Endless entanglement

In home cinema world , one of the most common topic is endless entanglement of cables. The reason for this is very obvious as home cinema usually will have multi channel audios which means multi speakers placed in the room with cables connection running around the room. Many a times this situation has become like spaghettis of cables especially behind the amplifier where all the cables comes into, like speaker cables, HDMI cables, interconnect cables, power cables. Most people will try to tidy up a little but many will give up after. I can tell you is not an easy fit which I have tried various ways to keep tidy like cable ties. Even tried with different kind of racks to separate the component but usually it will end up with whole entanglement of cables. So after scouring youtube and reading some online tips, I realized that many professional home cinema setup is done with those server racks uses for IT data centers. I gotten some research done and learning from different tutorial videos on how to do it properly. Mid of last year when I got around it decided to get a 33U server rack and give it a try. What I mean by 33U is how tall the rack is. Hardware size is usually measure by 1U =  4cm.

This picture shows how I have put up the hardware in the racks with the bottom being the Frank Power bank and slowly moving up with the power amps and to the processor and finally the oppo player. The reason I arrange in this manner is that the player and processor are the one at a height easier for loading of disc and controls. The power amps before are just switch to turn on and nothing else. This will be convenient and nothing else. I choose not to have any door on it as it will be easier to access the hardwares. 

Both sides of the rack can has panels that is removable for easy maintenance as well. The railing and the trays are all adjustable as there are many holes provided for you to screw in as you wish. This is very useful as sometimes hardware has different sizes and you won't have to worry about not able to fit certain hardwares. 

Putting up all the hardwares are pretty much straight forward but the challenge is again what to do with the cables. This is the back of the racks where all the entanglement will start. From the overview, there are multiple cables going into the different amps and processors. 

The basic idea is to group all the cables accordingly as I have mine goes with different connections for the different channels. With this arrangement, it will be easier to keep it tidy and of course will be easier to look for which cables goes where. Cable ties definitely useful and don't go cheap on it. Tie as many as needed to keep everything group up.

This is another piece of good cable management for the rack, it is inserted vertical in the rack so cables and run through and goes to different level of the rack.

The cables are each tag on both ends so it will be easy for any future maintenance. 

There are some really long cables, like my HDMI cables which I have it tie to the rack on the side and some other long cables which can be 10 meters long.

This is one important component. The trunking that is at the side of the rack which have all the cables running in to the rack which can be put in properly. The holes along the trunking will allow cables to go to any part of the rack easily. Is the same as how electric wiring trunking in a typical home. 

Other than trunking will be this long stretch of power sockets or PDU (power distribution unit). This is very useful as there many hardwares in the rack and can be use and more importantly with this arrangement will be easier to manage the cables as well. 

One final thing which is essential will be lighting. As you can see in all the pictures above there are lights on different level of the rack. This will be very useful as room lighting is not enough with this kind of rack. Good lighting will be needed for any future maintenance. Hope this will be a good tips for anyone going to setup a home cinema. Enjoy the movies.

Heart of your home cinema

Cinema is the one place that no matter what age or gender that will likely to go for some family entertainment or even with friends. Thanks to the pandemic that enjoyment is pretty much non existing for now at least. Home cinema or theater has been the next best thing to have. This days with so much high resolution content from blu ray discs to online streaming. Is totally no brainer to seat at home to enjoy the endless titles of movies. 

Traditionally, it has been the TV that dominant the home theater or I will say TV is a common hardware you can find in almost every home in nearly any countries around the world. The best thing is the prices of TV this days is very much encouraging and the size of TV is easily goes up to 85" with affordable price. Although that is the case but a relatively large screen size of 100" or more still is unreachable for most for the TV. The best alternative option is the projector. The same can be said for projector as well with much affordable price and easily bought this days.

For people who are venturing into projector or about to take the plunge, there are few things to consider to get the best of projector or the very least avoiding any blunder. Of course the first thing will be the projector itself. What kind of projector, just like TV with many different models and specs. Probably when choosing a display (TV or Projector) will think about the picture quality in term on resolution. Is either fullHD or 4k display. Is pretty straight probably for most to go with 4k however this will be also more costly. Next thing which is very important is the light source. Traditionally projector uses lamp as light source. Just like TV using backlighting as light source. Recent years, laser is being introduce as light source to the projector world. Now the thing with different light source of course will give you different kind of picture quality and so on but the thing most people will consider is the cost. Laser projector is more costly than the lamp projector. Of course the good thing about laser is the long life span compare to a lamp that might burn out in about 3000-4000 hours. Different brands of projector the cost vary as well. 

                                                                            3 LCD

                                    

                                                                               DLP

The next part of the light source is how it is use to project the image into the screen. There are 2 types which is the 3LCD and DLP. As from the image you can see that 3 LCD uses 3 pieces of mirros for 3 prime colours of red, green, blue to project the image. Whereas DLP uses a colour wheel for the 3 prime colours. DLP being the more simple setup also means the cost is lower than 3 LCD in general of course in term of picture quality, 3 LCD will be preferred as the colour is more accurate.

