Kaisergrendel Wrote:that shot of Bruce Boxleitner is one of my favourite pictures of him and of the movie.

Ha, me too. His "turn-and-look" is the best in the business. My next favorite is when Alan convinces Sam to go to the arcade ... "Wouldn't that be something ..."


The receiver and the sub were worth it, I believe, but the 5.0 are mostly token. I get to have house neighbors anyway, so an upgrade wouldn't be very considerate.

I've been lucky enough to work inside several residential dedicated theatre rooms ... hardware these days are just a thrill to witness. All I did was paint the walls and ceilings, but got a full run-through of their setup. The screen was perforated, probably 120sqft. The projector was like a squat cylinder ... I should look them up and see if I can remember the brands. Anyway it was great fun.

To anyone who can see the 7th page, I can't load it. I'm getting a "argument 'expression' is not valid error.

Kaisergrendel Wrote:Seems a little strange that you can add hundreds of dollars of performance to something just by changing a few parts O.o What's the dampening for?

One of the issues surrounded with the high cost of audiophile electronics is that it's a custom market, and the labor is almost always done here in the US. This means that the labor costs in doing upgrades is hundreds of dollars because it has to be done by a very few (and knowledgeable) individuals. This lack of automation makes a big portion of the cost of modded equipment. Just think about it, you can find a sony receiver in any electronics store in town, but where do you find people who know enough about an obscure piece of equipment to modify it? You can buy this model with modifications already done in a few places online, but with the modifications the unit price is about $400-$900 more expensive. Sure the parts make up some of this costs, but a significant portion is labor.

The dampening is supposed to cut down on any vibration in the unit that may interfere with the sound. If you've ever heard electronics "hum" when turned on, it's designed to dampen anything like that. There are a lot of people that swear it improves sound, other says it's voodoo. I'm not sure if it made any significant difference in the sound, but it was pretty inexpensive and easy to put it as I already had the unit opened. I think you reach a point that when your setup costs over $15-20k, your will to spend a few bucks on things that only "may improve" the sound (power conditioning, custom speaker feet, cable risers, high end power cords,... etc).

Kaisergrendel Wrote: DrP Wrote: Kaisergrendel Wrote:Seems a little strange that you can add hundreds of dollars of performance to something just by changing a few parts O.o What's the dampening for? One of the issues surrounded with the high cost of audiophile electronics is that it's a custom market, and the labor is almost always done here in the US. This means that the labor costs in doing upgrades is hundreds of dollars because it has to be done by a very few (and knowledgeable) individuals. This lack of automation makes a big portion of the cost of modded equipment. Just think about it, you can find a sony receiver in any electronics store in town, but where do you find people who know enough about an obscure piece of equipment to modify it? You can buy this model with modifications already done in a few places online, but with the modifications the unit price is about $400-$900 more expensive. Sure the parts make up some of this costs, but a significant portion is labor. Not questioning the modding economics of it at all, I mean why don't the manufacturers just install these parts to begin with? Sounds about right xD

They actually do. However, it takes the unit from a $500 stock unit price tag to $1250.

Kaisergrendel Wrote: DrP Wrote:They actually do. However, it takes the unit from a $500 stock unit price tag to $1250. Sometimes capitalism just makes me SMH.

Yup. Even if it wasn't so expensive I still would have liked to do the work myself as I find it enjoyable. Also, this way I get to pick the exact components that I want to upgrade and it makes my unit truly unique.

With all the custom work you did with you home theater I know you can appreciate the satisfaction you get from doing something yourself and having a good outcome.

Also bought a record cleaner the other week. My fiancée will be in Berlin all next week on a business trip so I think I'm going to spend one night cleaning the LP's. I hope this works well as I have some really old LP's that I've been saving (they looked completely filthy).

Some new additions coming to the home theater room. I bought a Sony SDP-E800 to use as an AC-3 Demodulator for my Laserdisc player. Once I mod my player this will actually come in use to decode 5.1 soundtracks on Laserdiscs.


I also made a bigger purchase today. I bought a Conrad Johnson PV-12 preamp to replace my Conrad Johnson PF-2. I have been really enjoying the "tube sound" and I hope it will bring some more musicality to my setup as the PF-2 was solid state. I'll try to post some pictures when things get arranged and installed over the next few weeks.