug or processor failure:

    What gets me is high-contrast scenes where your brain can’t quite compensate for the low frame rates instantly refreshing a sweeping panoramic vista behind a focal point such as say Paul Atreides standing on a dune, on Dune, in Dune Pt One or two where the stil suits are dark grey or almost black against the glowing sands of Arrakis. The TV may be trying to render a smooth pan and most of the time it will per source output, then all of the sudden there will be what appears like a frame drop or a stutter in the playback, so that panning is no longer paced correctly. It throws your eyes for a bit.

    I need to see what more UktraHD Blu-ray output looks like by comparison and also if using the older Apple TV that can only do 4K/30 offers any benefit, though that last week or so of viewing content has been great. I settled on Filmmaker Mode as my goto and only made slight corrections to the factory defaults. These include warm2, contrast enhance medium (sometimes high if it’s a dark film), and subjectively, color boosting can be fun with cartoon or fantasy content. The calibrated gamut 2.2 is very good once the OLED has broken in but shadow details will need to be boosted on a new set because the black crush is brutal. My display took weeks to open up more accurate grayscales so I was fussing with shadow details a lot. Lastly, max brightness to high and that’s pretty much good to go.

    Thankfully that stutter isn’t a constant issue, otherwise the display would’ve gone back day one. It is frustrating that it cannot be totally eliminated for all content.

    Here’s a handy link for the Apple TV setup:
    Match content setting on an Apple TV 4K.
     
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  • #143
    Carhole said:
    S90D can sometimes make “snaggy” pans. It’s quite distracting.
    Click to expand...
    That's probably my only complaint about my Samsung (QN90BA85). I have it set up to just display what it is given without changing it, but some pans are "snaggy" as you called it. No one else in the house has complained. I may look into the manual and see if I can just add a little motion smoothing, although I seem to remember the manual was mostly garbage.

    (several days later)

    OOoh boy, what an adventure in modern electronics.

    While digging around in the settings and fiddling with things I noticed that the TV was only doing 4K@60Hz. Well there's the problem.

    I basically have a HTPC hooked up to a receiver and output to the TV.

    I started with making sure the receiver and TV had all their updates. The receiver had no issues, just plugged in an ethernet cable and clicked update. 30 minutes later it was done. The TV on the other hand was a mess. I don't hook my TV up to the internet so did the update by USB and it just wouldn't work. Downloaded, unzipped and put the files on a USB just like the instructions said and it just would never see the update. So I tried hooking up an ethernet cable to the TV and it would see my network but could never see the Internet. I don't remember adding any blocking in the router, and online searching had a lot of people complaining about various Samsung TV's just not ever seeing the USB stick and updating and not updating over internet either. The TV would see the files but wouldn't engage the update. So I copied all the files out of the main folder and put them in the root of the USB stick in various different configurations hoping the TV would see and activate the update which it eventually did. I'm still not sure how it worked, but I suspect I was holding my tongue in the right way.

    After the TV and receiver updated, was still only getting 60HZ to the TV. I dug into the depths of the receivers' menus and made sure all the setting were where they needed to be and still no luck.

    That only left the HTPC, I just couldn't get it to change refresh rate over 60Hz. Until one time when I was moving the stand for the AV equipment, and I was getting 120HZ but not reliably. Lightbulb went off and I replaced the HDMI cable from the HTPC to the receiver and I now have glorious 4K@120Hz again. YAY!

    It was the HDMI cable. It was either always flakey and I just didn't notice or became flakey
     
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  • #144
    Kaiser Sosei said:
    That's probably my only complaint about my Samsung (QN90BA85). I have it set up to just display what it is given without changing it, but some pans are "snaggy" as you called it. No one else in the house has complained. I may look into the manual and see if I can just add a little motion smoothing, although I seem to remember the manual was mostly garbage.

    (several days later)

    OOoh boy, what an adventure in modern electronics.

    While digging around in the settings and fiddling with things I noticed that the TV was only doing 4K@60Hz. Well there's the problem.

    I basically have a HTPC hooked up to a receiver and output to the TV.

