AV Rant #999.6: Death Knell For Xbox

0:00Only when his tears wash the ashes of the dead from his eyes, will Cassian know whether he was the Savior, or destroyer. Cassian has been cursed since childhood. The faintest contact with his skin causes him agonizing pain. The all-powerful clerics who rule the city are convinced his condition is a blessing from the gods, and his suffering will be rewarded. His faith nearly exhausted, the only reward Cassian seeks is to touch Laurel, the woman he loves. When a mysterious outsider with powers that rival the clerics offers to help, Cassian is forced to make a choice. He can side with the clerics and trust in their prophecies, or he can follow the stranger and chance the wrath of the gods. Driving to lift his curse and finally wrap his arms around Laurel, Cassian will uncover

1:01his true destiny. But not all destinies are heroic, and Cassians may well usher in unimaginable destruction. Touch of Pain is a high fantasy novel from Tom Andrew, host of the AVRANT podcast. Download it from Amazon.com. Welcome to the AVRANT, I'm Tom Andrew and I'm here with you. Rob H, this is AVRANT, it's your home theater and AV questions answered. And yeah, I took extra long, I made a start late this morning even though Tom was ready, so here we are. It shouldn't be late, and I wasn't late, it just wasn't as lazy as I normally would be. It shouldn't be quite as packed as show, but we'll see how we go. Every time I say that, we seem to manage to go over time anyway, so we'll see how it is. Yeah, I have, again, I don't have a hard out, but I do have a, I have stuff to do out.

2:07Yep, yep, yep. So those of you wondering what's going on with the house and I don't know why you would be too long, didn't reversion is they tried again to find the leak, the leak detection company came out again because they were like, listen, we're not finding it and they came out and they basically said, listen, this is, you're going to have to replum your house. So we are replum in the house and that will happen next week, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. So for Rob, what does that mean? That means I, I don't know, I don't know what the condition of the house, I'm not going to expect our count on you being here at end. You should, obviously, prior, how it's filling up with water, so you know there is a leak. It's not like, right. So the problem is, is that the pipes are sunk inside the concrete in the footer or something. I don't quite understand. That's not how, I guess that's not how it's supposed to be, but that's how it was and they, somebody messed up, basically at the city who said, you know, you inspected it and

3:08said, it was fine, somebody signed off on it or somebody signed off on it or did that. I don't know. My wife has explained this to me two or three times and my eyes glaze over when she starts talking to the difference between the footer and the sign. It's anyways, it's way down there and basically the leak detection company said, if, if it, you know, it, it's very much from everything we can tell, it is inside the concrete, which means that what has happened is the house is settled or whatever, however things go when you put large weights on top of the masses of concrete and it's cracked the pipe and that's where the leak is coming from. Yeah. I can see that for sure. That's, that is, we could find it. We could Swiss cheese your foundation, which you shouldn't do to find this leak. Right. We could fix it, but then over time, our houses, other pipes are also have been installed that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

4:09I can see the logic of it. The logic is very clear. The logic was also present to us weeks ago when the first guy said, I think you guys should really repel this house. No. I mean, like given the obvious cost disadvantage of doing that, like I'm, I'm still surprised that it hasn't been possible to just find where this leak is actually happening because you know it's in the span between the hot water heater and your kitchen. So what happened was the, the house was initially designed, like the initial design for the house that was submitted to the, to the city had all the bedrooms and bathrooms on the other side of the house. Okay. So where this leak is is where a bathroom would have been not inside the kitchen. So it is kind of in the middle of the floor on the outside of the kitchen in the living room. It's like, why is there even a pipe over here? It doesn't make sense. Why there would be pipe? Well, the reason that it's there is because that's what they initially planned on putting all the bedrooms and bathrooms. Yeah. I wonder if something just didn't get capped properly if that's all it is.

5:10Well, it doesn't matter. We're going to, we can't find it and there's a huge hole. Leave me. They have dug underneath the cabinets in my kitchen trying to find this thing and it's not, it's not being found. So it's a done deal. They're coming on Monday. I don't know what, you know, because most of it's going to be just fitting pipes in the attic and, you know, just disconnecting what is there currently and redoing it from, from the hot water. It's like three days of work is what they estimate and the biggest, the biggest problem is that they have to trench a new line to the island where the, in the kitchen where the, so sink is, yeah, just can't go up and down for that one. Not without installing something else into the, you know, like a, highly, unsightly column that comes down from the ceiling to my, making it not much of an island anymore. So that's the, the biggest problem. The rest of it's all like attic and wallworks that will cut holes behind all the fixtures

6:10where there's dry, there's drywall at, you know, they'll cut, cut like a 12 inch square behind the fixtures and then they'll run pipes and they've run everything dry for about three days. And then they get an inspector out here basically to, they pressure test the whole system, ensure that it's, there's no leaks anywhere. And then it really only takes an hour or two, maybe a three, the most, to swap over the fixtures, you know, you basically, well, yeah, I mean, the actual, if, if things are done that way and there's very little digging that has to be done, sounds like there's some digging that has to be done, but not like literally the entire house has to be redug type of thing. So it's like the actual installing of the pipes, I mean, that I would definitely believe is a three day job. But like, then all the little drywall repairs and like, if you don't want any, yeah, if you don't want any of the paint to be noticeable, it means essentially repainting the entire house. Otherwise, you have that little patch that, you know, has to be blended in, which is never flawless looking when you shine on it on it. We're going to see, so that these, you know, this, these walls were just painted like

7:16every wall in this house was just painted when we did six months ago. So we'll see how, how it ends up looking. We're not repainting the whole house. I'll tell you that right now. We're going to have you up with these a furniture and from the very, make sure there's these things. No direct lighting on where any of the patches are made. And it's like, yeah, it's not like they have to literally open the whole wall because you can fit the pipe in and down and up and whatever. And they are you, I would assume they're using the flexible pipe as opposed to, you know, rigid copper, which can be bent, but then not always the best. Oh boy, yeah, wow, so anyways, well, I'm so ready to put the ground on pretty sure is copper. Everything else is going to be there. Sure. PVC, F, C, I don't know. I don't even know what the recommended one is these days, yeah, whatever it is, it'll be up there. So I assure you, not not been so gung ho on the pecs piping anymore, unfortunately. So, yeah. So we will see, um, yeah. So that's basically what's been going on with me. I did. Oh, it's a little update on the home theater situation.

8:19So I have a hung all four of the elevation speakers. So the atmosphere speakers are hung. That's all done. Ready to go. I've gotten in the ghost wire that I ordered, but the extra connectors that I need because I got 50 feet of ghost wire, I'm just going straight up the wall. I'm basically going to plug it in at the bottom and then go straight up the wall. That extra four connectors I need for the other two speakers because it comes with four connectors, like 50 feet and four connectors. The extra four connectors I'll need for the other two speakers because I'm only doing like 10 foot runs of this stuff. I'm still waiting on it. It's actually supposed to be delivered today, ordered speaker stands for the front and the rear. The rear ones arrived yesterday. I haven't had the chance to take them out of the box, but I did this. Oh, which ones did you go with? Yes. We chatted a little bit about that offline, you and I. I went with the ones from being in each photo that you recommend. Okay. I think those are the canto ones, the canto ones because they're pretty nice looking and

9:21adjustable. I think they went up to 42 winches max height. Yes. So the reason why I wanted these was because I'm not exactly sure where I'm placing these speakers. Okay. So they are able to, like if you have a wall mountable speaker, they are able to attach to the back of it just like with, they have multiple ways of doing it. So there is something for a keyhole mount that you can, I think you can like lock in, you can lock into this thing. There's also like a, a bar that they, that it comes with that comes across like parallel with the ground that you can attach the back of this thing on if you want to. Yes. It's got a screw hole mount instead of a cable mount. Yeah. And they have round flat bases which easily slide underneath things like capches. So I am, I am planning on essentially taking some, the rubber mat that you put on the

10:22floor, your gym. Okay. You know, those interlocking ones, I'm the cut round discs out of that and basically glue those to the bottom of this, of this thing so that they'll be nice and decoupled. And so they are here and ready to go and everything's in process for getting the whole thing set up. I did find out that apparently my, my Ultra HD player is in a box someplace in the sun. I found it. I don't know it has a power cable. Your, your Sony. Yes. Sony. Yes. And so that one is in here somewhere. Okay. So, you know, yay. I guess. Luckily that, that power cord I think is, I think it's just the figure eight type of power cord that goes in there. I'm pretty sure it's not a, not a IEC inlet on the player itself. It's the. Yeah. I'll have to double check that. That's, that's where we are in all of that. So. I was curious. So next week is, is maybe Tom's. Yeah. On the air. Yeah. The ghost wire installation. Did you, did you like mud and paint over it or you just adhered the ghost wire?

11:24We have not, we, we're. This whole weekend has been us looking at plans and talking to people about plumbing. So that arrived and I'm still, yes, but we are going to mud, I think the plan is to mud over it. Okay. I mean, when other parts of the house are going to have to be painted at the very least, the patches will have to be painted and then maybe you do that at the same time, it would kind of make sense. Yes, we will. Get that installed like I said, I'm waiting for the other two four connectors. Yeah. Cause I think you have to put the connectors on before you attach it to the wall. I think that's kind of how that works, but I will have to look. Yeah. Yeah. Just, just make sure once, once it's mudded and painted and therefore like really very invisible. Yeah. Make sure you like hanging a acoustic panel or something on the wall. You don't want to, you don't want to tap anything through the wire. Through that. Which is on the exterior of the wall, the ghost wire will be, it's not inside the wall,

12:26which is actually in some ways kind of nice because then you don't have to, you know, but the, the danger is forgetting it's there and hanging a picture right where that wire is. That's right. So what's going on with you, Rob? Oh, yeah. I can't say there's been a whole lot this past week, mostly just preparing tax stuff and that and waiting on some things that we're definitely supposed to have been here by law at the end of February and haven't arrived in my inbox or in my mailbox just yet. So yeah, getting, getting a little bit antsy there. I want to get, want to get taxes for all the people that I, I look after their taxes as well as my own, my own are very, very easy, but I'm still waiting on something for myself as well. Our tax deadline in Canada is not until April 30th. We don't have the middle of April like the US does. So I've got a, it's not like I'm in a time crunch just yet, but I still like to get those things done in case adjustments need to be made. But yeah, it's tax season over on my neck of the woods. We have tax season going on here. I know because my wife has been talking about it. I'm like, for sure. Yes. Good.

13:26Or bad. I don't know. However you feel about it is how I feel about it. Right. So she's, she's taken care of all that. All right. I didn't watch much this week. So the only thing I will say is that Ryan Gosling was on Saturday night live this week. I heard about that. Didn't see it. Yes. Apparently they just have given up with him. This man they have decided that he is, he is going to, he is going to laugh through every single scene they actively try to make him it's their single thing about him. So they have given up let trying to, to, to have him be able to make it through the scene. So there's, there's a particular scene in this episode where it's teacher that like he's playing a teacher with another actor who also breaks quite often. And that they're catching the kids with notes and then they flash a, an image up on the screen that says we, we changed all the notes from rehearsals.

14:31Right. Right. The notes are not the same. So they have to read these live. That message on the screen. On the screen. That's on the screen. They're like, we are trolling the heck out of this guy. It is, my wife was crying. She was, I was laughing uncontrollably. My wife was crying. We had to rewind a couple of scenes because we kept, we were laughing, we were, they say what they say. Because we couldn't hear them. It was by far the funniest scene. And on top of that, usually the highlight of, of center life for me is the, is a weekend update. Sure. And usually everything after weekend update is like these are all the, the, the skits that aren't that good, we laughed at, at least as much if not more after the, the weekend update. That's the scenes that we did before the weekend update scenes, they definitely front load that show. They tried to take the strongest skits and put them first and obviously set the back. It's reasons. So if you did not see the, very March, the March, whatever 7th, 8th, whatever that was,

15:34Saturday, 7th, live, 2026, go find it with Ryan Gosling. Okay. Just, they are cracking up throughout the entire thing. No, the most, I'm probably saying, no, I thought that Lauren Michaels was like a stickler on not cracking. And that was like a big, big thing. Oh, everyone, everyone says, yeah, like, yeah, like the, the message is that they take it very seriously and that no one has ever actually been disciplined or fired for breaking and they, they act like it's a, a big deal, but all of you, I mean, look, Jimmy Fallon was there for how many years, like did, did you ever say a single word? Without breaking? So, yeah, they even, they even got keen to crack and he never, oh, he never cracks. Yeah. He's also been there for a hundred years. So he's seen it all, but they even got him to crack this time. It was like uncontrollable. It was so good. So I would highly recommend that. So Rob, what, what downer drama did you watch this week? Well, I'm continuing on with the nominations for the 2025 Oscars.