Of course once you know which projector to go, you will also want to know screen. There are many screen types but the main consideration to start will be the size. How big you want your screen to be. This need to depend on your projector throw as well. What is means is that, how far away the projector from the screen to have the size that you want. Every projector is different. This is best refer to the projector brand with proper calculator to get this right. Also you can consider acoustic transparent screen. Meaning the screen has micro or tiny holes for sound to pass through. With this kind of screen you can place speakers behind the screen and not blocking the sound. Finally we can choose for fixed screen or roll up screen. 

Projector and screen is done and next will be placing the projector. Some prefer to mount the projector, some will place it on some rack or furniture. Now if you do mount the projector, it is important to know the mount so you will know if that fit your projector. Not all projector will fit into standard projector mount. Also the weight need to be consider. The placement of the mount is important to make sure you can have the projection image throw into your screen. Some projector do have function to move the display or screen shift. If your projector doesn't do that, than is even more important to place the mounting accurately for the display to be in proper size and location.

Last but not least is the HDMI cable. Assuming with projector, usually you will need long run cable from player to the projector. Usually cable length is really not much of a concern, after all it is digital cable. Now the thing with long run cable is the speed of the cable will reduce on long distance. Again this is not much of a concern most of the time. Now the issue we need to consider is the 4k HDR or HDR+. To enable 4k 60hz image with full colour chroma of 4:4:4, the cable need to be able to sustain 18 Gbps speed. What happen if it fail ? The possibility of not getting any image. The audio part is fine as HDMI can carry any kind of surround format without issue. Normal copper cable is not enough to run high speed. Its like home high speed internet is usually fiber cables are use. This apply as well for HDMI. To achieve high speed requirement for the display, fiber HDMI is the answer to it.

Finally once you have your hardware setup is time to enjoy your movie with some nice popcorn. 

Bass Matters! Bass Management/Calibration

Its has been ages since anyone posted on bass management. Last week I have talk about doing auto calibration or calibration for your multi channel audio. This is something tedious and time consuming. I think to some can be mind boggling. It is how I started as well but I am lucky to be guided by some of the best sifu there is. Another lucky thing is many forum members willingness to share on their experience especially the mistake learn which helps a ton to me.

First thing I learn about management is the essential tool. The more common tool most members are using is the REW software with the Umik-1 mic. There are tons of better products out there but that is another topic. REW is a measurement tool of how the sound respond. The purpose of it, is to know what might be dip and peak of different frequency. Knowing that will tell us what we want to focus in getting it to the more ideal level. Looking at the graph I have posted is the respond of my dual subs to my room. You can see that is all the bumps and dip still even after much work was done in correcting it.  

REW or (Room EQ Wizard) is the software use for measuring audio. It can be downloaded from https://www.roomeqwizard.com/ as it is a freeware. This can be use as SPL meter to measure how loud the sound which is very useful when doing leveling on multichannel audio. Of course to use the software you need the hardware for the measurement. That is the umik-1 from the company (MiniDSP). Its a Hong Kong based company that produces hardware of various kind of audio management. Its sold for USD79 which can be bought here https://www.minidsp.com/products/acoustic-measurement/umik-1

With this hardware and software is pretty much you can start doing the calibration work on your audio. This also applies for stereo or any number of channels. The limitation right now is the REW software ability to measure height speakers. Of course you can always rely on the software in your processor to do that as well. Some pictures here just to show some example of measurement I have done for my home theater setup. You can see the graph with multiple measurements for different channels. The other graph with just 1 line is the subwoofer measurement.

One additional tool which I have in place is the minidsp 2x4 HD. What it means 2x4 as it have 2 inputs and 4 outputs. This is use for subwoofers to manage the bass which will help on top of the processor calibration. The minidsp has more functions which can do tons in calibrating the LFE (Low Frequency Effect) or bass in your home theater setup. The beauty of this hardware, it works with the REW software. Practically the measurement done in REW can be imported into the minidsp to save some work on your calibration.

This is the result I have gotten so far for my dual SVS subs which consists of SB16 and PB16. Its a mix of sealed and ported subs in my setup which I think is best of both worlds. This is not quite popular I will say as integrating both subs can be a big challenge. Get it right and is very satisfying. Time to get back to more movies. Cheers......

No longer headless

 

So what is so headless about ? In computer or digital world , headless pretty much is saying that you are operating some hardware without a screen or keyboard. Practically you don't see any kind of interaction with the hardware. What is in the picture is a DIY box of music player / streamer. The inside hardware is a single board computer (Asus Tinkerboard S) loaded with volumio O/S. The idea of it is to have a remote without the need of any kind of display which is convenient.

Although this is what the whole intention is about but no doubt sometimes it will be also nice to have some visual while we are enjoying our music. Even we listen with our ears but something nice to the visual is always a plus point.  After all, hifi is an entertainment. It does make sense to make the environment to be as good as possible. Of course this also meaning that what we see during the listening is critical in adding on to the enjoyment.