    I started with making sure the receiver and TV had all their updates. The receiver had no issues, just plugged in an ethernet cable and clicked update. 30 minutes later it was done. The TV on the other hand was a mess. I don't hook my TV up to the internet so did the update by USB and it just wouldn't work. Downloaded, unzipped and put the files on a USB just like the instructions said and it just would never see the update. So I tried hooking up an ethernet cable to the TV and it would see my network but could never see the Internet. I don't remember adding any blocking in the router, and online searching had a lot of people complaining about various Samsung TV's just not ever seeing the USB stick and updating and not updating over internet either. The TV would see the files but wouldn't engage the update. So I copied all the files out of the main folder and put them in the root of the USB stick in various different configurations hoping the TV would see and activate the update which it eventually did. I'm still not sure how it worked, but I suspect I was holding my tongue in the right way.

    After the TV and receiver updated, was still only getting 60HZ to the TV. I dug into the depths of the receivers' menus and made sure all the setting were where they needed to be and still no luck.

    That only left the HTPC, I just couldn't get it to change refresh rate over 60Hz. Until one time when I was moving the stand for the AV equipment, and I was getting 120HZ but not reliably. Lightbulb went off and I replaced the HDMI cable from the HTPC to the receiver and I now have glorious 4K@120Hz again. YAY!

    It was the HDMI cable. It was either always flakey and I just didn't notice or became flakey
    Click to expand...
    Sounds like a frustrating way to learn that HDMI bandwidth is needed! Glad that you figured it out.

    Mess around with motion smoothing (judder) in increments to see if you can find a safe blend of hitch-free panning without invoking soap opera cheesiness and you might be happy. Somewhere around 3-out-of-10 on the S90D does a decent job for TV shows, and some movies, though if there’s a really long pan, the smoothing will interpolate say a pan across 1/3 of screen looking perfectly natural (I do not know how many fake frames are inserted over 60Hz) but then there will be a tiny hitch again, and that tiny snag is enough to blow the whole experience. So you may get a total of two total screen snags as the cinematography so subjectively breaks Samsung’s IQ processing, while at other times it will work very well and you should be alright with it. I’ve got days without a single image snag, then just likely content contrast or some other color contrast triggers the intermittent failure mode. It makes my brain itch every time.
     
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  • #145
    Carhole said:
    Sounds like a frustrating way to learn that HDMI bandwidth is needed! Glad that you figured it out.

    Mess around with motion smoothing (judder) in increments to see if you can find a safe blend of hitch-free panning without invoking soap opera cheesiness and you might be happy. Somewhere around 3-out-of-10 on the S90D does a decent job for TV shows, and some movies, though if there’s a really long pan, the smoothing will interpolate say a pan across 1/3 of screen looking perfectly natural (I do not know how many fake frames are inserted over 60Hz) but then there will be a tiny hitch again, and that tiny snag is enough to blow the whole experience. So you may get a total of two total screen snags as the cinematography so subjectively breaks Samsung’s IQ processing, while at other times it will work very well and you should be alright with it. I’ve got days without a single image snag, then just likely content contrast or some other color contrast triggers the intermittent failure mode. It makes my brain itch every time.
    Click to expand...
    Replacing the cable and getting back to 120Hz seems to have fixed it for me. I watched a few scenes that I know would trigger it and it's much smoother now not even really noticeable.
     
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  • #153
    Carhole said:
    Sorry, soap opera effect, where cinematic content all the sudden looks fake a bit overtly fluid, and the lighting and color grading get borked. I thought that this was a common acronym amongst the AV crowd.
    Click to expand...
    Ah. No*

    *I don't watch live TV or much of any broadcast TV really so I have the TV set to "film maker mode" and I have the Picture Clairity (motion smoothing) off as well.

    I did watch a little bit of broadcast TV last night and it looked fine to me, but none of it was fast moving action. I should see if any sports are actually sent OTA and watch something. Oddly enough there was a commercial for a new soap opera and it really stood out. Commercials, how quaint.
     
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  • #154
    No broadcast content here at all—only streaming shows, movies, and a few films on disk. I wonder if your set is just defaulting to 60FPS. I’m going to dig around this evening to see if I can pull up an overlay on the S90D to see data rates, resolution, refresh rate, etc. as there’s a brief moment where the set shows this while connecting new sources so perhaps it’s possible to dig it out of a service menu. I’m personally curious to learn what looks best to my eyes for various content. It should save some time while dorking around with other inputs aside from gaming where I’ll let it rip.
     