16:40And so I watched one battle after another. So yeah, this was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. You know him from there will be blood and magnolia and punch drunk love and several other films. And so yeah, this is his latest one, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn, and then he got supporting roles from Benicio del Toro and Regina Hall. And then I think this was the second movie that young actress Chase Infinity has shown up in, but they sort of did a, they didn't say introducing, they gave her an and prestige credit at the end of the credits, but that's kind of like introducing. So maybe they had to change that because the other movie that she filmed in the same year came out first. So they had to change it from introducing. But anyway, yes. Okay. Let's see. Yes. I mean, that name, but that's it is not it is her real name. But anyway, one battle after another, a very appropriate title this movie is definitely one battle after another. So how do I approach this?

17:41Let's see. Art, right? Art in general. One of the things that art for good sign when you have to start the way we go on, one of the things that art in general is is a admirable goal of art is to get it to make you inspect yourself, right? Get you to look a little inward and think about your own attitude towards things. And this movie certainly did that for me because I hated every person in this movie. I didn't find a single person that I connected with or was rooting for in any way. If every single one of them had failed and died and had a horrible fate come to every single one of these characters, I would not have shed a single tear and I would have felt absolutely fine with that. Everyone in this movie is awful. Every character in this movie is someone I absolutely would not want to be around. Saving perhaps Regina Hall.

18:42She's the only character I felt a tiny bit of sympathy toward and she is in a tiny portion of this movie. It's merely a supporting role. Yeah. So not even though I could go on to that character and root for her, just a tiny little bit part, but maybe the only character that I felt any sort of sympathy toward. So that's me because I know from reading and listening to other people have reviewed this movie and I absolutely understand many people who said aspects of this movie spoke to my life experience. And there are some scenes that aren't exactly like it's not like spotlight camera holding on it make you look at this. It's like stuff going on in the background where people like it's not very often depicted in movies and people appreciated that real life experiences for immigrants from minorities, for people who are poor and downtrodden and have the entire government apparatus against

19:44them. It's like stuff that just isn't often portrayed and they appreciated that it was portrayed in this movie. And I appreciated that it was portrayed in this movie even though I can't say it's a lived experience for me like that part of the movie I very much appreciate. I also appreciate like this is a well-made movie, you know, it shot very well. It was all shot on this division film in a 1.5 to one aspect ratio. And so it was much of it was converted to IMAX and shown in the full 1.4.3 to 1 where they cropped a little bit of the left and right to make the 1.5 to 1 aspect, fit the 1.3 to 1, 3, 1.4, 3 to 1 and then for the other IMAX theaters, the digital ones, of course, the tops and bottoms were cropped to 1.9 to fit that aspect ratio. The home release is just released in 16 by 9, 1.78 to 1. So a little bit of the top and the bottom is cropped off. They didn't do a zooming or panning and scanning anything like that. There's a little bit of a crop of the original part that was shot here. So a lot of the movies this year that were nominated are making use of this taller aspect

20:46ratio in one form or another. This chose 1.5 to 1, the way that it was shot. But again, they are using that verticality, especially in not the very last scene, but the last sort of action sequence that takes place, which is all, I guess you could call it a car chase, but it's a little bit of an unusual car chase in that there are no other cars on the road besides two. It's a pursuit more than it is a chase. It's a pursuit scene and it's just these long stretching hilly roads. And I thought that that scene was, I hadn't really seen that before. I hadn't seen a car scene exactly like that before where they used the hilly landscape, both like to trick the audience and to trick the pursuit car character. And I thought, okay, that was that was kind of novel. I appreciated that chase scene. The thing that I liked about this movie is after I get past the first hour and 15 minutes, which, oh boy, I was struggling to keep watching this movie, I'm like, I'm going to watch this movie. I'm going to watch it to the end. But I was like, I hate everybody in this movie and I don't care what happens to them.

21:50And I'm not rooting for anybody. And whatever goes on, I'm not going to care. But after an hour and 15 minutes of that, because this is a two hour and 45 minute long movie. Of course, of course it is. Basically, after the first half of this movie, it is just kinetic. It just moves and moves and moves. And as the title suggests, it's one battle after another and it is a pursuit and it's a chase and it's a struggle and it's one thing after another very much so and it goes and goes and goes and goes. On a technical level, one of the criticisms I have is this is a movie where the score I found almost punishing. It's not that it's particularly loud and cacophonous or something like that, but it's just, it's one of the movies where I'm struggling a little bit to hear what everyone is saying. The music is constant and not quiet and it's going and going and going and going and it's like, yeah, you got to you got to struggle a little bit to make out what everybody is saying in this movie. And it never ever ends. There are a couple of very strange abrupt edits that didn't fit with the rest of

22:54the movie. It's not like it was a style choice that was used frequently. There's like two really abrupt strange cuts where I'm like, was this movie three hours long and they just needed to chop something out because that was a strange cut in a couple of places. But yeah, so this this story, I like, you know, I don't want to spoil things for people who want to watch it even though after what I'm saying, it might not be, it might not sound like a resounding thumbs up from Rob, which, which it isn't, but that's purely on based on, you know, whether I like this movie or not, I mean, it's, it's a very similar story plot to Les Miserables, honestly, except that there is no hope, there is no redemption, there is no pathos. Nobody changes their attitude in this movie. Everybody ends with the exact same thoughts and feelings that they began with. So there are no character arcs. And like this movie just left to me with the feeling of, well, if this is humanity, what's

23:55the point? Because the thing is the way everything's depicted in this movie, I don't blame anyone on either side for never even attempting to have a conversation with the other side. Because it is absolutely pointless for anyone to try and talk this through. So the fact that they are just at longer heads and running from each other or fighting each other or whatever, like, okay, I get that with the way this movie is depicted. I'm not blaming any character in this movie for not attempting to have a conversation, but it's just like, it's hopeless. It's a hopeless, hopeless feeling. There is no chance for a conversation, let alone reconciliation. There is no chance that anybody is going to change their mind on any of this. And just watching two hours and 45 minutes of that just felt punishing. I was like, like, what am I supposed to take from this movie that well? That life is one battle after another, that's all it is. And that's the best we can hope for, is that you survive to fight another day and there

24:56will never be a better day to come, there will just be another day. And that's the message I got from this movie, which is not a fantastic feeling to be left with. Performances in this movie. I mean, Sean Penn is like putting in more energy than I've seen him put into a role in years in an absolutely despicable loathsome character. But there's a 15 or 16 year time jump in this movie. And he is the only one that they made zero effort to look any different whatsoever. He looks exactly the same as the character 16 years ago as he does 16 years on. Everybody else they tried to age up at least a little bit and make it look like some time has passed. He looks exactly the same from beginning to end. Maybe they're trying to say that evil doesn't change over time. Something like that. This is Paul Thomas Anderson. So for the first half of this movie, I was kind of questioning like, are we even supposed to be on either side of this thing?

25:58And maybe that's the point is that both sides are utterly despicable and there's no hope for anyone. But it's Paul Thomas Anderson. So eventually he makes it very clear which side we're on in this movie. But does so in a cartoonish way, eventually the rich white people are just cartoon caricatures as they often become Paul Thomas Anderson movies. And it's kind of like, well, I mean, I already wasn't on their side, but it doesn't really make me on the other people's side all that much. Benizio del Toro I thought was the most entertaining part of this movie. You know, if I could maybe latch on to anybody whatsoever. But Leonardo DiCaprio, I mean, you know, he always puts in the effort. As an actor, but like, I don't think he's a stoner in real life because he was the least convincing stoner I've seen on screen in quite some time. I live in Vancouver. I know a lot of stoners. And so like, I don't know if he's ever been high in real life, but it did not ring true

27:00to me. And also, most people who are like utterly, utterly addicted to marijuana, they kind of have their favorite way of using marijuana. And this movie had to great links to show that he uses every form of marijuana possible, which I like just didn't, I don't know, maybe there's somebody out there who's like that, but it didn't quite feel right to me. It was like, it felt like a very put on stoner performance where he vacillated between being the dude in the big Lebowski. And then like 1980s, this is your brain on drugs commercial like that, that was the depiction of stoner that he went for. And I'm like, well, that just doesn't seem like real life. And it didn't click with me. Yeah. So there you go. Chase Infinity, much praise has been heaped upon her. And I thought she was good. I mean, when she first shows up in this movie, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, she's compelling. I like to watch her performance. But as it went along, we certainly get the, we get plenty of scenes to explain to us that she is afraid, but she's putting on a brave face, which totally makes sense for

28:05everything that's going on. But if I was just watching the scenes where she's putting on that brave face, I was like, I'm not reading any of the fear behind it, right? Like with, you know, the really great actors, they can put on a stone face, but you see that little bit of fear that's behind their eyes. Or there's just a slight bit of movement that, you know, gives away that they're not actually as confident as they're attempting to appear to be. She just looked like she really was that confident. So it's like, well, is she supposed to be that convincing in real life? Because the scene isn't being played that way. But also, she was, what, 15 or 16, when she made this movie, she's not like, you know, so... Yeah. Yeah, so... Come on. Well, yes, yeah. But I'm just saying, I'm just going at like the amount of praise I've seen heaped upon her for this performance. Like, I don't know if I go that far. I thought she was compelling. I think she has a great career ahead of her. She has a fantastic look and she is good. And she wasn't like swallowed up by being on screen next to Leonardo DiCaprio or anything like that. So, yes. But I just thought the amount of effusive praise was maybe a little over the top of

29:06the scene. So, yeah. I don't know. I don't know if anyone listening to my take on it because this is very much me. I know that there are people who got a totally different experience watching this movie than I did. And I can understand how that is the case. But yeah, I just found every single character to be absolutely loathsome. And for that reason, I can't say I enjoyed watching this movie. It did get better after the first half for me, for my viewing. I've made this comment before, but I'll make it again. I felt the same way when I watched Bad Lieutenant, the first one with Harvey Kaitel, for the first original with Harvey Kaitel. I got to the end of that movie. I was like, oh my God. Why did I watch that? Why did I spend all this time watching this movie? And it wasn't two hours and 45 minutes, thank God. Yep. But it was just awful. And that's the extreme example of why I don't watch dramas in general. Okay. Obviously. But I like to watch things that take me out of reality and don't remind me how terrible

30:09reality can help me. Sure. Yeah. But I do like dramas too, but usually lighter ones obviously than that. Right. So here's the thing. I don't regret having watched this movie. Don't take that away from what I said. Yeah. I'm not sitting here wishing I had never seen it because it is thought-provoking and it does make me inspect myself like I am thinking about it like, well, why am I like that? Why couldn't I empathize or feel sympathy for some of these characters? That's a, that's something on me. That's, you know, the movie is presenting something that in many ways I do think is pretty close to realistic. I think everything in this movie is a little bit, and it's Paul Thomas Anderson, so there are quite a few things that are a little bit tongue and cheek and satirical, you know, intentionally that, that is, that is his milieu. But, you know, like I say, some of those scenes that are like, okay, I can see how that somebody's lived experience and they would appreciate seeing that, like all of that matters to me, and I appreciate it, and I respect what is, it is done here, and I don't, I, yeah, it's not that I wish I hadn't watched or something like, or don't feel that it's worthy of

31:14recognition. It is a movie that's well made and, you know, well produced and, and worthy of recognition, but yeah, for, for me to say, it's certainly not a favorite, it's not an entertainment one, so that's where I come down on it. One battle after another, that one, alright, let's see it. This is A.V. Rant, the podcast that answers your home theater and A.V. questions, it's your questions answered. All you have to do is ask, yes, by emailing us at questionaavarrant.com, come to the website, find our shows or show notes, links to any products or articles that we'll refer to during this podcast, as well as previous episodes and all of that. You can find us on facebook.com slash avrantpodcasts, youtube.com slash avrant, contact Rob directly. Rob at avrant.com, his socials, his, his at first reflect, I'm Tom and avrant.com. I do not really do socials anymore, unfortunately. I spend time on some of them, Facebook in particular, I do spend some time on Facebook, but I

32:16block more people than I follow, that makes sense. I mostly use Facebook just to support local businesses that I am connected to in some way. So, I am the target audience for many of these, I am the age white dude, and they, my opinion unfortunately matters more than it should, so like if I know somebody, a friend who started here in town, a, like a yarn shop, it's like they sell yarn for like, knitting and stuff, and they have classes, and they have a coffee shop in there, and it's a really cute little store. I have absolutely, it's just nothing to do with me, but it has everything to do with people who are connected to me, so my wife wants to go, and in fact, I am going to go as well and take a class, I want to figure out this knitting thing, I used to do cross stitch when I was a kid. Yep, yep. So, I'm, you know, I like the, the common thread isn't even the place I'm here, common thread, housing peat. Anyway, so I like, like all their posts, just to help them out.

