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netarc
18 years ago
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jasper_60103
18 years agonetarc
18 years agoRelated Discussions
doing whole house audio
Comments (45)A little of both. I have 11 ft ceilings in a roughly 20x20 great room with 6.5 inchs. The outdoor ceilings with the 8 inch was more like 14 feet ceilings and then there is more background noise outside - and it is nice to help transmit even further since I haven't put deck or patio speakers in yet. I bet 12 feet is roughly the switch over in common practice to 8 inch. There are no absolutes and size is certainly not all that matters. But an 8 inch on 9 foot ceilings would be out of place. It is a bit like recessed cans - 6 inch on 8 foot ceilings is a bit big. I absolutely think you will be fine with 6.5 inch in your great room. You can always go bigger but going smaller would be a mess. You might think that 8 inch speakers are visuallly intrusive....See MoreWhat are you doing for audio?
Comments (25)You need to define what you are trying to do. True audiophiles will have speakers that are well spaced from the room walls so that the wall is not contributing anything sonically to the spatial stage that the speakers are trying to reproduce. You will find very few 2-channel guys who will want anything to do with Dolby anything. Most true audiophiles remove as many things from the signal path to reduce/remove any possible sound signatures that they may impart. This means any sort of DSP processing (like any Dolby Surround/Digital, etc). For the larger portion of the world that is not in the esoteric world of high-end audiophiles - this isn't really a reality that we'll live with. So its a compromise of sound fidelity and reality. Dolby (nor thx) have any speaker requirements that require speakers to be "on the wall". And honestly - thx certified is really a joke certification (sort of like energy star) - its the /minimum/ specifications with which consumers can live with. There are more high-end systems without THX certification that will blow away your "THX certified" system components. Your statement isn't correct that you can't get good sound from in-walls. I will point out that high-end in wall speakers all have their own backboxes and are highly tuned to impart the soundstage with the knowledge that they are to be placed in the wall. If you want high-end - go listen to a setup of triads, Revel inwalls, or Meridian in-walls. I guarantee you that you can tell the difference between them and a $20 Pyle (which I've never heard of). Also, just for your benefit - power plays a very little part of the entire equation. Power is a logarithmic function - it takes 10x the power for double the sound. So, sending more power isn't the solution for enveloping sound. What is primary into the equation for sound is speaker efficiency. E.G if you have an 87 db speaker vs a 90db speaker (3db difference). The 87db speaker will take DOUBLE the power of the 90db speaker to output the same volume. . Taking an even larger extreme - a 94db speaker at 4 watts is the same volume as a 87db speaker at 16 watts. Speaker efficiency is key here. Some manufacturers will lower impedance to drive efficiency but that just means that a higher quality amplifier that can drive a 4ohm (or even 2ohm) load is necessary. The next thing to consider is that full range speakers sound fuller and are better able to give a better (and louder) sounding experience than cheaper limited range speakers. There is a reason why some speakers are balanced toward the higher side and get "lost" when other sounds are present and other speakers don't. Believe it not, Bose is an expert at filling sound which is why some people believe their speakers are good. In no way am I going to say Bose is a great speaker - but I will give credit that they know how to fill sound and market it like crazy. People may not like Bose, but people also realize that Bose made a clock radio that sounded better than everybody else (and more expensive). Why is it that Bose made a radio that sounded better than everybody else ? Well, they made a system that reproduced sound as people wanted to hear (richer, deeper, fuller). You want your in-wall/ceiling speakers to be the same way - otherwise you end up with cheap clock radio sounding speakers....See MoreThe Audio-Book thread
Comments (21)To Linelle's point, sometimes I find I like a series of shorter stories when travelling. Your party might all enjoy the Sherlock Holmes series, read by Rick Kishner (sp?). These are 45 minute short stories, very well read and, well, what more is there to say about AC Doyle's writing? You can find them HERE, just click on Itunes U under the twitter and fb icons. You can download them while on wifi before you leave instead of streaming. I agree with writersblock that Librivox can be amateurish as the readers are volunteers. But anything read by Karen Savage (you can search by reader) I would recommend. Not sure if she is British, her accent varies by author, but her rendition is perfect. Among her books are Jane Austen's, The Treasure Seekers, and The Secret Garden (see fave children's book thread). These may not be the best selections for your travel companions, so consider this a PSA. Also about librvox, you can search by "solo reader". I'm not a fan of the group read, or the dramatic read... bp you asked about how to listen to audio: If your car has bluetooth https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203412 If you want car speaker audio but don't have bluetooth http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/162020530489?lpid=82&chn=ps&ul_noapp=true Be aware that streaming will use a lot of data. If you have space on your device, better to download them. Happy Travels!...See MoreDecember Harvest/Planning/Conversation Thread
Comments (118)Hi folks, I haven't been over on this thread just because it got so long before I looked at it, and I hate to comment on the end of a thread, only to learn that someone already covered whatever-it-was, up above! Right now my soil is at it's very best for clearing and weeding. I've been enjoying that. My wife commented yesterday, and at first I thought she was speaking facetiously, that I love nothing more than to dig. However, if I'm not under pressure, I suppose I really do enjoy cultivating. Maybe I was named "George" for a reason. (Geo=soil/earth, orge=worker/tiller). I WON'T be starting tomatoes until March. Don't know why, but since moving to Oklahoma in 2005, I have had a terrible time keeping seedlings alive. I think part of it is that my house has no good exposures for natural lighting, and part of it is that I struggle with seed starting medium. Seems whatever I get is generally deficient. In recent years I've obtained some from a friend who mixes her own, and uses it on a large scale. That seems to work better. But still, my seedlings never seem very happy until they go out in the garden. I gave up on fluorescent lights as I never found the right intensity/distance combo, and my seedling would often burn. Okay, anyway, I do alright. My seedlings are just on the small side when they go out. It has been extremely busy year for us, especially the last couple of months, with Jerreth's medical crisis. She's doing much better now, thank God! During our Christmas break I'm supposed to be writing materials for Homesteading Edu and we're in, what we hope is the final push to submit an audio book for publication. We've been over two years, now, translating Grace Plus Nothing, by Jeff Harkin, into Spanish (getting close to finished) and somewhere along the way we agreed to do the book as an audio book in English. Only after getting waist deep into the audio book project did I learn that I was going to have to learn basic audio engineering (yikes!). Oh! And Jerreth has launched into a masters program on instructional design, learning to design and engineer instructional videos. This will help with our website and is also part of her work. The long and the short of it is that everything we've endeavored had turned out MUCH MUCH more complicated and laborious than anticipated. We hope to finish with Grace Plus Nothing in 2017. I think we're close. Homesteading Edu, while up as kind of a blog, hasn't really launched. Hopefully that will happen soon. Writing for Homesteading Edu will be an ongoing project for... well, probably for many years. Currently I'm writing our materials on rabbitry and doing some experimentation on sourdough. Kim, it's a REALLY good thing you have a dog to guard those rabbits. Most folk have no idea how much wildlife meanders through their yards at night. Coon will tear a cage open and kill rabbits. Stray dogs will do the same. Here's last night's sourdough project, something I've worked on (sporadically) for nearly 40 years: French Bread. This was by far the best I've ever done....See Moredynamos
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