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    Negative Entropy

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  • #156
    Hey guys, I am late to the party here but thought I might add some of what I learned on the audio side when designing and constructing my home theater (ended up with a 9.3.4 setup). I’ll stick to audio as my display research has been limited to projectors.

    This audio info I have is about 16-18 months old (or older) and I have not thought deeply about it since I made my speaker and amp decisions about 16 months ago.

    So block of salt and all that.

    I’ll start by reinforcing what others have said: like many topics in science and the human nervous system, this is a deep rabbit hole. Add in the snake oil, people trying to sell you something, and generations of assumptions and misconceptions (and things that used to be true and no longer are, like Class D amps being terrible for sound quality) and there’s a lot of misinformation available. I’ll try to not make that worse.

    The bible in this space in general is Toole’s “Sound Reproduction”. If you want to dig deep in audio, start there. Also some specific links at the end on subwoofer measurements, as that is the topic of this post.

    First, as a practical matter, if you want good sound on the cheap, just get a set of good headphones 😊. Filling a room with sound will cost ~25-50x more for the same quality and volume and control (speakers, amps, room treatments, eq, etc.).

    I did not scrutinize each and every post in this thread, but I think the biggest misconception I saw is the “ported subwoofers are slow”, muddy, less musical, etc. I don't think that's true.

    I"ll do a follow up post later on Atmos stuff (though I see a new thread on the main A/V page on the subject I have not looked at yet, so it may go better there).

    Assumption: both subs are well designed.

    Statement based on what I've researched: A ported sub will sound the same (to humans) as a sealed sub with the same driver size at the same SPL until you approach the tuning frequency of the ported sub. And when you turn it up, the ported sub will play louder, often much louder, at lower frequencies, where the power requirements increase rapidly. So one key to choosing a good ported sub, is a sub where the port tuning frequency is low, think around or below 20 Hz. Because as you get to and below the tuning frequency, THEN some group delay and port effects can cause the ported sub to sound different. But we can't really hear the sounds that low (20-25Hz threshold, depending, just feel them.

    The reality is that if you want home theater levels of sound (loud at ~30Hz or below), especially in a large room, ported is a no brainer if your décor supports it.

    If music is your thing, then reproduction at frequencies this low matters less (or not at all!), unless you are REALLY into pipe organs.

    The trade off is a ported sub will be LARGER and therefore heavier too (all else equal).

    Here are some CEA2010 measurements of 2 models Rythmik subs, same driver, same amp, one ported (tuning frequency of 12.5Hz with 1 port plugged), one sealed.

    The F18 is sealed, basically a 21" cube and weighs 125lbs.

    The FV18 is ported, almost 50% taller at 21"x33"x22" and weighs 160 lbs.

    You'll see the output is the same down to about 50 Hz, then the ported unit starts "winning".

    A 6dB difference is twice as loud. i.e. take 2 subs and stack them, and you get a 6DB increase in SPL.

    1740845246846.png 1740845423804.png

    In this CEA test method, the sub is sent signals and the SPL and distortion are measured. The test stops for each frequency either when the sub stops getting louder (amp limited - green above) or the distortion cap is hit for that frequency (THD limited - that brownish color above). The distortion caps are based on our ability to detect it audibly and are in the standard. The lower the frequency, the higher the distortion cap. Distortions below the cap are considered inaudible in the real world.

    So for my space, I decided I needed a minimum of 2 subs, preferably 3 to even out the frequency response (see this Harmon paper: https://www.harman.com/documents/multsubs_0.pdf ) and increase the average SPL across the main listening position.
    Based on my SPL goals, that would require either 2-3 very powerful 15" units, or decently powerful 18" units. I ended up with 3, vented 18" subs. Your goals may differ :)

    Refs for more details (rabbit hole):

    https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/audibility-of-distortion-at-bass

    https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/understanding-loudspeaker-measurements

    https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/loudspeaker-measurements-2

    https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/measurements-3
     
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    Carhole

    Carhole

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  • #157
    Negative Entropy said:
    I did not scrutinize each and every post in this thread, but I think the biggest misconception I saw is the “ported subwoofers are slow”, muddy, less musical, etc. I don't think that's true.
    Click to expand...
    Your input would be a lot more useful if you addressed this statement with the rest of your post, instead of talking and demonstrating the difference in SPL that the more efficient speaker design offers re: ported sub.