33:19When I think our listeners of the week, to become a listener of the week, support the podcast in some way, you can do that by going to aburant.com, click on the, buy us a cup of coffee link, and send us a PayPal donation, and Marco did that this week, so thank you very much, Marco. Yeah, for sure, Marco, thank you so much for that PayPal donation, we really appreciate the financial support. We also have a Patreon for those who want to support us monthly, not think about it. Patreon.com slash aburant podcast, you can sign up there and they will take every month, a little bit of money, whatever you tell them, some money from you and give most of it to us. So, we currently have 120 patrons over at patreon.com. That's right. One more time that is patreon.com slash avrant podcast. If you'd like to sign up to make an automatic monthly donation, so big thanks to our 120 patrons over there. So, we got Mr. Gratitude for keeping the podcast going from Infinite Gary, who though he's Grat, he's thankful that the podcast is here, but he was not a fan of Frankenstein despite Rob's review. Maybe you'll like this punch each other enough.

34:21That's it. Punch each other. That's what it's called. So, notes of gratitude from Infinite Gary, Henry Sean and Grinder, thank you for thinking us. That's right. I'll say it names one more time. We got Infinite Gary, Henry Sean and Grinder. Thank you all very much for the notes of gratitude and encouragement. We really appreciate them and a big, big thank you to everybody who continues to listen and send in your questions. The sofa baton in the news here, the sofa baton X2 universal remote has launched in full. Finally, and it decided, the sofa baton decided to run a clearance sale on the older X1S model, which is still a perfectly good remote. In fact, I would recommend it as well, based on everything everybody else has said about it. I haven't used it. X2 is great. I like the X2. It don't think it's perfect yet, but nothing's perfect. So, whatever, but the X1S is, by all reports, very good. At the moment, it's already 20% off on Amazon, making the price 160, but you can get an extra 10% by using our promo code, Tom, hey, what's, Tom X1S20, Tom X1S20, that is the promo

35:30code Tom X1S20, that is my name. Anyways, that brings the price down to 144 bucks. It's before tax and shipping, of course, if shipping applies to you. So, you enter the promo code in the payments section during Amazon checkout and make sure to check the box. The checkbox is ticked to apply your additional $16 discount. So, and full disclosure, obviously, the link at our show notes is an affiliate link, so we are making a small commission if you purchase through that link, so thank you very much. The commission is a little higher if you use the promo code, but everything we said about the X1S and Andrew's review as opposed to the AB gadgets, all took place well before any affiliate link or promo code offer. I don't know what we're saying all these words doesn't matter. So we stand by all previous results, remarks, sorry. And if the X1S sounds like the right remote for you, right now, you can save some money when you buy one while it's still around. So, the X1S, we have two different articles on the AB gadgets, both written by Andrew.

36:30So you can check those out. And I don't think Andrew's X2 remote also review also kind of compares it a little bit to the X1S. Yeah. Now, so if we thought it didn't say anything about discontinuing the X1S outright, it's just that they had a bunch of stock, obviously, the X2 has been all of the focus in recent times. And they're like, hey, we got this stock of X1S's. Let's run a little clearance sale. Let folks who've reviewed it and talked about it on podcasts and influences and all that get in on it. So that's what's going on with the X1S. So our, excuse me, RSL has launched a new section on their website. It's the on core store, which I have not clicked on yet, so I don't know whether this. In the past, RSL offered open box items of the approximate 10% discount, but now they've been reduced to cosmetic greeting systems so that open box products with minor or noticeable blend, which just can be sold at an even greater cost savings. So their entire lineup, product lineup of bookshelf speakers and ceiling and wall speakers

37:32and also buffer models in both black and white finishes, finish options are all listed in on core store. And you can request to be notified whenever stock is available. I paused there for a second because I was like, what possible blushes could be on the incealing speaker that anybody would care about, but I assume that the grow being dinged would be the one that would be. It could be a section that's behind the grill. I mean, it's unusual to not put the grill on an incealing speaker, but conceivably. Yeah. I don't know who would not have a grill. But anyways, a grade of products are cosmically flawless, exactly like the old open box items. B grade versions have minor blemishes that you won't notice from your seat only up close. And C grade have noticeable cosmetic blemishes and the biggest discount, you know, as a result. RSL stands firm that every item and their encore stores individually checked and tested in the guarantee that the performance is flawless. They provide this exact same warranty and support as their brand new items.

38:33So no 90 day limit or anything like that sales are final though. And inventory is very limited with availability, changing on a constant basis. So you also cannot apply any discount codes or promo codes to encore store items. But if you were looking for even lower prices on RSL care, and you're willing to wait in pants when the stock becomes available, keep it keeping an eye on their new encore store might be a good idea. So there you go. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, just figure that was worthy update because very often, one of the reasons that we're gung ho about, especially the RSL speed woofer subwoofers is that, you know, right now, if you're trying to find bang for the buck, if you're trying to get extension and output at the lowest price that you can find in a brand new product. I mean, people always point out there's the used market and that is true. But we like to point to, you know, products that you can buy brand so people do not like to buy used products. That's right. Yeah. Okay. For just general advice. But here is a way. If you know, like price is the number one factor directly from the manufacturer with

39:33what I like. Most of all is a full warranty, right? So often when you buy B stock or open box, it's only a 90 day warranty or something like that. And they're like, no, it is the full warranty as if it were new. But just be aware, you know, there might be a cosmetic blemish. But they have checked every single individual unit and confirmed that the performance is right. So in a way, sometimes like if you're getting the A stock at a 10% discount, essentially, but it's an individually checked unit, like sometimes I kind of prefer that to like even buying brand new because it's like this very unit has been checked and confirmed that it works properly. So there's no real chance of, you know, getting a brand new unit, you open up and something is defective. So there you go. At the very least they turned it on. That's right. And I mean, I wish someone had individually checked my TV before I, indeed, exactly. I don't know that they were the found what was wrong with that, but maybe they would have. All right. Also in the news, and they're in her new role, a CEO of Microsoft gaming, Asha, Sharma, quickly made some waves by publicly releasing the code name for the next Xbox console.

40:37And now we're conferring the confirming the rumor that would it will play both Xbox and PC games. So they're just releasing a PC. That's all they're doing. That's with the Xbox. I don't know how else you do that. It's a PC with the Xbox Amulator on it. Okay. That's all it is. That's fine. Just call us to make a spade. The code name is Project Helix, which doesn't invoke any thoughts of AI, by the way. I never thought of AI when somebody said Project Helix. Project Helix, you might as well call it Resident Evil, the console. Has anyone Xbox ever played a game? That's the one thing I really feel Spencer definitely used to, but he's retired now. He is, but you know, Helix, are you going to look at the logo of this thing? It looks like the T virus thing, whatever it was. I mean, obviously they're pulling from a double Helix DNA strand. No, what they're pulling from, but it looks like you're going to turn into a zombie

41:42by the end of this. So code name is Project Helix, and it already has a logo that plays off both the old X theme and the Helix name. So perhaps that name is going to stick. I mean, I wouldn't mind, you know, if the next generation is just Xbox Helix, I don't think that's a bad name. I don't know why they would develop this logo and then never use it other than as a development logo. I mean, I guess that happens. You have development logos. It's going to be called Xbox. It's going to be called something stupid. Helix is actually not a bad name. Xbox Helix would be kind of cool or just drop the whole Xbox and just call it Helix. It could be. And I kind of dig the logo, to be honest, I think it's a pretty decent logo. You know, mixing the X and the double Helix DNA into the shape of an X and I think that all kind of works. Well, it also. Well, in Resident Evil, where's the company's name? Sorry. That's the umbrella corporation is umbrella corporation. The umbrella corporation was always really good at marketing. That's how they got people to buy all the products.

42:44They were good with logos, but I'll let you get through the rest of the news, but then I'll make a comment on what I think this logo kind of kind of hints at a little bit potentially. Okay. So MDCO reconfirmed that the next Xbox console will continue forward with and with AMD processing and graphics. So backwards convalidability should be a given, especially considering it's just a simulator anyways, but with the confirmation that Project Helix will also play PC games. Some of the speculation is obvious. Well, this new home console function, just like the recent aces, roge, Xbox Alley Alley Alley Alley, yes, handheld units, I mean, it's just running full windows 11, but with an Xbox skin interface on top, try and make a little bit more console like. If it's running windows underneath so that Indian all PC games are fully supported, how much is going to cost? Some early leaks based on purchase orders for parts of electric rumors at the Syrian price might be upwards of a grant.

43:45For his part, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tried to put the rest to rest rumors that the Microsoft is looking to sunset the entire Xbox business. He outright said that Microsoft is long on gaming and that they will continue investing in Xbox, which is the first thing they say right before they start cutting jobs by the way. Literally the first thing, you know, it's, but you also said it's up to this new ex, this new leadership team to show an excellence in execution and creativity. Okay, every, every word out of this thing screams. This is the end and we put, we put a woman in charge so we can blame her for it for years and years of men running this thing into the ground. We're going to put a woman in charge, we're going to, we're going to charge $1,000 for more for the console.

44:45No one's going to like it and blame, blame the woman and, and close and shut her the doors and they'll be their fault. The whole thing is just, it's just sounds like death now for it. So my, my comment about, about this logo, whether this is just a development logo or whether it ends up being something similar to the final logo, but I mean, you know, you've got, you've got the two strands, right, that are crossing to form the X and I'm like, okay, you know, we've got the ASIS ROG Xbox ally and the Xbox ally X handheld units and those let you boot into just the regular old stock Windows 11 desktop if you want to, you can, you can just go to that Windows interface and it's on your little handheld and there's, you know, X, there's a Windows with its start menu and everything. And then you can also just click the Xbox button, the actual branded Xbox button and go

45:46to the Xbox interface, which is running as a, I mean, it's almost like it's running as an app on top of Windows is more like what's going on there, but with the, you know, the simplified controls and the streamlined interface and supposedly this sort of paired back version of Windows 11 underneath it so that it isn't so resource, hogging and intensive behind the scenes when you're in the Xbox interface. And I'm like, okay, they've already done that with the handhelds that you can buy now. You, you know, take a look at this logo and it's like, well, is that what the two separate and intersecting and overlapping strands kind of hint at that this really is going to be like a dual boot situation. You choose whether you go to the full on Windows 11 interface and then, you know, go to your Steam game library or Epic Games library or wherever you want to go play all your PC games in a full on Windows 11, you know, interface and then have this Xbox layer version app, whatever you want to describe it as a, as a basically completely separate experience

