Home Audio 2.0

 

Most people would be pretty happy with these two pieces of home audio/theater equipment. I should know: I used to sell them back in a previous life. OK, let's rewind. Twelve-thirteen years ago, before we moved to the Metro-plex (Dallas/Ft. Worth) and started (for my wife), restarted (for me) our teaching careers..... we lived in Lubbock. I worked in IT, and as almost a hobby, I also worked part time in a home audio/theater store there. I loved it! Every other weekend and a couple of nights a week, I got to talk audio with people and they even paid me! A couple of the brands (among others) we sold, were Denon and B&W (Bowers and Wilkins). The Denon AVR-3802 was near the top of their line and an excellent piece. The B&W ASW 600 was a mid-line piece, but a great deal for the money.

Fast forward a decade + and you might remember; last summer, this happened! We moved to another house. Well, along with it came 2 sets, not pieces of equipment...... 2 Denon AVR-3802s, 2 ASW 600s, 2 sets (5 per) B&W LM1 Satellite speakers mounted in 2 living spaces........ and 7 sets of in-ceiling speakers! The subs and receivers were just piled in a closet. My suspicion was that they and/or the ceiling speakers had not been used for some time. The models were current when I was selling it more than 10 years before, so it was probably bought when the house was built in 2003 by the original owner. We'll just say that the 2nd owner from whom we bought the house didn't didn't strike me as the type of people who would have cared about whole home audio.

I, like most people should have been pretty darned pleased, right? Yes and No. Yes, these were excellent pieces of equipment, but I didn't need them! I already had 2 home theater receivers that I was already happy with and not planning on replacing. They have pretty much the same capabilities and built to the same standard. ..... But what about driving those 7 pairs of ceiling speakers? Well, that's not really a job for a receiver, .... any receiver. I'm not going to get into impedance and load here, but lets just go with the simple explanation that driving more than 2 pairs of speakers is not a really good idea. Driving four or more pairs from the same amp will kill an amp in short order. It may not be today, or even next month, but it's coming! To do this, what's needed is a beefy "stand-alone" amp and an impedance matching speaker selector with protection circuitry. So, over the course of the last month, I sold both receivers and both subs. Why would I sell 2 perfectly good B&W subs!?!

To buy something smaller of course! Back when I was selling them, I loved B&W subs and sold lots of them.... but I tended to not sell as many of the ASW600s. ??? Something the matter with that model? B&W as a brand is a fraud? Ah..... No. Let me diverge and go on a little sub theory according to the Frugal Propellerhead. Unlike many (probably most) people, I don't like more bass, I like bass just fine, but I want it to be fast!!! 

Most of you are aware that sound is made up of waves. The lower the tone, the bigger the wave. So bass waves are the largest, some are huge, as in many feet between the peaks. Therefore, it takes a lot to move the air to create (or recreate) them. So, the bigger the cone, the better chance it has to make that wave. Doesn't that mean, we should all buy 15"/18" coned subs? Good luck with your wife on that one! Remember; it's not just the speaker itself, you'll also need a heck of an enclosure to acoustically match that driver! So, we're all screwed, right? Again, Yes and No. There is another way (actually there are others as well) to move the air, and that's with a smaller cone, but it needs to piston (this is called excursion) in and out more. That's not easy though: in order to do this well, the driver has to be extremely stiff and the amp has to be VERY powerful to control all the movement. Here's the issue. The ASW600 is the smallest and least powerful of all B&W 10" subs from it's generation (150w). My ASW675 which is used in my main HT system, is from the same line, but has a Kevlar/aluminum composite cone AND a 500w amp..... along with a sealed-box "acoustical suspension design. The next model down was the ASW300 with a smaller 8" driver, but an amp almost as powerful at 100w. You might be thinking here that 150 is 50% more powerful than 100. The calculation of audio power isn't linear. To create a descernable difference to human ear, you have to up volume by 3db..... which require double the power from the amp! An 8" driver is significantly smaller and easier to drive for an amp than a 10". The other half is in the listening. To my ear, the ASW300 was much more musical than the ASW600, it's notes reproduced faster and just hit much cleaner. My preference is less, but faster and more musical. So, I sold the 2 ASW600s at $150 apiece and bought an ASW300 at $100 (after shipping). Plus, I sold the 2 Denon receivers at $75 each so, I cleared $350 profit from equipment I didn't need, plus ended up with a sub, I liked better.

But what about the "whole house" audio part with 7 pairs of in-ceiling speakers? I screwed up...

I bought a pair of these things.... Niles HDL-6 speakers selectors. As the model number might indicate, they will handle 6 pairs of speakers each. Problem solved, right? I even got a great deal for them ($50 for the pair)..... ??? See those white things on top of the selector? Yeah, those are the speaker wire connectors and mine didn't come with them. No problem, right..... $6-8 each  on eBay...... I need 14!!! That's more than the price of the box itself! On top of that, when I did finally figure out the original manufacturer of them (Weco), ordered 14 at $1.50 ea, the "pin" size was wrong. It appears that Niles used a special size which is half a millimeter smaller than standard!

