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Author Topic: Hello There, my first post  (Read 5404 times)

Bob in St. Louis

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Hello There, my first post
« on: August 16, 2007, 11:25:28 am »

Hi,
I just wanted to stop by and say HI. Not sure if this is the best place for this thread, but since it said, "Other Cheap Thrills", I figured why not.
I downloaded the trial version of MC12 the other day. Haven't played with too many of the buttons yet, but based on the product description and a few recommendations from fella's that know my goals, I'm confident I'll be purchasing the full version.

My room is used mainly for home theater, partially for 2 channel listening, and partially for gaming. I intend to 'converge' all my toys with one piece of software as opposed to several pieces that are unfriendly with each other, and worse, unfriendly with me.  >:(  I'm "optimistically assuming" MC12 will be my new best friend so I'll take great joy in un-installing a few select pieces of software that have been a source of aggravation. In fact, I may prop my feet up and sip an adult beverage, grinning slyly while the software melts away into oblivion.
In addition to the above uses for MC12, I'd also be using it for manipulation of digital camera and camcorder media.
Currently in the room are two PC's, Ideally, I'd like to only have one and have it sitting in the equipment rack. I may put one in the rack and use it to stream tunes via Cat wiring and leave the other for internet duties. Not sure yet.

Based on the capabilities of MC, looks like I'll be in for a little reading in my future.
Is there a "newbee 101" area? Have'nt found one yet.

If you're interested, here's what's in my 'hole' as my wife calls it:
http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/home-theater-equipment/4895-goodies-found-bob-st-louis-ht-room.html

In addition to "The Shack", I can also be found on AudioCircle and the Hawthorne open baffle forum.

Thanks for reading guys,  ;)
Bob

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JimH

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Re: Hello There, my first post
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2007, 11:39:40 am »

Hi Bob.  Welcome to Interact.  I moved your post to the main MC12 board.

The FAQ (top of this board) is a good place to learn about some of the things that are here.
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Bob in St. Louis

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Re: Hello There, my first post
« Reply #2 on: August 16, 2007, 11:52:11 am »

Good deal Jim, Thank you very much, I'll check out the FAQ's.

Bob
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Using (paid) MC17 to play music from a PC server (ZOTAC ZBox Win7) and controlled by a Samsung Galaxy 10.1 with Gizmo and/or "Unified Remote".

benn600

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Re: Hello There, my first post
« Reply #3 on: August 16, 2007, 09:50:32 pm »

Where are the tweeters in your home theater system?  It looks incredibly big and powerful but all I see are woofers.

You will like Media Center.  I discovered it about 13 months ago and it has cost me literally around $15,000 (no joke).  From buying 600+ CDs (used, luckily) to get FLAC quality ($5,000), building a $5,000 7TB server to rip all my music and DVDs to, buying lots of DVDs ($1,000) and other equipment upgrades, it has been a very costly journey.  However, I am very pleased with everything I have compiled over those 13 months.

Oh, and Media Center cost me $40 + $20 upgrade to MC 12.  Lol.  Small price to pay but it led to bigger things.

1) I ripped our 500 CDs and bought CDs to replace my questionable personal MP3 collection--then ripped to all FLAC.  I basically have purchased every song in my library.
2) I hand scanned every piece of cover art I own and bought replacements for some I didn't have.  I saved it as 1200x1200 JPG files.  They look amazing full screen.
3) Imported our 20,000 digital camera collection and am in the process of scanning our 30,000 old picture/slide collection.
4) Already put all our old 100+ VHS tapes on DVD and ripped those to my server for MC's use.
5) Have around 530 DVDs including TV, Movies, Home DVD, etc.

I take care to only store the finest material in MC.  I don't keep randomly downloaded youtube clips and such in MC.  I just keep ripped CDs (FLAC ONLY--not a single downloaded MP3), ripped DVDs (no downsized AVI's, etc.)  And our digital camera collections with our several digital cameras over the years.

I also take care to keep backups of the most important media and 2+ backups of the smaller but irreplaceable content, mainly pictures.  My music is backed up but only once (and kept offsite).  My server is RAID 6 so it can handle two hard drive failures.  It's also on a good APC UPS ($200).

I still remember my 6K song collection in iTunes back June of 2006 until I found MC.  I spent hours and hours looking and finally stumbled upon MC on the FLAC web site because they listed lots of FLAC compatible software.

And now I sync music to lots of portable devices including my iPhone (requires iTunes + MC to do).  I have a car stereo hookup so I listen to all my music from my iPhone in my car.  Works great.
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glynor

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Re: Hello There, my first post
« Reply #4 on: August 17, 2007, 07:25:27 am »

Welcome, Bob!  I think you'll probably end up pleased with your decision.