46:48that you go to exactly the way it is on the current, you know, ASUS handhelds. I'm like, all of that seems plausible, right? It seems like maybe the likely, you know, I've seen articles saying like, no, they have to have, if you're going to call it a home console, if you're going to call it an Xbox and you're not just going to call it like Tom alluded to a computer, a PC, a Windows PC that is running Xbox emulation on it. Like if you're going to call it a home console, then it needs to have a single streamlined interface with nothing but the paired down version of Windows so that it is only there to play games and you're not going to see someone running Microsoft office on their Xbox Helix. But I'm like, it's not what they're doing right now with the handhelds. There's, you know, rumors that they're aiming to get this thing out by the end of next year, 2027. And I'm like, I don't, I wouldn't predict that they've rewritten all of Windows to work in the way that gamers want it to. I'm like, they're not turning to Linux. They're not going to like use Steam OS like the none of those things are going to happen. It's, it's going to be a Windows machine if they're going to run PC games in one form

47:50or another. So yeah, we'll see how it all goes. But I didn't take Satya and Adela's comments as particularly confidence in Tuesday. It's a, it sure sounds like all right, show us we're giving you one last chance with this Xbox experiment show us that you can actually make a go of this thing that that's what I read into it again. That's that's purely my interpretation of what was said there, but that's all I'm feeling about it. So my biggest thought on all of this is that if you're anything other than a first party developer, right, any of the third party developers, we've, we've already seen in this current generation that I think a gigantic mistake was made on the part of all of the console manufacturers, which is that they're like, we have our installed base of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consumers. And they're like, don't leave any of them behind. Don't force them to upgrade to the new console. Every game that comes out for the new console should still, there should be a version that

48:53there's still a PlayStation 4 version and Xbox One version that you can still play. And then even if, you know, some of these third party developers dared to make a game that will only run on the much, much faster hard drives of the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox series, there was still the stupid Xbox series as I never liked the series. I know there are people who are fans of the series and thought it was a good idea that there's a less expensive version that, you know, only runs in 1080p and not 4K and supposedly that's all you're giving up. But I'm like, to my mind, all it ever did was completely kneecap game developers and say, your game still has to run on this less powerful machine. And you can't just go whole hall again, make a version of the game that is optimized to only run on the higher power machines. This helix box, if it's anything close to $1,000 because that's what a gaming PC that's going to be anywhere near decent to run games in 4K would need to cost, I'm like, it's going to be kneecapped again. Guess what third party game developers are going to do? They're going to make darn well sure that their game, yes, in lower specs, whatever you

49:56turn down, some of the graphics features, but they're going to make sure it runs on an Nintendo Switch 2 because the Nintendo Switch 2 has already outsold like everything. And it's like, you know, the Nintendo Switch 2 is surprisingly a bit more powerful than people were expecting. They're like, yeah, it's basically like an Xbox One X with a much faster hard drive. It's only slightly less powerful than an Xbox Series S. And so it's like, so we've got a Series S again. Like that's our floor again. And do you really think Microsoft gaming is going to quote unquote abandon the last generation of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series level? They're going to try and bring everybody forward again and not force them to buy the $1,000 machine when people say $1,000 I'm not paying that. Don't worry, don't worry. We're still selling Xbox Series consoles and all of the new games are still going to run on that. Well, then what's the point of the $1,000 box? Like, oh, the graphics look a little nicer. Yeah, just like, you know, PC gaming could always do that. So why not just buy a gaming PC like it just, I don't, I'm not predicting that this

50:58thing is going to be a hit and I don't even predict that it's going to bring graphic fidelity for home gaming forward because I'm convinced that developers are still going to be targeting the Nintendo switch to as the as the base level. And it's going to have to run on that. And then yeah, maybe there's some graphical niceties that run on the Xbox helix, but I don't think it's going to be anything more than that. We shall see. Let's get to questions here. Dan. Dan has a multi-purpose room in the space. It has doors so it can be enclosed making the total space roughly 14 feet from the back and 37 feet wide. The right half is a basement kitchen with a small dining table and some cabinets. The left half is the TV set up with some speakers, some just some a pair SPS PB 1000 subs. Currently one sub is in the front, left corner of the sub is on the front wall to the right of the TV means basically in the middle of the 37 foot wall as a whole. I already tell you what I'm going to tell you to do.

52:00It's pretty easy. He's already thinking of it. Don't worry. He's ahead of you Tom. But hearing us say over and over how both sub should not be together on the front wall who's thinking trying to think of a way to improve their placement. He wanted to aim for the mid points of the front and back wall and he does mean the actual mid points of the whole room, not just the TV area. But with the room being only 14 feet front of back having a couple of PB 1000 smack dab in the middle of each 37 foot wall does wide wall doesn't pee the main walkway and would be awkward with the way of all the furniture is positioned on the other side of the 37 foot back wall is unfinished basement space. So he was thinking he could build a cubby on the other side of that wall and recess one of the PB 1000 subs. So that's basically flush with the wall inside the room. So what do we think? Would that be a good idea? Is there an obvious placement choice for his dual subs? That would be easier that he's overlooking. Both rear corners of the space as a whole have doors. Both rear corners. Okay. And the front right corner is part of the kitchen.

53:01So cross corner placement is out whether we suggest offset. First of all, I would not put it, I would not sink it into the wall. You're basically getting the makeup and closure in just directly around this thing. If you did that, it would be very hard to predict and control the reinforcement of the base that would be coming from inside that little thing. You'd have to make it a little bit extra big and then I guess just fill it with insulation. Surround it with insulation. I mean, thankfully the PB 1000 is front-ported. So we're not dealing with any sort of rear or downward firing port that would be blocked in any way by having it in the cubby. It is entirely possible to use a PB 1000 that is recessed into a wall. That's not really the concern here. Yeah. So, you know, like I had immediately the same thought as well, which is that, yeah, you don't have to be literally the middle of the front wall, literally the middle of the back wall. If that is inconvenient, I do think that we can do better than the current placement of

54:03both subs on the front wall and in no way symmetrical to the room itself, right? This is everything is shifted over to the left side of this very wide, 37-foot wide room, you know, with the way things are oriented. But yeah, he was pointing out how it's like, yeah, you've basically got this one continuous long walkway that goes behind the couch all the way along the 37-foot wall as the back wall and gives you one continuous walkway from one door on one end of the room to the other, you know, through the dining area, through the kitchen area, through the living room area. And he's like, yeah, he doesn't want anything impeding that entire length of the walkway. I wish I had better pictures of the kitchen. It's a little hard to understand what I'm seeing in some of these spots. Yeah, because it's like, how much could you shimmy the subwoofer that would be against the back wall, like shimmying it over to the left would either put it, you know, on the other side of the door, like either way it's going to be behind the couch and a bit awkward. I agree. And if you shimmied it all the way over to the left of the back wall so that it's past

55:05the left side of the couch, then I don't really think there is a good place that's that far to the right along the front wall because you're definitely going to be in the kitchen up. Are you ready for something stupid, Rob? What is it? Look at the open bays at the top of this thing. Because this is an unfinished ceiling. Yeah. Is there any chance we could elevate these subwoofers? Because that would be an insane thing to do, but also would totally work, right? Right. I wonder if you could elevate this. It's a wonderful construction other than some sort of obviously hefty bracket that will hold the subwoofer's in place. I mean, do we have to put both subs in the ceiling? I don't think we do. I don't think so. One could go towards the back up in the ceiling. I'm a little concerned. Well, I don't know. He's obviously not super concerned about soundproofing because it's already got these open bays in the ceiling. It's already an unfinished space on the other side of the wall. He was already thinking about cutting a big old hole in that back wall.

56:06I mean, perhaps enclosing it on the back end, but considering cutting a big old hole in the back wall so that the sub could sit fresh. So, okay, if you want to do the thing that you want to do, which I don't necessarily love, but it's not the worst idea, you just have to do it right. So what you have to do is cut the hole, and I know you want the hole to be the size of the subwoofer. So that's as small as the hole possible, right? So you cut that hole, but then around the subwoofer in the back, you're going to have to build another enclosure. And that enclosure should have, I mean, 12 inches all the way around the subwoofer at the very least. And then you would fill that with just regular old insulation as best you can. And remember, this has to be completely enclosed as well. So it's like a real wall, not just like, in order to contain the sound. I mean, it's not containing it, but you're looking for a barrier. You're replacing the wall.

57:06Yes. Yeah. And then, so they'd have to have an outlet and everything in there because you're rebuilding. Right. You don't just want the opening, you know, to put an extension cord through or something like that. But I'm going to say, like, if you decide that is the only solution that you're happy with, like we say, performance wise, it can work. We're not saying that it cannot work. So it's an okay idea. But there is no world in which I say you start cutting holes in that back wall until you have temporarily simply put one subwoofer in the middle of the back wall without the hole cut and try out to make sure that the performance, like, it's not going to be identical because once you recess it into the wall, it is going to change somewhat. But to get at least a modicum of a similar idea of, hey, does repositioning my sub that is currently in the front left corner of this room, repositioning it to the back wall does that make a worthwhile difference? Because if it really doesn't make any worthwhile improvement whatsoever, I don't want to undertake construction.

58:07The simple is that. I wonder if these bays are open to, like, if this wall looks like it just stops there, but no, there's a black, looks like there's a black something that connects to the top of the bay. It's very hard to understand what I'm seeing in some of these pictures. So I wonder if the bays are just open to the next room and eat anyways, in which case, then this is all moot, because it's all, the sound's transferring. The sound's already going through those open ceiling bays. Yeah, I'm not sure if that's what it looks like. Then it doesn't matter where you put the subwoofer because you can't predict what's going to happen. Right, right. And I would put it against the back wall just away from, you know, having them both at the front, or stack them, you know, just have one big subwoofer instead of two. That's, I mean, because yeah, I mean, a PB 1000s, a pair of them in this room, they are reaching their output limits. Yeah. They're not hitting reference syndrome of volume with a pair of PB 1000s in a room with this size. And then if those ceiling bays are actually open air to the unfinished room that's behind to this room, then you've got way more volume of air than you were even thinking that

59:09you had. Because there's the picture with the back of it, with the couch that's facing the couch. And you can see there's like a black scrim or something above the wall, but it doesn't look like it goes all the way up into those bays. And it doesn't go all the way up, but I don't know if those bays are closed off. Yeah. On the other side, we can say, I think that's foundation because we can see what sort of looks like foundation, insulation that's fitting in the end of the bays on what is the front wall where the TV is. But yeah, the back wall might just be completely open to that unfinished space on the other side of the house. Yeah. In which case, our suggestions will change based on that to pretty much at that point, I think I would just stack them. I think I'd leave it at that. I think I would too. That would be because at that point, you can't predict the performance by the shape of the room. So just stack them as much output as you can and give them a DSP. Having both subs, I mean, just figure on them, now it's one more powerful sub. Just think of it that way. Having your single sub in the middle of the front wall is like the best place to put

1:00:11us in the sub. So that might be the ultimate solution here. Yeah. And it's hard to take pictures, especially in theater rooms because everything is so dark by definition. So I feel you and I'm not insulting the pictures at all. I just can't see. The idea is in no way a bad idea. It makes sense. Like we say, it could, it could work. We're not saying it can't work at all. But yeah, there are things I would examine first before undergoing construction. That's all. Yeah. Kevin. Kevin appreciated the suggestions that Rob Lee and Joe gave regarding his basement home gym set up in which though in wall speakers and and which in wall speakers he should install. As he previously mentioned, he'll be powering speakers with a couple amplifier channels on his distribution amp. And he was using his dev tech towers. The connections were easy since he could just send full range signals to the pair of towers. And then the def text built in self power base. Sorry. Okay. Grammarly cut it out.