Then, lightning struck.... twice..... in a good way! I found a Niles RSL-6, remote controllable 6-pair speaker selector on Craigs List for $30 which I talked the seller down to $25 and has spring bindings for the speaker wire. That's almost $20 less than the cost of buying the connectors alone! 

 

On the same day, I was asking my friend Pat (who still works in the home audio business) what I amp I should target to drive those speakers. His answer was, "I've got something here. I'll send it to you".... that was it. I figured that he was probably busy with an install so I let it go with a "?" as reply. The next day, I found out that he had been given a QSC GX-3 amp for some work he'd done for someone, and that it was on it's way via FEDEX to my house! Apparently, it was sitting around his garage and he didn't want to hassle with selling it, so decided ship it to me. I texted him at the right time! What is it? It's an industrial amp that people use to set up professional sound equipment for performances. If you go into any decent sized pawn shop, you'll find several in the DJ equipment area. This one is rated at 300w X 2 channels.... perfect for driving the 5 pair of in-ceiling speakers downstairs through the selector. Upstairs?

Quite some time ago, I picked up an old Sony "AV" receiver. It's old enough so that the surround sound doesn't even have a center-channel. Yeah; pre Pro-Logic! But it's not considered vintage, so the new age posers who are into retro aren't interested. I was the only bidder on eBay at $25. What about shipping? He was local, so I picked it up from him at the cost of about 2 bucks in gas. It's going to run the 2 speaker zones upstairs through it's own terminals. 

There is one last thing to add to this already too long post. I was finally able to break out my other Griffin TuneCenter iPod dock as well. I've had one in my main system upstairs for several years.

They not only allow the user to run their iPod through your main AV system, but they set up to interact through a graphic interface on a monitor. I picked them up years ago for about $15 each, when Griffin was getting rid of the old iPod 30-pin interface devices when people moved to iPhones with the Lightning connector. Now, I have the ability to run all our music through these devices through the 2 main systems, and by this afternoon..... all over the house, plus porch! 

So, This Is Summer!

OK; the reality is that I've done very little "work" as related to my actual job. But I've gotta say, I don't remember ever having a summer where I've had so much to do so quickly after the end of the school year! We knew going in that we were going to have to "front-load" our summer since the beginning of July would bring an avalanche of items out of our control.

Right out of the gate, we took our vacation. So, it's appropriate that our little white-water-rafting trip in Durango, Colorado was a pretty good analogy to the summer so far. It started out busy, but fun. You see us paddling with big grins on our faces! We had to get that vacation in immediately before everything else happened......

..... then this! We went over a big rock, went into the hole on the other side, didn't have enough strong rowers in the raft, so the whole thing got stuck in the hole and we start going over the side. You can see my leg sticking up over the right side there. I started out on the left! My wife and son (who were on the right) are already gone. What you don't see is that it's going to go up on it's side (again) and everyone else will go out as well...including the guide. So, we got back from our little trip up to Colorado tired, but happy...... then it just goes downhill from there.

 First, I have 3 training days in the space of a week for new systems at school. 

Then; on top of our friends coming to visit, my brother/sister-in-law complete with their four children fly in from Austria! Both things are awesome, but both happening at once made for a busy weekend.

Oh! Did I forget that on the particular Friday that the friends were arriving, and the family was flying in, my other sister-in-law delivered her baby...... yeah...... 

That morning, I also went over to a commercial client and started the process of doing a 3-year rebuild on their main PC. 

This was over the 4th of July weekend, after which I promised to have the newly rebuild computer online on Tuesday morning the 5th. Fireworks symbolizing this and the 4th is all too appropriate! In the middle of this, I've been helping my brother-in-law car shop for a large SUV so that they can have a car to drive their large family around the country. Yesterday, I finally had a day off. 

OK; not really. I forgot to mention that my wife was offered a new job last week (yes, in the middle of the craziness). So yeah; my worse nightmare. Moving my elementary teacher-wife's stuff and since her new job isn't as a classroom teacher, it all had to come home! Therefore, the last two day included moving stuff out of her classroom.... in 100 degree Texas summer heat! Yup.... this is what I did on my "day off". I started by making the second trip to her classroom and filling up the space previously known as the garage. Then the wonderful woman that I married volunteered to take all the kids (our 2, sister-in-law's 4, other sister-in-law's 1 of 2) over to the grandparents for swimming. So I spent the rest of the day, reloading a laptop for my commercial client since it's MS Updates stopped working, building my brother-in-law a HTPC from old parts so they could watch Kodi and watching YouTube. 

 Half the summer's over and I'm exhausted already!