    Since as you know we like to keep things scientific at Ars, supporting your argument that a ported subwoofer is just as fast to make bass without any, say "muddiness" as most of us word the sound of slow bass response to a fast transient, and dynamic bass load from a soundtrack, electronic bassline, LFE, etc, we'd need to see why propogating sound via a cabinet is just as fast as simply pumping sound waves directly at the listening position, and that if it weren't just as fast, that humans couldn't detect this delay.

    Unfortunately, the speed of sound is very slow in normal atmospheric conditions, so slow that we hear this on a daily basis is the compresion and stretching of sound waves via dopplar shift of say, passing cars. Bass emanating from a subwoofer cabinet design is compressed, gets ordered, tuned, and pumped through folding the rear impulse of a driver for an an addtional cycle of the driver and this takes time to make its way out and around and dumped into the listening space as audio, and I'm meaning separate from any cabinet resonance. "Boominess" as you may have seen many people claim to dislike is that ported subwoofer cabinets sustain in real life scenarios, and that delay if falloff is audible in addition to the slower response time of the speaker design. This is perceived as discolored bass, and inaccurate sound reproduction since we ideally don't want any resonance to keep ringing once the input has told the speaker to stop making that note, or if it's too slow to transitiont to creating a new note in very quick basslines or effects.

    The difference between the SB and PB-1000s is fairly stark regarding your two talking points: the immediacy and accuracy of the sealed box is extremely impressive, yet it is a very weak subwoofer for higher SPLs. The PB-1000 Pros, utilizing the same amp and driver, is impressive in that it has much of the immediacy of the sealed-box version at lower SPL levels with both ports unbunged, and the cabinet harmonics at higher frequencies are very easy to EQ out using SVS' app.

    It'd be nice to have some tools to measure, and add empirical data to my findings just on this set of speakers as both designs are exceptionally "good", yet both aren't suitable for everyone's needs in small-medium sized listening spaces. Note that the ported brethren introduce another difficulty in that their room gain is also more problematic for tight, accurate bass response as the space is left also resonating during louder sequences, or of course at resonate frequencies that the AVR cannot correct for at lower SPL.

    I believe that even a novice musician or everyday moviegoer or music enthusiast could hear the playback differences between their tracks from each subwoofer and note that there is inflation or deeper response with the ported variants, and potentially muddied low end and looser articulation compared to the sealed variant. It's factually occuring difference between the designs, hence there are two different designs sold.

    Google's AI output sums up nicely from various sources:

    Yes, generally a ported subwoofer is considered slightly slower than a sealed box subwoofer, meaning it takes a bit longer to respond to rapid changes in the signal due to the added delay from the port, resulting in a slightly less "tight" bass response compared to a sealed box; however, ported subs can produce significantly more loudness (SPL) at low frequencies when properly designed.

    Key points to remember:
    • Sealed box:
      Offers faster transient response, meaning it reacts quicker to sudden changes in the audio signal, providing a tighter bass sound with less "boom".

    • Ported box:
      Can produce higher sound pressure levels (SPL) at low frequencies due to the port amplifying the bass, but may exhibit a slight delay in response time compared to a sealed box.

    Click to expand...
    Their sources include a Crutchfield selection guide, or take this succinct bite from teh following link:
    A sealed box also reduces what we call group delay. Group delay is a measurement that tells the equipment when the sound is playing and determines how long does it take for the subwoofer to stop playing at different frequencies. So group delay determines the time it takes for the loudspeaker to stop working, so to speak. The sound coming from the port in a ported subwoofer will be delayed one cycle relative to the driver, so that it takes longer time for the subwoofer to actually deliver the signal. Whether or not this is audible is a discussion point, but nevertheless, a sealed box mitigates this phenomenon and you will often get the impression of "tighter" bass when you have a sealed subwoofer compared to a ported ones.
    Click to expand...
    ...from a Dynaudio description of the speaker design physics.