1:01:12Built in self powered base drivers handled the base duties without any additional subwoofers and amplifiers needed. Also, as you said previously, he's already made peace that even with eight inch woofers and even with eight inch woofers and his new in wall speakers he probably won't have the same base output as was dev tech towers could provide. I think that's a fair assumption. Yes. So that will be fine for now. You agree with Joe that if he ever does add in the add an in wall subwoofer ought to be a good one, which is hard to find and expensive and definitely fully enclosed with an integrated rear enclosure. So perhaps an SPS 3000 in wall sub if the budget ever allows and he ends up really really wanting more base. But should that day ever arrive? How would he go about connecting everything and getting the in wall sub and the in wall speakers integrate with one another? His control for C4 16 amp three. As the model names on I can't do anything about just if you want to look it up. Some people hear me make these pauses and get upset at these names and think I'm insulting

1:02:16their question. I want you to understand. I am so unconceivably angry at these companies for not being able to come up with a reasonable name for their stupid stuff. It's not that hard. And I understand what they're doing here, but there's a logic to it. This one's not that bad, but you know, do we really need the C4? We are already says control for on there. And the 16 amp three better makes sense when they get that. 16 channels. Yeah. And the channel amp distribution amplifier amp makes sense and it's the third generation. So it's not it's not the worst thing I've ever seen. I wanted that three to mean three inputs, but whatever. Okay. So so his control for C4 16 amp three distribution amp doesn't have any subwoofer outputs or across over that it can apply this incoming signal to the distribution amp is just through a regular stereo RCA connection. But if you were to split that to feed the subwoofer amp, one of the subwoofer end up playing

1:03:17all the time even when he's using a different room and not in the home gym. So what's the solution? You can put an inline crossover into this situation depending on how you want us, you know, define it. So the only RCA hit connections he has into his current distribution amp are from the source side of things. The distribution amp that he has doesn't have any RCA outputs of any kind. It's RCA in which you can do input by input or universal, right? This one source is shared by all of the channels. But then you just have speaker line outputs to the rest of it. And so yeah, this would be a little bit of a challenge because if you're running your sources into a crossover before that then feeds your current distribution amp, you've run into the situation of yeah, that crossover is going to be active for all of the rooms, not just the home gym because you put it on the source side of things rather than the output side of things. So what I think would make sense here, because you are talking about like one specific room,

1:04:21this is the room that's going to have separate subwoofers in it, I think there's an opportunity here where it makes sense to buy another amplifier. That's what I would suggest in this situation. And what I'd be looking for is one that provides its own subwoofer output that, yeah, you can apply basically for this one amplifier either like speaker level in so that you can continue using your current distribution center and then just do speaker level in to this separate amplifier which will power the subwoofer because we're talking about an in-wall sub so it's not going to have a built-in amplifier in the subwoofer itself. So like basically a subwoofer amplifier that will power the sub but can accept a speaker level in. And then what I'm going to not worry too much about in this scenario is applying a high pass filter to the in-wall speakers that you're going to have because we did suggest you know pretty large eight inch woofer in-wall speakers that you're already going to be running

1:05:24full range as it is. So in my scenario in order to keep the price kind of reasonable I would just continue running your in-wall speakers as full range leaving those alone but then adding in a new subwoofer amplifier that can take a speaker wire level input so the distribution app stays as it is. It's still powering your in-wall speakers but you have this new subwoofer amplifier that is taking the speaker level from the distribution app and then powering the subwoofer with a low pass filter for the subwoofer so you can adjust the blend as far as the subwoofer goes. So one example that you wouldn't have to go with this one specifically but it's an example so that you can visualize on the back panel that we're showing a little bit more what I'm talking about. So outdoor speaker depot. There are SMP 300 which sells for $500 so it's not ridiculously expensive and yeah it has enough power to power the 3000 micro from SPS. Yeah this has speaker level in and out so you see two pairs of binding posts speaker level

1:06:25in speaker level out so this is a fairly simple connection path right you're taking the exact same speaker wire outputs that would be powering those gym in-wall speakers that they are. Now they just go into the speaker level in on this and then it does daisy chains back out speaker level out from this outdoor speaker depot subwoofer amplifier and still continues to power your in-wall speakers that you already had set up but then it has a subwoofer amplifier output with on the front panel an adjustable low pass filter fully adjustable phase which is really nice to see on here and then of course volume for the subwoofer itself. So to me is that low pass filter is that fully adjustable because they have weird numbers on this. I don't know if it's a detented knob or if it's a fully adjustable I mean either way that's not really a problem. Yeah it's just kind of weird that they don't have 80. It is that's what makes me think maybe it is fully adjustable and they've just marked. Yeah I think so too. Looking at that there's like a little like tick mark in it I think it's worth it.

1:07:27Yeah it looks like it's facing straight up along with the phase. I mean the phase is definitely fully variable adjustable because I don't even put anything between zero and 180 so that would be very strange if they didn't give you full adjustment there but like I say it's not as though the outdoor speaker depot SMP 300 is the only game in town it's just a readily available nicely affordable appropriately powerful subwoofer that has all of the connections that you would need so it's an example of what you could look for if that's not the specific one. Yeah it says variable crossover and okay that's the same language that you use with the phase switch. Right. So zero 200 so yeah to 180 for the phase. If there's any fly in this ointment it's that yeah we're not applying a high pass filter to the speaker side open but you're already going to be running them full range anyway you know it before it until if you ever get an in full sub so all the way up to that town time they're running full range anyway so I don't see it as a problem of continuing to run them that way and then integrating the subwoofer as best you can this way. Uh new for though okay my name is Joe Joe Klasnik.

1:08:31Joe has a few hundred old magazines with a clue snake. You said Klasnik as you are sorry but it's Klasnik. Joe has a few hundred old magazines audio video interiors, widescreen review, home theater magazine etc. If there's someone listening in Northern California or really to make the drive there who would like to have them be happy to save them from going into the landfill by just giving them away but if no such collector comes forward what can we suggest we do with all of them. Um yeah so the type of person I think wants this because I don't know that people really want the whole magazine but I think some of the um some of the uh covers uh displayed in like high-fi shops and stuff like that might be valuable to somebody. I don't know that anybody's gonna spend a whole bunch of money on them but um I mean he's like look they might just end up going to a landfill so even if it's purely giving

1:09:32them away that's that's better than that yeah. So uh you know that's the way I would uh like market them on eBay or something like that I mean I don't know how else to think it says there's no there's no like national way of giving away stuff um uh easily you could do Facebook marketplace and then open it up to like everybody and put you know one dollar or whatever and then in the description say you know I'll ship you however many you want you just pay for shipping yeah and do it that way uh because I think there are some people I don't know if they want the whole collection right but they may want specific issues or well and that starts getting pretty time consuming if you're having a similar or or go to the extreme of like literally snapping a picture of every single one of them because he's got hundreds of them that gets up because there's hundreds right so I mean I you might say you know I'll send you up to five for free you just pay you just pay you pay a shipping uh and I will pick the five

1:10:37but you'd have to put that in the description of what you were what how you were uh listing them on whatever websites you were listening yeah I mean we know that Joe uses Facebook marketplace frequently that he's very often on uh AVS forums so certainly that's obviously another place in AVS forums classified section uh to list them I'm familiar with audio gone of course so audio gone is another place that I would look to and then yeah eBay I don't know maybe that's a bit of a last resort but it's not not the worst idea to put them there too but uh one notion like I very much agree unlike Tom suggesting that it's like yeah maybe it's just the covers that's that some people are looking for uh but another thing that often um collectors are looking for is the ads more than the articles right having that historical record of the print ads which are often very difficult to find in any other way because unless you know the entire a catalog going back was digitized and posts posted somewhere online like the actual scans of the magazine sometimes you can find old articles right the old articles were um like you know optical character recognition and and uh

1:11:41uploaded somewhere and you can find the text but the actual print layout the ads that were in there sometimes those are lost to time and that's the part that collectors are really interested in more so then you know the text of the articles or anything like that which is obviously out of data at this point and would only be valuable as a historical record so yeah listing them as like these are the actual magazines uh this isn't just you know a uh an archive of them these are the full things and you can have the original covers and the original ads and the original layouts that might be a way to market them on places like facebook marketplace and audio gone in avs forum but if there's no luck doing things that way like um i don't think a regular library would be interested in it but sometimes there are specialty libraries uh and obviously being in california that's one of the more likely places you might actually be able to find might not be specifically northern california but at least it's a big state with a big population and the possibility of there being a specialty library that would like to have them donated or like an archive or a museum of something like that i don't know anywhere off the top of my head to point you do specifically

1:12:44but again it might be worth it somewhere that's trying to preserve the actual original layouts the original ads things like that the original covers um now maybe the last resort is uh places that are trying to keep up digital archives and unfortunately ai training right now anyone that's doing digital archiving or ai training on these things they would almost certainly be doing destructive scanning right that's where they physically chop off the spines of the magazines so that they can put be put into an automatic document feeder scanned that way and then they would be discarded they'd end up in landfill or burn or something like that but they'd be out of your hands and you wouldn't be doing it and uh yeah you you might send them off to at least be preserved in some former fashion so those are the all the all the ideas i could come up with i don't know if tom has any additions to that list no that's okay it's all good okay uh let me scroll Trevor Trevor uses a denim x4200 w a v receiver with both of his subwoofers plugged into it a single sub out via the

1:13:46white splitter because of our advice just recently he came across her right up describing how if you measure with a u mic one and ruikyu wizard after running honestly and then take a look at the impulse response timing you can see how all denim rants receiver models that came up before 2022 use an incorrect speed of sound in their automatic distance calculations rather than using 434 meter per second 343 three hundred three hundred three times tom's tom did i say you said 434 it's three oh i just i don't have i haven't had enough coffee i woke up late uh 343 meter per second 11 25 feet per second as a speed of sound pre 2022 denim rants receivers were using an even 300 meters per second or 984 feet per second which is which the focus on reddit claim leads to poor out of focus imaging sensor speakers are not accurately timeline the first and only time you see somebody safe timeline is when you just stop reading things well i mean that is the point of

1:14:47setting the distance settings is to time arrival uh adjust the time arrival of your various speakers so that speakers that are physically farther away than other speakers don't have their sound arriving at your primary seat at a different time than the you know speakers that are physically closer to you they suggest that you manually multiply all of the speaker distance settings by 0.875 or 0.8746 if you want to be even more precise so that your distance settings and your denim rants setup will properly match the real distances and therefore give you better imaging and proper time alignment is that for real can we clarify the situation here is there something he needs to worry about and manually adjust so we addressed this when this years ago when this was being talked about and came out and we talked all about it and uh addressed you know the concerns people had and in whether or not it was something to worry about um if you think about it from the perspective of uh of uh functionality in the actual home in your actual home theater or in general

1:15:50right if um you're talking if you're if you're the if you're applying a multiplier to everything okay or you're using a measurement device that is inaccurate but is equally inaccurate to everything that it measures and all you're doing with that measurement is using it to to make sure that uh things that you measure with it are all the same so let's say that um uh you have a uh this actually this is it makes me think of something else I'll talk about later but if you have a ruler that is it says it's 12 inches but it's actually 11 inches right and you measure it use that rule to measure a bunch of stuff uh and you want to make sure everything's the same length it doesn't matter that with it the reading on them the the ruler is right or wrong uh in the absolute sense it matters because all you're using it to do is compare it to each other so you're trying to get the time to all come to this you know the sound to all come to the same spot

1:16:53at the same time yes that's what time alignment is so if you are multiplying your measurement by the wrong speed of sound as long as you are measuring it you're using everything in the same way then it's still arriving at the spot at the same time it's just the the multiplication was wrong but the effect is nonexistent yeah so what is uh the key to understanding what's happening here to to clarify it as he requested um what Odyssey is actually measuring is the difference in time right like the microphone is not sending out a little laser guided ruler and physically measuring distance the microphone um because everything is done through the den and other marrants receiver with the microphone plugged directly in the receiver it knows here is precisely in time when i sent out the electrical signal to the speaker and here is the amount of

1:17:54delay in time in milliseconds uh to when that sound arrived at the microphone it is then multiplying by a constant in this case for the pre-2022 avi receiver models uh you know 300 meters per second it's multiplying all of those time measurements by a constant by a conversion rate and then displaying the results as a distance but this is a conversion that happened it measured the differences in time it then converted to differences in distance and displayed it to you that way in its settings but it never directly measured the distances so if you pull out your tape measure and you physically measure the distance from microphone location number one to any of your speakers it might not perfectly line up with the distance that's displayed in the interface because it was calculating at 300 meters per second instead of 343 meters per second but it multiplied

1:18:55all of those original time measurements by the same constant and therefore the actual amount of delay that was applied didn't really change at all but there is a scenario where this could make some difference in actual time arrival time alignment in your real system if what you did was run Odyssey and then you didn't touch any of the distance settings that it's made you're not going to have poor time alignment poor time arrival bad imaging smearing anything like that because it it multiplied all of the time measurements that it actually made by a universal constant that isn't accurate to reality necessarily but it used the same constant all them so the original time measurements didn't change whatsoever that's totally fine what could happen is if you manually change the distance settings because that's what you can actually change is the distance settings not the time settings you can change the distance settings and if you manually change some of them right