As for noob resources, we could certainly do a bit better, but luckily this forum is a veritable font of good information.  Another good place to start is certainly the JRiver Wiki.  It is relatively new and, like all wikis really, is a work in progress, but it has some great info.  And, as always, search first but feel free to ask any questions here.

You'll probably be surprised with the responsiveness of the forum!
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Alex B

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Re: Hello There, my first post
« Reply #5 on: August 17, 2007, 09:11:20 am »

Where are the tweeters in your home theater system?  It looks incredibly big and powerful but all I see are woofers.

He has full-range coaxial drivers.

http://www.hawthorneaudio.com/drivers.htm
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benn600

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Re: Hello There, my first post
« Reply #6 on: August 17, 2007, 10:32:58 am »

So in other words, they are very amazing speakers?  I didn't know you could get a wide range of sound from a single speaker.  Why don't other companies use them?  $145 for a speaker is very inexpensive when you can spend $500 each easily on 3-way speakers at Best Buy.

That's interesting because I kept thinking it would be neat if they made 5-way speakers...just something with so many different speakers that not only would you get incredible power, you would end up with wide frequency response.  I read the speaker wikipedia article a few weeks back but didn't quite finish it.  I bet the coaxial drivers section was after where I stopped, lol.
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Bob in St. Louis

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Re: Hello There, my first post
« Reply #7 on: August 20, 2007, 02:09:44 pm »

Holy cow guys!! I thought I had all the rights buttons pushed to get topic reply notification. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to ignore your replies.

Ok, lets see, where do I start?

benn600, It looks like Alex answered your first question about the tweeters. He's correct, the drivers for the mains, center and rear channels are coaxial. Meaning the Compression tweeter is threaded into the back of the "mid-woofer" as it's called, and fires through the woofer fabric. Makes for nice accuracy and timing. Wonderful soundstage and imaging, purely amazing stuff this dude (Darrel Hawthorne) has designed. The manufacturer is Eminence. I shouldn't get started talking about my drivers, you'll never get me to stop.  ;D

You've got a collection of music to be envious of. Since these 2 channel audio heads got this home theater guy interested into music recently, my collection is very small. Besides, my money is going for "stuff" right now, not music. I'm 'kinda' new to HT, but VERY new to 2 channel. You have your work cut out for you copying all those photos, MAN! That's a lot of work.

I agree about saving only the best quality of stuff for MC. I've got about 1,300 songs (remember when Napster was legal?) Yea, that's how I got those songs. Well, you can imagine the quality.  ::) So when MC is up and running, I'll be starting my ripping of "the good stuff", what little I have.....

Regarding your FLAC, is the MC's lossless good enough, or is FLAC better??

About your comment on why more manufactures don't use coaxial....I don't know. It's considered a sacrilege by some fullrange purists that a driver has to have "help" from a another driver for the high frequencies. I suppose they don't consider it a true fullrange driver because it really isn't a driver, it's driver(s). In my (very) humble opinion, there isn't a true fullrange driver that will do fullrange from top to bottom. I thought about designing a tri-axial made from the HawthorneAudio coaxial and it's mate the "Augie" (bass augmentation driver), but before I made the first prototype, I realized physically connecting a bass driver in the same plane as a coaxial may turn out to be the equivalent of shaking baby syndrome and have a large negative effect on sound quality. Back to the drawing board. ::) But to reply to your statement, "$145 for a speaker is very inexpensive....".... Yea buddy! You're not kidding. For the price these are stunning drivers. I've heard speakers that cost thousands of dollars, and.....well, you see what I have in my room.  ;)

glynor, You're right, I do think I'll be happy. I've not (still) had much of a chance to do much with the software to get a good feel for it, but so far, it looks very nice. I've loaded the trial version on my main PC and works just fine. I also loaded it on the PC that I ultimately plan on using as a dedicated server (layman's HTPC if you will....). Having lots of "issues" with that one.  >:( I wasn't going to EVER hook that one to the internet, but then I lose the tagging ability. Soooo, now I've got to get it connected. Either that or figure out how to network that one to my main PC. I have no clue how to network, other than the Cat6 Ethernet from the main PC to the XBox360. But that really doesn't qualify one to be called "proficient" at networking now does it?  LOL ;) Anybody know if a USB cable between the two will work?

The link you gave to the wiki is much more what I need. I haven't done more than a quick scan of it, but it looks like it'll answer some of the questions I have. Basically, I need an owners manual, which it looks like it has. Will check later.

Alex, thanks for giving the guys the link. That's exactly what I've got (and ALWAYS plan on having): Hawthorne Audio drivers.

Sorry again about the delayed reply. I'll double check my profile preferences.

Bob
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