Geek with Family

My DIY acoustic panels project is on hold until I can breathe again (nothing like a cold over Labor Day weekend). I've built the wooden frames but haven't begun to work with the fiberglass because I can't imagine coughing through a respirator. So, to feel like I was making progress I threw together two Jon Risch Quick and Dirty Bass Traps (scroll down to "New Quick & Dirty Recipe").

You construct the the bass traps by just stacking a few bags of fiberglass insulation and shoving them in the corners of your listening room (that's the quick and dirty part). I bought four bags of the cheapest insulation my local Home Depot sold: R-13, 3.5 inch kraft faced, 15 inch wide rolls. The rolls' dimensions while rolled up in their bags is approximately 23" wide by 16" diameter. I stacked them one on top of the other by the long dimension and duct taped the middle of the pairs together, making one long piece 46" x 16". I then placed them in the front corners of the room for instant bass traps.

Continue reading Jon Risch Quick and Dirty Bass Traps Dressed Up By Ikea

Popularity: 18% [?]

I've begun a Acoustic Test CD project that will contain various test tones, solo drum tracks, bass lines for testing your subwoofer and other musical tracks to test the rest of the frequency range and stereo imaging. Apple's Garageband will handle all the music compositions while Amadeus II will output test tones. This collection of tracks will follow industry experts' and my own philosophies and techniques for getting the most music out of your stereo through proper acoustic set up.

Continue reading My DIY Acoustic Test CD Project Will Help You Get the Most Out of Your Hi-Fi Components

Popularity: 8% [?]

For the past two weeks I've been obsessed over my listening room's acoustics. I'm sure that acoustic problems are now invading the space (or I've read too much about the subject and I'm just noticing them now, always train your ears). The most obvious problem is too wide a stereo image. For example, I'll get a tight, centered combo of snare and kick drum that I can imagine a drummer playing and then he hits a cymbal eight feet away over past the right speaker. Another problem is losing center imaged singers to a weird lobing split between either speaker—the voice may suddenly collapse to one side. These anomalies are subtle, don't think my room is crap.

I need acoustic treatments and I don't want to spend much money. Enter Jon Risch's (of Audio Asylum Tweak/DIY moderator fame) DIY Acoustic Panels (a simple wood frame covered with burlap and stuffed with fiberglass insulation). The advantage of these panels is their wide frequency bandwidth absorption, sucking up high and medium frequencies and even upper bass down to 100 Hz. Other acoustic treatments with a narrower bandwidth only deaden higher frequencies and let the bass remain bloated. Plus they're more expensive and usually have a low WAF (wife acceptance factor).

Continue reading Why I Need to Build Jon Risch’s DIY Acoustic Panels

Popularity: 9% [?]

I’ve mentioned Babelcolor in the last couple posts about calibration. The application can sample and convert between any color space and profile. I checked it out because it is the only third party Mac application (it’s available for PC too) that can accept xyY readings (important for certain calibration Excel spread sheets) from the Eye One Pro in emissive or ambient modes. I was surprised to find it does everything I need to calibrate my Sanyo PLV-Z3 projector in its trial mode.

Continue reading Babelcolor - Mac OS X Utility for Eye One Pro and Projector Calibration

Popularity: 4% [?]

Sunday night, I stayed up late calibrating my Sanyo PLV-Z3 LCD projector. I attempted a full gamma and grayscale reading from 0–100% using GetGray’s 10% increment gray window test patterns. The Eye One Pro can only get reliable sub-30% grayscale readings when you point it directly at the projector with the ambient light head attached (as opposed to the usual emissive readings from the light reflected off the projection screen).

Now I have a problem. My projector is mounted on the ceiling, a little under seven feet off the ground. My camera tripod—that would normally hold the Spyder2 Pro or Eye One Pro—only extends to about five feet high. I had to find a solution to getting the Eye One two feet in front of the projector and fully bathed in the light path so I could sit at my Powerbook and take readings in Babelcolor. I needed to mod my tripod.

Continue reading Howto: Camera Tripod PVC Extension Pole for Eye One Pro Front Projection Calibration

Popularity: 4% [?]

GetGray is a hobbyist produced home theater calibration DVD. You can only buy it through internet download, as it’s a VIDEO_TS folder you burn to a DVD-R. As implied by the title, the DVD’s primary purpose is to track your digital display device’s underlying gray scale with the aid of a color measuring device like the Colorvision Spyder2 or Gretag Macbeth Eye One Pro.

Continue reading GetGray Calibration DVD Review

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Google SketchUp was released a few days ago for Mac OS X. I’ve been waiting for this one to render my real and imagined home theater rooms and electronic components in all their detail.

Searching through Google’s 3D Warehouse (keywords: hifi, electronics, audio, HDTV, etc.), I found many SketchUp users already had the same idea. After a quick search, I discovered three or four nicely detailed theater or listening rooms. One SketchUp-er created super nice replica’s of his Classé system including CD player, processor and amp. You can download and edit or use any of the models as components in your own SketchUp constructions. This is a great way to learn the application by reverse engineering other’s hard work.

Continue reading Google SketchUp for Mac OS X - Render Your Home Electronics in 3D

Popularity: 4% [?]

FuzzMeasure Pro is a new audio analysis graph pr0n creation tool for the Mac. Now you can create all those fancy charts you see every month in Stereophile:

FuzzMeasure Pro is an audio and acoustical measurement application you use to perform, analyze, and produce visually stunning graphs of your measurements. Using FuzzMeasure’s tools, you can easily gather measurements of a home theater system, recording studio, stage, auditorium, raw loudspeaker components, and more.

This app looks like a great (and only) audio calibration and loudspeaker analysis tool for the Mac. Armed with this software, a mike and a Macbook you could show off all of your audiophile measurement results on various forums. Whenever someone posts "My new speakers sound great," you can reply with charts for Frequency Domain Analysis, Time Domain Analysis, Delay Finding, Reverberation Time, Waterfall Plots, and Impedance of your superior equipment. Or you can tell them they suck and you rock.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I don’t trust my Radio Shack 7-Range Analog Display Sound Level Meter. I know the device lies to me whenever I take an audio test signal reading because acoustics experts have told me so. Whenever I do take readings that I think will enhance the blend between my Vandersteen 1c front loudspeakers and Hsu Research VTF2 subwoofer, I have to do too much math in my head. If I want to measure a 63 Hz test tone at 75 db on the SPL meter (+1.5 db error), I actually want the needle to center on 73.5 db. Or, wait, is it 76.5 db? I can never remember. If only I were a polymath (read Scott Westerfeld’s Midnighters trilogy).

Continue reading Rives Audio Test CD 2 - Enhance Your Radio Shack SPL Meter

Popularity: 4% [?]

After I fainted from sticker shock at the pricing of the official Sanyo PLV-Z3 projector ceiling mount ($200), I found a much cheaper solution. For $36.95 I could buy a Metalcraft all metal adjustable ceiling mount off ebay.

Mounting a projector to my ceiling was easier than I thought. Here’s how I did it.

Continue reading Howto - Ceiling Mount a Home Theater Front Projector - Metalcraft Mounting System

Popularity: 9% [?]