1:19:57if you manually change all of them by the same amount then the same thing is going to apply but if you manually change some of those distance settings but not all of them you would have to change the distance setting with the knowledge that there is this conversion back to time because what you're really trying to do is change the amount of time that's what you're really trying to do is change the delay and you would have to be aware that you would as your conversion say how how many feet or how many meters or decimals of feet or decimals of meat how many of those units do I need to change to get the actual difference in the delay and the amount of time that I was aiming for there is that conversion happening if you're aware that the conversion that was used inside the AV receiver is 300 meters per second it's not a problem you take the amount of time delay that you wanted to manually change and you also multiply it by 300 meters per second instead of 343 because that's what the AV receiver understands right but if you were like well I figured out by my tape measure

1:21:01here's the distance but I'm not accounting that the conversion rate is not like as accurate to realities it could possibly be yeah you could have a little mismatch there right so that's what people freaked out about is that they were measuring with their tape measure and noticed that it didn't perfectly line up with Odyssey's automated results to begin with and then when they started manually changing it and then they looked at the RumiQ wizard impulse response results like well that didn't change by the amount that it should have given the distance units that I changed it should have changed by this amount of time but it changed by a different amount of time that's how people figured out that it was using 300 meters per second instead of 343 meters per second to begin with so yeah as long as you're always multiplying or dividing by the same conversion constant there isn't really a problem here but it is something to be aware of the other thing to be aware of is that the multi-qx program that runs on your PC which is an upgrade that one does use the 343 meters per second as its conversion rate so if you have one of the receivers that was just on that cusp of

1:22:04it was just old enough that was what was built into the AV receiver itself when you didn't use multi-qx was using 300 meters per second but then you paid for the upgrade to add multi-qx it's like well now you have two different conversion rates with an Odyssey itself potentially being used and it was a thing to be aware of but yeah if what you've always done is run Odyssey and then left the distance settings alone the fact that it used a you know rounded off conversion rate really doesn't make any difference because what it originally measured was the difference in time that's what it measured it wasn't using a tape measure or a laser measuring device to actually measure distance it was always measuring time to begin with this was a problem the bigger problem when people started using tape measures what went from using tape measures to set their distances to using all this here whatever and their subwoofer distances would be crazy yeah like nowhere near inside the room like yeah I got one that was like it was outside the house no matter what direction you walked and you know you pointed it then and people would be would freak out because they'd be

1:23:09like oh my god you know this has got to be wrong there's something wrong with it and it's like Rob said it's all about time it's what they're really measuring and subwoofers that distance setting is all about setting a delay yes and of course they rounded the issue of they were doing some of their adjustments in a mini DSP right two by four instead of in the AV receiver itself and the mini DSP displays it as a time delay they say how many milliseconds are you delaying this signal they don't say how great of a distance are you delaying this they they put it in milliseconds so people were like okay I'm adjusting it in milliseconds on my mini DSP but then I run it back through my Odyssey calibrated AV receiver and the results don't jive they're not what they should have been what the heck is going on there but yeah it's because there is this conversion it's it's just a constant that's being multiplied but what was measured was always the time delayed to begin with Henry Henry asks realistically speaking how long do ultra-HG blu-rayer player players last his newest player is in

1:24:13the Panasonic UB9000 that he bought in the summer of last year how many more years would he would we expect it to keep working I expected to keep working somewhere between one day and infinity days because these things are unpredictable I mean it's unfortunate that we won't and I'm going to put the onus on us we won't really pay for quality the way we should I was complaining the other day about t-shirts and I watched this video from this guy who was talking about cotton and how there's different grades of cotton and how most you know for a long time cotton was made from a certain grade but now because of demand and you know costs reductions and everything else it's made from this lower grade of cotton and it was like man I have been complaining for like the last five years of my t-shirts are just garbage yeah they just they just didn't cold color well the colors stretch

1:25:14like stretch need to be I have to wash them I mean it sounds like I wouldn't wash my shirts very often but by the end of a day if I if I've been wearing a t-shirt all day long the colors are stretched out like I physically feel that they're stretched out oh yeah and that's something that better quality cotton will not do it will retain its shape and its elasticity for longer but this the cheaper cotton won't and we won't pay for quality and I am I am just as much guilty of this as anybody else like I'm like a $12 for t-shirt if you lost your mind get it for $10 online there is this whole like well it's so cheap that I know it's not going to last very long but it's so cheap I'll just replace it like whatever but that also means that selling a quality product is hard and all Traci Blu-ray players while they are a niche product their people are like a just like bikes people have decided that things cost a certain amount and players are one of those things

1:26:17and people are like what do you mean it costs $500 yeah it's supposed to cost it's supposed to cost a hundred that's how much of vcr cost why would I spend more on a different player that plays a different technology and DVD players got down to like you know 39 bucks 29 bucks yeah so you know why those ultra HD player costs so much so they have to cut corners in order to be able to convince you to buy it in the first place so you know there's moving parts in there yes the last player that broke on me just refused to spit out a disc yeah just would not go and I eventually had to tear the whole thing apart to get the desk out and then that was it you know it's I it died could I have gotten it fixed no I mean I could have but it would cost more than buying another one yeah I mean because there are physical moving parts instead of inside of any optical display so obviously the disc is spinning that's a moving part whatever the eject you know mechanism is that's a moving part even if it's a slot loading one there's a moving roller inside there that accepts the disc and then brings it back out those are all moving parts the

1:27:22laser itself is on a little tray that moves back and forth so that it can read from the outside of the disc to the inside of the disc yeah so you know all of these moving parts those are obviously the most likely culprits for failure anytime moving parts that's the thing so keeping your player clean you know lint free dust free that that is a factor in all of this if you let it accumulate a whole bunch of dust moving parts are gonna start suffering problems that little track where the laser moves back and forth that over time can eventually need some lubrication otherwise it starts moving not as precisely and easily and smoothly as it should and given the incredibly micro distances that that laser laser needs to accurately move to keep reading the tracks of the disc if you have any hitches in the movement you are definitely gonna have playback problems but sometimes that's literally a little bit of lubrication is all that's needed to keep that player going so yes upkeep and cleanliness of the players is is something to be aware of it has moving parts inside now you know he went for the most expensive Panasonic player the UB9000 that's their flagship player

1:28:23and sometimes you're hoping like okay I paid all that money for the flagship surely the components inside are of higher quality but the thing is optical discs like we're down to one manufacturer in the world that makes all of the optical discs now that might not have been the case when the UB9000 first came out but any that are being made today that's the case it's the same disc drive in every single optical player that's out there so there's not like a quality difference to be in the optical disc drive itself so the other major thing to be aware of is that inside of any optical disc player you know there is the laser that's reading the disc it does like any laser does gradually and slowly dim just a little bit over time but they put inside of every optical disc player there's a tiny little potentiometer that you can change with a tiny little flat head screwdriver and you can boost the power to the laser now I normally wouldn't recommend that you do this on your own because exactly how much you need to turn that little potentiometer

1:29:24I'm not totally aware of I need to look that up and find some tutorials that I trust to figure out how much you're actually needing to turn that thing and how much you should be boosting the power and it would be very nice to know how to use a proper meter to confirm that you've actually boosted it by the amount that you should so you know I don't know how far in the future this happens hopefully there are still shops around that know how to do it but if there aren't I mean there are tutorials you can look up to figure out how much you need to boost that output if your laser ever starts dim so if you're running into problems of overall the player like it functions but it's I'm getting a lot more disc skipping than I ever did or a lot more freezing than I ever did it's not that it doesn't work at all but I'm getting a lot more reading errors and that it's like very often it's just that you boost that power to the laser just a little bit using that potentiometer that's inside and your player starts working exactly the way that you want it to again so yeah I've got an HD DVD player that still works just fine that's going back many years I've got a original PlayStation console that still reads I mean that was CD and that was a red laser

1:30:26which is a little bit easier to deal with in a blue laser but it still works so it's not that optical drives automatically 100% you can count on them failing within 10 years or something like that no those those ones that I have are way older than that there's no reason they can't last decades but also yes we obviously know optical disc drives fail frequently as well so yeah very hard to say as a prediction but there is no reason that it can't keep working for decades to come yeah so clayscape has a digital service if you're a real physical disk you can connect a USB disk drive to your clayscape scan the physical disk into your clayscape account and then have the option to purchase a clayscape version of that movie at a discount price if it's available so that's great so with the belly digital to digital surface it would be terrific if you could somehow link say your movies anywhere account to your clayscape account confirm that you already bought the digital version of a movie from Apple Amazon Finnego or whatever and then be offered the chance to buy the clayscape version at a discount just like just to digital so what's the reason why this isn't available is

1:31:32it just a licensing issue with the studios or what other factors are at play that might be preventing clayscape from doing this I mean you're asking them to do a lot of work just so that you can pay them less money it's where it comes down to and I you know I I don't really see any motivation for them to want to do this because the people who are in this clayscape universe that are customers are there aren't clamoring for it would be my guess they they might say hey I already bought the disk why can't I just have it on your service right and enough of them say that and they've spent enough money there that they're like okay well yeah we can we can do something for you but are those same people like well I reboiled an apple so we can and then you've got to somehow develop a way of verifying apple and movies anywhere in

1:32:33finnego and amazon and all of those services that ultraviolet that have died off or whatever which is another whole thing so that is a lot of agreements to make certainly on that side I mean they could pick just one and say from this particular service is the only one that we support which would probably be the way that would have to roll out if they ever did I mean I like Henry's idea it's a very consumer friendly idea so certainly on that side of I like it but kaleidoscape they're in a bit of a tough situation you know I don't know with 100% certainly all the agreements that they have but when it comes to what they have available on their kaleidoscape store as we mentioned in the past like the the reason why kaleidoscape hardware costs as much as it does is because kaleidoscape unlike every other software service they kaleidoscape barely make any money whatsoever if they even make a penny on the movies that they sell in their kaleidoscape

1:33:35score like if it's not 98% it's 100% of the movie money that you use to buy any movie on kaleidoscape score that goes to the studios that's the agreement that they have they make their money on selling their hardware and that's why their servers cost $10,000 you're like a hard drive doesn't cost $10,000 why the heck does this server cost $10,000 that's where kaleidoscape makes their money it's not a razor and then we make all the money on the razor blades model it's not a we sell this like like it used to be video game consoles we sell them at a loss the hardware we sell it a loss because we make on the money all the money actually selling you the games right that that was the model for ages and ages we're kind of moving away from that now but that was the model and so it's reasonable to think okay I mean kaleidoscape they sell you the hardware and then they make their money over time by selling you the movies that makes perfect sense but in their case that that isn't how it's working the studios are getting virtually all of the money that they that is collected by the kaleidoscape store so it would be the studios that would have to agree to a digital

1:34:38to digital service and that's like how many layers are we going through right because you didn't buy the movie directly from Disney or directly from Fox or directly from Universal or whatever it is you bought it from Apple or a Fandango or whatever it was so that's already one layer of abstraction you know how does the money make its way back to the studio that's what the studio cares about and for kaleidoscape to sign all of those agreements and get all to work and then have enough margin to be able to offer a discount I'm like I think that is genuinely a business challenge that they haven't found a way to overcome so I love your idea it is consumer friendly but I think there's a legitimate business reason on kaleidoscape themselves right it's the studios that are greedy we can all agree there the studios are the greedy ones but on kaleidoscape side to expect them as the company the small company to do this yeah I don't think there's a business case to be made for it yeah Sean Sean has an L shape basement and his home theater area takes up the short arm of the L he's looking to increase his tactile sensation of deep bass he'd like to ask

1:35:40us about adding a tactile transducer or two or three to his three cedar couch if that might be the best solution the theater area is roughly 15 by 12 and a half which means nothing the ceiling is that is in that part of the basement seven feet his three cedar couches about nine feet from the tv and front speakers the rest of the basement which is the long arm of the L shape adds another 5,000 cubic feet so he's dealing with about 6,300 cubic feet of air and total there's no closing off and then closing the theater area portion from the rest of the space he's using paradigm premiere 800 f towers and the big 600 c center basically another tower on the side up the rest of his speakers are mixed and matched to create 7.2.2 configuration he made his own DIY gigantic subs a pair of them they are they use 18 inch date and audio drivers imported cabinets that have eight cubic feet of Jesus of internal air volume like Lord they're not many