So here it is, I have added a small monitor of 11 inch in size to the unit via HDMI. The Tinkerboard do support A/V as with its HDMI capable of 4k resolution and even atmos / dts X surround. That is another story. So is pretty use to have a monitor add on to it to have the nice display of the unit. The display is pretty standard is showing what is playing, volume level, the minutes, play, pause. I guess with the display you have a sense that there is something playing behind the scene of the music. This is a standard fullHD monitor but it does work with touch screen monitor too. Initially I was thinking of touch screen monitor but is quite a bit costly. I am happy to settle with this. Very much happy with it and will surely enjoy my music a lot more to come. 

Our Shiok Sendiri Space!

It was never in doubt that our little blog revival would do well, despite only registering a few post a month, a far, far cry from our past posting records. As our readership rises, with almost non-existent fanfare, we somehow started to get calls from hifi dealers. They noticed! Which is always a good sign of our influence in thoughts.

We have been offered to do reviews of hifi cables & equipment, invited to attend events, request for preview write ups, even offers to pay for advertising. All those things we previously did for the sake of helping to promote the hifi & AV industry. I have so far turned downed all those request & offers. As some of the more keen eyed readers have asked me last week, "I noticed the rebooted HiFi-Unlimited has no advertising panels, unlike previously, what happened?" My reply to this reader would be the same as all those dealers who contacted me. I have agreed with Tan, my long time partner in crime, that this blog would now serve more like our personal space of hifi & AV related expression, yes a personal space for us to SKL(Sin Ka Lan). When we decided on the reboot, we agreed there would be very little room for commercialism here in these pages, unless it's a specific product that we are really curious about, or maybe a very dear hifi cause that is close to our hearts.

Even if we agreed to do "that very specific product review", there are terms & conditions:
1) There must be no deadlines, but we promise not to take much longer than we need to complete the said review.
2) It must be delivered to us for the review & pick up from us after we are finished, we do not collect or send back like before.
3) There will be no guarantees that it will be a favorable review. We will publish our un-censored thoughts about the subject matter, without prior consultation what so ever. In other words, it will be a total surprise!
4) We promise not to ask for review fee or solicit for advertisement or sponsorship of any kind!

Now I want to see how many hifi dealers are up for this challenge!

And then, a funny thing recently happened is that a new reader who was recommended by his friend to read this blog sent me a Whatsapp message, questioning what qualifies me to review equipment and other people's system? My answer is simple, I replied to him to read the articles in this blog from it's very inception, which will take some time, but if he'd do that, he'd understand where we come from, and what we are about. A few days later, I got another message from this same chap, offering me to review his system. I declined but offered to buy him a cuppa instead. We met at a coffee shop spoke for a couple of hours about hifi instead. I have new hifi buddy now....................

Sometimes the weirdest things happens when our readers interact with us. In the mean time, we will just Keep Calm & Shiok Sendiri!

The Boys Are Back In Town!

Let's just say we never really left town.....

As per our final post in 2013, we moved to a different model & platform. Much design planning had been done on the new venture and it was launched with much fanfare. Alas, after a while the chemistry among the content providers were just not right, and everyone had their own business priorities. A kind soul once warned me against turning a fine hobby in to business, it will not only consume your friendships but also one's love & passion for the hobby as well! A warning in which I had ignored with at my own peril & regret, I might say. The only saving grace is at the time, both Odioslueth & I decided we'd keep this blog as a reference to people who may need the information here and maybe as sign post for lost souls to our new platform.

I took a hifi sabbatical for almost 3 years, to concentrate on other matters, mainly the kind that put food on the table. I did not even have an AV or a hifi system anywhere in my home or car, a feat that seemed un-fathomable in my life time, as the past 40 years oe so, as I've always had hifi & music in my life since primary school days. My only music source was MP3 files shared from friends which contained music mostly from my childhood years, loaded on to my smartphone and a pair of Bose wireless IEMs(In Ear Modules)............ before you cringe, I know it's Bose & I loved it! It represented my anti audiophile sentiment at the time. I was as far away from audiophilia as one could get. Call it my long and extended mid life crisis if you will.

Last year, 2019 was a turning point of sorts, my mid life crisis spiral have receded, I could see dawn again and skies seemed never more blue as the year went on. Recently more than a few work colleagues mentioned that till this day they still use Hifi-Unlimited as a reference of sorts when shopping for used equipment, and even wondered who those 2 guys writing about their hifi was, & why did HiFi-Unlimited stop?

I kept mum...... but eventually the guys came to know me as Big E....... It is much with their repeated encouragement, coupled to a few exchanges with my long time buddy in crime, Odioslueth who was feeling a little detached from the scene, we decided to come back for a 2nd gig!

Not sure what this second journey of ours will read like, but one thing we've figured out for sure..... We have decided to keep out all commercial aspect with this rebirth, and truly keep these pages as a reflection of own thoughts in this passion of ours.

Stay tuned!