    Anyhow, one could go on but yes, sealed boxes are faster and more accurate. Perhaps you simply haven't experienced the difference in your listening space or elsewhere or simply, subjectively prefer the sound of a deeper digging port-tuned sub with low cabinet sustain? Anyhow, thanks for your thoughts on it. It's good to get the basics of this correct despite this not being the intent of this thread--it does seem that a few folks are upgrading and could benefit from being informed on the theory before shopping.
     
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    Negative Entropy

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  • #158
    Carhole said:
    Your input would be a lot more useful if you addressed this statement with the rest of your post, instead of talking and demonstrating the difference in SPL that the more efficient speaker design offers re: ported sub.
    Click to expand...
    ...

    Carhole said:
    Anyhow, one could go on but yes, sealed boxes are faster and more accurate. Perhaps you simply haven't experienced the difference in your listening space or elsewhere or simply, subjectively prefer the sound of a deeper digging port-tuned sub with low cabinet sustain? Anyhow, thanks for your thoughts on it. It's good to get the basics of this correct despite this not being the intent of this thread--it does seem that a few folks are upgrading and could benefit from being informed on the theory before shopping.
    Click to expand...
    Fair enough and thanks for the dialog. Post was already long so cut it where it was.

    I don't disagree with the common conception that sealed subs are audibly "faster". I mean that's what you see written 95% of the time, as you found.

    I just don't think it's always true.

    I think it used to be almost always true, and I think it's sometimes true today, but I don't think it's true for a well designed ported sub.

    Like anything, this assumes it's properly integrated with the mains (time aligned, SPL matched).

    My understanding is that the way to measure this "fastness" is with group delay. Perhaps this is where I err? Anyway, the rest of this assumes group delay is the appropriate metric.

    A good ported sub, with a low port tuning frequency, will have a likely inaudibly low group delay.

    Will it be higher than a sealed sub? Yes. Absolutely. That's physics as you pointed out. Will the difference be audible? I doubt it.

    Unfortunately it seems not to be settled science or I would point to that. And no, I have not attempted to conduct that testing myself. As you may know, double blind audio testing is extremely difficult to pull off.

    My searching failed to find a level matched, double blind sub listening test for this topic. Which is unfortunate, because at the end of the day that's what matters IMO (what's audible).

    Ported mains/surrounds will have the same increase in group delay as it approaches the port tuning frequency. A frequency that's typically much more audible because it's (typically) at something like 40-80Hz, not 15Hz. Someone who will only accept sealed subs, should only accept sealed mains (or cross them over well above the port tuning frequency).

    To me it's analogous to SINAD in an amplifier. I have one amp with an 85dB SINAD. I have another that's about 100dB. I can't hear the difference. I don't think most could.

    I'm not an expert in this area (or anything audio), but this Audioholics discussion covers this, starting at about 25 minutes:
    View: https://youtu.be/nP57-RfSOPc?t=1519
     
    Carhole

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  • #159
    A simple thought exercise might go like this:

    A sound is pushed in one pulse from your speaker cone directly towards your ear, and the wave is then pulled back as the driver retracts back into the cabinet. In a sealed sub this is all that is happening as a simple thought model anyhow and the sound wave could be visualized perhaps as a rubber band between driver and eardrum, tension and compression changing on that rubber band.

    The ported version, that same signal has the immediate push, and following pull, to begin the sound just as the sealed box does. The pressure is then redirected from the back of the driver so that it aligns in timing to push on the second impulse that the driver sends at the listener, thus a second impulse is added one cycle of driver excursion and retraction and boom, that is added output, but at the cost of taking time in excursion cycles to build the additive pressure. I’m again leaving out tuning of the enclosure to make any additional bass, but it’s the gist of the difference.
     
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  • #160
    Negative Entropy said:
    I think it used to be almost always true, and I think it's sometimes true today, but I don't think it's true for a well designed ported sub.
    Click to expand...
    It takes time for a resonance to both build up and fade away. If it doesn't take time, it's not resonance, and it doesn't help your sound output level.
     
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