1:36:46think he's got the small theater area the smallish theater area and he can't enclose it yeah you can just put these subs at the back now it's enclosed it realized you built two walls of subs he built an infinite battle two infinite battle subs a single barringer nx 6000 class de amplifier powers both subs and he opened up that amp and replaced it stock cooling fans with a much much quieter one so it's actually usable inside the room yeah manas certainly seems to be very handy given the layout of everything both subs are positioned up front but not to worry by combining his front towers and the pair of subs optimizing everything using the DSB is able to achieve a close match to his desire to target curve at least as primary seat yeah there's the rub but even with the sub with subs of that size and frequency response that good he isn't able to fully pressurize the entire

1:37:49basement space to full reference volume yes and that's where his idea of maybe adding tactile strand doosters come in his receivers marrants SR 612 so it doesn't have the dedicated tactile transducer output but he already has this many DSB so he figures he can undo all the C sub out correction and feed a non-EQ signal to his tactile transducer he's experienced he that is possible he's experienced debox added theater before and he wasn't impressed by its rattling and distraction but he's also been to a Dolby cinema where he learned they were using tactile transducers in the seats and he thought that was a great experience so that's the sort of thing he'd he'd be after he's read that Kraus and actuators are really good but they're also really expensive then you heard this recommending Buckkicker LFE and that got his attention so do we think the buck Buckkicker LFE is the way to go for a setup if so how many should he buy to attach to his three-seater couch it's funny all this information yes and not a single picture you know piece of information

1:38:54about the couch itself other than it has three seats so if this were a single couch yeah that has three but places for it then you you know and it's all one structure then you just need to attach the transducer some place in there in the shakes the whole thing sure but if it if it is a it's three separate seats that are just pushed together pushed together like a sectional then you need it's better you're better off having three separate ones right um the idea that the debocks or whatever than the action that's I think a lot of my hatred of debocks comes from the fact that the seats move I don't think that tactile transducers is the biggest problem with those things for me I don't like tactile standard transducers I just don't I don't like them in general I have not had a good experience with them and I've not had a good experience with having seats vibrate artificially in general meaning I've had seats that are on top of

1:39:59risers that were not properly dampened or secured and the dampers the the the risers would vibrate which would vibrate the seats which would vibrate me and I hated it so I generally don't look for tactile transducers as being part of my experience with home theater but there you would do have the ability just like a volume control yes to change the amount of tactile trends do seem that's going on and you can I think based on what you're saying dial this into the right level and yes you will have to undo the Odyssey room correction in order to make sure that you're getting a nice you know accurate vibration pattern but other than that you I think you'll be able to tweak it to what you like yeah um you know it's funny because people look at the butt kicker LFE obviously compared to like the aura based shakers or the date and based shakers or something like that is quite a bit more expensive like each butt kicker LFE I'm talking about

1:41:03the full size ones three hundred fifty dollars a piece you know so they're they're quite a bit more expensive and people are like okay and I mean it's it's a a stout very dense very heavy and you know you might be thinking this is fist size no no no like the it's pretty sizable the full size butt kicker LFE and of course people are like oh you just want to be able to shake your whole darn house with it and you know it kind of can if you if you really want to do that but the reason I have always recommended the butt kicker LFE and look I don't have any problem with the performance of the crossing ones either they are very good and there's some others uh but out of those the butt kicker LFE pins ends up being one of the least expensive the reason I've always preferred it is because it's the only one I've experienced where um you know everyone has heard the experience of you add gigantic subwoofers to your system and you could do the thing of yeah you play a sweep and it's blatantly obvious when that sweep transitions from your speakers to your subs because your subs are seventeen decibels hotter than your speakers and there's this giant massive noticeable thing of oh now my subwoofers are playing and you can certainly do that with the

1:42:08butt kicker LFE tactile transducers were like wow my seat is really shaking and it's obviously not my speakers that are doing it but the flip side of that is you can take very powerful uh well controlled subwoofers and then seamlessly integrate them so that you can't tell where the transition happened from speakers to subs that's what I've always preferred it's as if every one of my speakers just became a really competent full range speaker and I don't want to notice that transition and the butt kicker LFE lets you do that with tactile transducers where it's like I can't really tell that the reason I'm feeling a physical impact is because I've got tactile transducers like you can dial them in to be really really nice and accurate and they're not buzzing and they're not rattling and they have the frequency range and most importantly the reason they're this physical size and this weight is they have the subtlety of movement a very very small amount but a very very heavy weight that's just suspended in a magnetic field no rattling no bottling uh bottling out no like unwanted distortion vibration just a very accurate representation of the physical movement

1:43:14that you might get from pressurizing the air but in a situation like yours it makes a lot of sense so that's why I'm always in support of the butt kicker LFE as the choice I do think it's a very good choice here exactly like Tom said if you've got a single piece couch you don't need more than one you really don't and if you can physically bolt it to the frame of a one piece all connected couch you really do not need more than one um I will potentially make the argument because it's like look look at the subwoofers that this fellow made look at the experience that he's trying to go for if you were to get because what they also offer is um a little furniture mounting kit and I'm not even sure I would call this a mounting kit this is a platform where you attach the butt kicker LFE to this platform and then your couch leg sits on top of this platform and it transfers the physical movement from this platform to the leg of your couch and that's how it starts vibrating your couch I've certainly found that if I do this on just say the rear right leg

1:44:15of the couch you can notice that it's not uniform dispersion of that vibration throughout the entire couch if the only place that makes sense to put the mounting kit is on the outside legs I would want to have to at that point like for the subtlety of the movement for the accuracy and the uniformity of the movement if your couch happens to have actual central legs because very often on a three-seater couch you kind of have like four legs right so like there's the two outside ones and then two that are on either side of what is the middle seat and that is like yeah I could put on one of those central legs but if there's an actual like center leg that you know again to be a one piece couch that has that totally sufficient to have one butt kicker LFE I could make the argument in some scenarios and see my way to two if it's what Tom said though this is actually a sectional or this is like theater recliners it's three separate seats that you've just pushed together to make a three-seater couch area then I would probably look at yes one per seat but not the butt kicker LFE that is such overkill for the amount they have a slightly less expensive slightly smaller model

1:45:20called the butt kicker advance that's the one I would point you to if it's a one for one one tactile transducer per seat the the butt kicker advance makes total sense there so yeah that's what I would suggest you'll see plenty of people in line to who are taking their butt kicker or check out tactile transducers and they're flipping their couch over and they're mounting the the transducer to like a piece of wood and then mounting the wood to the bottom of the the seat so you're handing enough it feels like that this is something that you could do but not every couch has the physical space the physical space and that's where the little the little foot thing comes in handy so yeah you'll have to see how that works for you I mean heck if you just get a piece of plywood that's right you know put it in the middle of the piece of plywood set the whole couch down inside the plywood and you know you know attach the feet to the to the couch

1:46:22if this is a if this is a all like it's a couch you you buy it as a couch it comes as a couch it's not in pieces you do not need more than one but kicker LFE it will absolutely handle a full couch all just one on its own so you heard Rob mentioned I recommend the Dayton SA 1000 amp is a good alternative to to buckickers own amp which is almost always out of stock and also has lots of negative reviews for its poor reliability but he's been happy with the his barrencher x nx 6,000 amp after replacing its noisy fan so he was wondering if the nx 3000 might be a suitable option to power the butt kicker LFE trans the transducers since it costs less than the SA 1000 I mean it's all about how much power or you know it demands and you know it's the max output and making sure that those things match up and if it has the right amount of power then whatever it's fine it is totally up to this task you absolutely could use an nx 3000 yes one of the major reasons that it's often not recommended is because yeah it sounds like a mini jet engine is going off with the with the stock

1:47:26a fair cooling fan that thing is not meant to be in the same room as the thing that it is powering which is fine it's a it's a pro amp it's meant to be like a DJ setup type of amp and it makes sense that you're not going to hear the cooling fan in that scenario but yeah you're already familiar with doing the replacement yeah it's a totally reasonable and finding it can power two butt kicker LFE's no problem yeah uh grinder grinder coming across came across an open box seller 65 inch Sony OLED TV model at Best Buy Canada it's the XR8B a variant of the Bravia 8 that uses an LG display W OLED panel he decided to snap it up an old Sony remote he already had on hand allowed him to access the service menu where you can look up how many hours this open box unit had already been used it said 673 hours probably continuously by the way they turned it on and 673 hours later you picked it up I don't know but yeah that's that's more than just a customer return like you know

1:48:31immediately decided that for whatever reason they needed to return this TV that that that TV has definitely been turned on before so it was a used TV for sure and it was missing some of the removable plastic covers that go on the back to hide all the ports and cables and whatnot but naturally his main concern was whether having performance problems so you quickly went to its YouTube app and put some solid color and grayscale patterns on the screen nothing obvious jumped out at him as a sort of problem turn off the TV and stop looking at it immediately immediately stop what you're doing like I've sat in my seat I put up some gray screens and everything looks fine stop hey I was watching somebody play a game the other day on like a game's done quick the the big thing the gamers do twice a year to raise money for cancer or whatever and there was a single pixel it looked like point in the middle of the game that was like the aiming rather you know particular or whatever that was called or whatever it was it wasn't really for aiming but it was

1:49:34this shows you like where you're looking I don't really know why that pixel was white but I kept turning my TV off and on again to see if whether or not you know I kept changing to different apps to make sure that that wasn't like my TV that was doing it's in the video it's not the screen itself showing a flaw yes so when once you know that something is fine stop looking at it because if not you will find out that you will find something it is inevitable okay in yep in statistics we have this thing where there is the phenomenon that if you look at enough variables you wouldn't inevitably find significance and it's just because of how statistics works you will find a false positive somewhere because you look at enough stuff so if you if you survey a bunch of people and you're only looking for one specific thing through the survey and you find significance that's way more impressive and and and means more to the statistics community then if

1:50:35you looked at 20 or 30 different things through a survey and found significance with one of them because that could be a false positive sure so you continually need to continue to look at your TV and trying to find something wrong with it means you will find something wrong with it it is inevitable anyway so you can he confirmed that the built-in speakers work fine and they actually sound pretty decent I would never have looked at that my my big problem with my TV is I can't figure out how them I mean I know the TV speakers are off because I verified it but I would like it to say it somewhere it doesn't say turn TV speakers off it just says where you want the audio to come from right well you're not getting in the audio so I don't know why you're even asking me this question turn the speakers off so what else should he test before he the his return window closes what flaw should he look for out for and what can he use to test if those flaws exist like I said Rob's

1:51:36going to tell you a bunch of stuff tests that you could do and that's great it's a terrible idea as far as I'm concerned you have looked at the TV you you've done more than I did which is I never looked up gray screens because I know that oh let's can sometimes have you know some banding oh we're gonna talk about that in gray screens and I know that if I know that that's going on I will see it yep but if I don't know that it's going on and I forget this exists then I then through just watching regular content I'll never notice it yeah and if I never notice it is it really there is it really there I think the answer is no it's not and therefore I am happy I'm a happier person for my ignorance so thank you this has been my Ted talk yes so I mean look I bought when I bought my G3 you know going back a few years I I bought it as a geek squad certified open box unit you know that was one of the ways to get the price down to a somewhat reasonable level mine did seem to be just it was a customer return it it it it had barely been turned on it had not

1:52:40been used for any length of time and so yeah I like because I was still spending a lot of money even though it was a discounted one you know it was a G3 I wanted to make sure that that panel was was flawless I didn't want a single stuck pixel or anything like that so if that's the way you're feeling about it look best buys very good about their returns as long as you're within their return windows so if that's what we're dealing with so I put on a full black screen and not just like I you know put the TV into its black screen mode where it cuts the video signal I mean a video of a black screen which you can find on YouTube or anywhere else and that's to make sure there are no pixels that are stuck on no sub pixels that are stuck on um because sometimes it's not like a white pixel that's there it's literally like just the red sub pixel or just the green or just the blue uh or in the case of a WOLA panel just the white sub pixel because there are four sub pixels for every single pixel in a WOLA panel uh but yeah just to make sure there are no sub pixels that are stuck on all the time uh and then the reverse of that a full white screen to make

1:53:42sure that there are no sub pixels that are stuck off and not emitting late when they're supposed to and yes this does require getting physically right up to the screen because it is not going to be obvious for many distance away and look if you don't want to find that issue because we're talking about a single pixel out of eight million pixels and then multiply that by four not even just three by four in the case of WOLA millions upon millions of sub pixels and if you're like there is there is one that is stuck off there's a there's a red sub pixel amongst the eight plus million sub pixels that is stuck off at all times ignorance is bliss wrong ignorance can definitely be bliss um if there's going to be an issue with the WOLA panel it is almost always like when the panel is new it's going to be somewhere around the perimeter it's you know you'll you'll kind of notice it if it's midfield but it's going to be around the perimeter it's like yeah you look right around the edges of that screen now one thing to be aware of is on the LG display OLED panels there is an over provisioning of pixels and that's to account for if you're using that screen shift the burn-in

1:54:48mitigation where it actually shifts the image around by just a couple of pixels it's very very subtle they actually there's slightly more than you know 38 of what is it 38 40 by 21 60 right yeah there's slightly more than that so that it can move it around without you losing any of the image so if you happen to find like literally one pixel or sub pixel at the the very very perimeter of the screen that I actually wouldn't worry too much about that that's part of the over provisioning and it isn't really going to be an issue but sometimes you find a whole strip of pixels like near the perimeter and it's like those are all just off all the time and you actually can kind of see that if it's a full white screen like it's not a rectangle there's a little chunk of a strip that's kind out of it so you could look for that if you wanted to now if you really want to torture yourself right not just finding dead or stuck pixels truly want to agonize and torture yourself that's when you put on the full gray screens on your double you hold it and not like 50% gray or 25% gray like 10% and lower the the deep dark gray screens because that's where any vertical

1:55:53banding is going to show up and guess what if you look hard enough you will find it there is not a single WOL lead panel out there that has zero like completely utterly zero vertical banding so yes I suggest that if you don't immediately notice it then you never look for it again so lastly I would put on some HDR 10 content I would put on some Dolby Vision content make sure that everything is activating and working as it should but yeah if all of that is working I think yourself a good TV just do what I do live in the appearance and also my TV doesn't do Dolby Vision so I don't worry about that's right did we do this yeah vertical banding vertical banding on OLED TVs is seeing it kind of like noticing the weave of his acoustically transparent projection screen he didn't notice that first in life was much better because after he did see it see the weave during a very bright scene for the first time now he can never not know this said welcome yeah welcome to my side of the force whatever side this is the side that

1:56:57refuses to acknowledge that problems exist is that what spotting vertical banding on the OLED TV is like and is it more noticeable on a larger screen is he saving himself by going with the 65 instead of the 77 inch I mean I think bigger is always going to be more noticeable than than I mean just by virtue of if it's filling a larger portion of your field of view there's a greater chance you'll see it sure but if the question it is the question that the vertical banding is worse on a smaller on a bigger TV versus smaller TV the answers I don't know I don't know what it would be but maybe it would no I mean I mean LG display does have a couple of different factories and it's from from my knowledge of it the vertical banding originates from it is a heat-based process that smushes together all the layers of the final OLED panel and so it's down to there being a little bit of uneven heating during that process that causes these vertical bands and so typically what we're finding is because they refined and improved it over the years and it's to the point that

1:57:58vertical banding is really quite minimal at this point and then people have been pointing out on how the the brand new G6 they they seem to have eliminated it now it seems to be like flawless thanks largely to the processing more so than the inherent panel itself but yeah it seems like the very first one in a run because you know there's a whole huge line of them that go through the heating rollers and it's like the very first panel and the very last panel where maybe the heater wasn't fully up to uniform heat at the beginning and maybe it was just started to cool down on the very last one that goes to that role it's like those panels seem to be the ones that have the worst so there's still a little bit of a panel lottery out there but yeah I think your analogy is like obviously it's not exactly one to one the weave of an acoustic transparent screen doesn't look exactly the same as vertical banding looks but it is a similar situation where it's like I never saw it at first and then one day I noticed that it's not perfectly uniform and now I can never not see it and it's like yeah that that's about it that's about what it's like if then Gary if then Gary says sparky the puppy has arrived in the semester of a puppy on our YouTube

1:58:59channel also in their flicker album on the on the show notes so if you want to see a puppy who's climbing a fence or something I don't know what this puppy is doing it looks like they're on top of a puppy pad which is what people use it doesn't make sense so his crunch of fun speaker so that isn't quite complete yet but it won't be long and don't worry also has a quiet speaker free play pen in the different rooms just turn the speakers off it's the same way you have to have a different anyways it's Gary he's got to have separate setups and so he isn't being subjected to audio at all times or anything so far he's a little bundle of energy yeah dogs grow up real weird this is my quiet space this is my surround zone space I have a two channel setup too but I can't take you there that's only for that's only on for the weekends seems like so now turning back to home theater stuff so if you take a regular speaker

2:00:01and you face it directly at a wall instead of how you normally face it into the room if you go to the other side of that wall in the adjacent room you can hear the difference facing the speaker to fire at the wall makes it louder in the other room which obviously makes sense but with about subwoofers we've already discussed this ad nauseam but okay we talk about how based ready it's out from a sub and basically a spherical pattern and we talk about how you do not need to be concerned about which way the driver of the subwoofer faces in any which way subwoofers don't need to image or be towed in in the way that speakers do what about the room on the other side of the wall or the apartment below your apartment if you have a downfiring sub does having the subwoofer driver facing straight into the wall or straight down at the floor make a difference in turns of sound transmission the same way facing a speaker into the wall does so I don't have any data specifically on this the way that subwoofer the sound waves propagate out from the subwoofer is that the driver pushes the air and then the air from the driver wraps all the way you know it

2:01:06wraps all the way around the subwoofer and then radiates out from there basically so if you were face it directly out of wall would the sound on the other side of that wall be noticeably or measurably louder I think the answer is probably yes would be my guess but only because the physical the the the the the the air the wind the the wave coming off the driver is literally immediately bouncing off of that wall which it's going to do anyway so I just think it's I think that the only just having the proximity there's going to be like a reverberation right there of that wave but I think you know like I said I have no data on this so I'm just physically thinking I'm just thinking about this yeah there may be a slight difference I don't know

2:02:09if it would be noticeable it may be measurable but in the actuality of the the the way that the sound propagates around the subwoofer I just don't I don't know what do you think that's sort of the yeah the thought experiment wait I mean we know what Gary's asking makes total sense because you're like you know I experientially I know that if I take a regular speaker and I aim it at the wall I go to the other side of the wall and it's like and then I turn the speaker around and aim it normally it's like yeah I can hear that difference so why wouldn't a subwoofer act the same way that's a perfectly reasonable you know thinking it through so the answer that I'm going to give is that it is frequency dependent because you know at the very very lowest frequencies what you can look at as far as objective data goes is yeah you know we have like those spinorama measurements of speakers and subwoofers and so you can see their sound power right which is how how much sound is going out in every direction at every angle right you're you're taking your slices and measuring every five or

2:03:1010 degrees around the the sound producing thing the speaker subwoofer whatever it is and it's like you see at the very low frequencies if the device is able to play that low it's like oh that that 360 degrees around you got the exact same amount of sound going in every single direction and that's why at those very very low frequencies it does not matter which way you hang your sub up down left right any angle degrees it's the same amount of power radiating in every direction so at those frequencies it really doesn't matter but your sub is playing up you know it's playing above 80 hertz even if you set a 80 hertz crossover it's still playing sounds above that and you'll notice on any spinorama measurement once you I mean 80 hertz was kind of chosen because objectively speaking that's about the frequency where the sound power is pretty darn close to a 360 degrees fear all the way around completely even but above 80 it starts to narrow just a little bit starts to get a little bit more directional so that there's a little bit more sound coming out the front above 80 hertz then there is going straight out the back of a driver that's facing forward or a little bit

2:04:11more going down then going up if it's a downward facing driver so because your sub is playing above 80 hertz and making some of those sounds I can't tell you that you know you go you go to the other room and you're like I aimed the sub straight at the wall and I hear some more bass coming through this wall and experientially I think that will be the case it's being the case you know myself if I've ever tried that experience and so it's like but what am I hearing what am I hearing through that well am I hearing the absolute lowest 20 hertz I can barely hear it anyway physical rumbles am I hearing even 30 hertz am I hearing the lowest note that a piano or a bass you know stand up bass can possibly play it's like no I'm hearing like you know the music kind of thumpy thumpy bass which is at least 50 60 and very often it's like the harmonics are easily up above 100 hertz and it's like that's kind of the bass that I'm hearing coming through this wall just like how if I am the speaker at the wall I'm hearing more sound coming through the wall and I'm like you know it is frequency dependent it is sound power radiation dependent and it makes sense

2:05:14that yeah you aim this the subwoofer straight at the wall and you do hear more bass coming through but I don't think it's like the 20 hertz bass it's the above 80 hertz bass yeah just remember that the regular so regular speakers this the frequencies are playing are very way more directional that's right yeah that's why facing it if you look at the sound power plots then at 180 degrees the the polar opposite of the forward facing drivers like oh there's way less sound coming out the back of the speaker at the at the midrange for you kind of at the treble frequencies you know you can get sometimes 15 degrees off of dead ahead street in front of and it's like oh there's there's considerably less power coming out of that tweeter at this off angle I I don't blame anybody for for this being a hard thing to understand this is why science and scientists are so important because even though I know I I know that low these low frequencies

2:06:15are equally loud regardless of what direction the driver faces it's still hard for me to envision that the sound comes out of the driver and the wraps completely around the subwoofer and then emanates from there it's hard for me to understand that even though I do know it it's knowing it and being able to really really understand it is a completely different thing and I I mean I've been talking about this for over 20 years and and I'm still like I like just but how well it's keeping in mind that it it is a wave right it's like the the air molecule that is literally the very first molecule right after like the the surface of the driver itself that little air molecule didn't make its way all the way over to the wall that little air molecule it did move it did physically move its kinetic energy but it oscillated back and forth that little air molecule is still the very first air molecule right next to that driver but the wave propagated through those

2:07:16air molecules and made its way to the surface of the wall where almost all of the energy bounced back the way that it came very little of that energy makes it into the wall but enough does that some of that wall itself starts to vibrate which then transmits that wave through this different medium to the other side of the wall where you can hear it in the room adjacent right so it's like yeah visualizing all of that when you've got these very long wavelengths so it's like that little first air molecule it's still moving in one direction by the time that wave front has already made it to the wall surface and it's like that's why it already bounced off of that surface went to the other side of the room and came back before the first air molecule has even stopped moving and turned back around to go in the other direction it's like yeah it's all hard to visualize all of it but that's why the sound power is like a uniform sphere at the very low frequencies but your subwoofer is playing higher than that so it is still somewhat directional and aiming the sub straight into the wall will make the other side of the wall a little bit louder than aiming the sub away from the wall. All right that's it for this week we're going to think our listeners of the

2:08:19week we're going to think from thank Marco for going to avrant.com and clicking on the bias couple coffee link as well as our 120 patrons over at patreon.com. Yeah Marco thank you so much for that PayPal donation really appreciate that financial support and patreon.com slash avrant podcast is where you can go if you'd like to sign up to sign up to make an automatic monthly donation so a big thanks to our 120 patrons over there. We also got Mr. Gratitude for keeping the podcast going from Infinite Gary Henry Sean and Garendra thank you for thanking us. Yeah I'll say the names one more time we got Infinite Gary Henry Sean and Garendra thanks so much for those notes of gratitude and encouragement we really appreciate those and a big big thank you to everybody who continues to listen and send in your questions. Do you want your question answered or do you ask us by emailing us at questionavrant.com. For avrant I'm Tom Andrew and I'm Rob H. Now go out and listen to something.