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A new, new amp
Remember how I got an Onkyo TX-SR875 to drive my new audio setup? Well, it had an "E2PROM ERROR" which meant it lost my settings whenever I turned it off (fantastic!), and it's a discontinued model. So for a small upgrade fee, and to say sorry for taking a little longer than they should, the store cut me a really good deal on an Onkyo TX-SR876.
You will notice that the 876 has one number higher than 875. If you needed any more solid concrete evidence that it is infinitely superior, then this upgraded version features a second HDMI output (so I can drive my TV and my projector both at once), ISF video controls for greyscale calibration (which I've already done on both devices anyway, but never mind), and more of the Reon video chip's functionality enabled, in the form of Mosquito NR, Block NR, and Temporal NR functions, for when you want to watch "Coal Black" from your illicit Video CD.
When it arrives on Monday, I'll actually be able to finish "running in" my recently bought but barely used speakers. So, if you just bought an Onkyo 875, and want a cut-price upgrade to the latest model, just turn it on and off. Apparently the error is relatively widespread; you may get lucky!
Oh, and better yet, the replacement I'm getting is in black, not silver. That alone makes it all worthwhile.
Samsung's LED-based LE40A786 reviewed
Yes, good readers, my review. In a nutshell, the LED backlighting is a real bonus; but there are video processing issues thrown in to the mix too.
Oh, incidentally, speaking of issues, I've had to return my Onkyo TX-SR875 because of the dreaded "E2PROM ERROR", and the receiver losing all of its settings after going into Power Off mode. Here's hoping for a swift replacement...
Metallica releases noise on CD, music in video game
For years and years, someone, somewhere, has been insisting that music released on CD should sound shitty. Did you ever buy a CD featuring music you loved, but found you couldn't listen to it for long before finding it excessively abrasive?
Although I'm not an audio engineer, I've known about the process of "mastering hot" for a long time (you can read a fantastic video explanation/demo of it here). It seems now that more of the general public does too, thanks to the fact that Metallica's latest album actually sounds better in a video game than it does on their actual CD.
Yes, if you listen to the tracks through Guitar Hero 3, you get unclipped versions of the tracks. The CD, by comparison, sounds like took a shit on the disc stamper.
Since the story has actually made mainstream news, fans have retaliated, and a superior, illegal version of the album which contains the unmolested tracks recorded from the video game, is circulating Torrent sites. Hilariously, it was actually Metallica who complained so bitterly about illegal downloads of their music in the days of Napster.
This issue is actually closer to me than you'd think, because the process of limiting the range on a CD is, at least in principle, similar to the frequency limitation that's standard on DVDs (and has even affected some high-def Blu-ray Discs). At least with MPEG-compressed video, there are sometimes genuine reasons for doing it, however.
To play us out, here's some comments taken from around the web, which shows that, just like with video, there are average joes who don't understand issues, but nevertheless feels compelled to talk about them as if they are experts:
People should just buy a decent CD player, not the shit Alba or whatever churn out through Argos.
Just to echo fireman and Sparrowmans comments really. Great album, crap sound.
As my friend has just pointed out, it's no wonder the Guitar Hero game sounds better than the CD. The game is on a DVD and you can fit loads more data on a DVD than a CD - it's obvious really.
bloody hell. people complain about anything and everything thesedays!
why dont u quit whinnin and enjoy the aceness of a new kick ass Metallica album......? ? ? ? ?
I'm a music production student in my 2nd year studying Mastering......and even i think these people need to get out more
Don't give up the day job, then.
Great sound is finally here!
 So today, I made a long overdue and very important audio upgrade to what can now certainly be called a home theatre system. After getting all the speakers and the subwoofer home, I connected what I could to my new Onkyo TX-SR875 receiver (which arrived today), and then realised I'd run out of speaker cable, so had to get a taxi back into Glasgow's West End before all the shops shut.
I still need more cable so I can bi-amp the Left and Right speakers, but even now in these early uncalibrated days, I am a very, very happy boy. Clearly, a £2000 setup is going to perform a hell of a lot better than a £200 one, but nothing can really prepare you for when you finally pass the threshold from "better than TV audio" to proper full-blown movie audio. In fact, one of the first things I thought when I heard it working was that it reminded me of being in demo rooms when I was first on the lookout for a projector.
It's a cliche, but yes, you can hear lots of nice little details that you couldn't hear before. The sound is just much more detailed and pleasing; voices have that nice Hollywood texture to them, and the surround speakers now actually DO something rather than sitting and making barely audible croaks. The subwoofer (I got an MJ Acoustics Pro 50 mk.II) creates bass that actually feels spacious, instead of just being there for the sake of it to conceal shortcomings in the main speakers (like in the last setup). I checked out Kill Bill: Volume 2 on BD, using the PCM surround track, and was happy to be able to pick out clicks and crackles from the vinyl-sourced background music, and just generally appreciated the believability and impact of everything.
As for the amp, I really enjoy having a high end one which can actually draw on screen menus. Making adjustments on the amp instead of on a tiny 2-line LCD display is much more convenient. Oh, speaking of which, the HQV Reon-VX video deinterlacing and scaling chip is implemented nicely. For DVD content, I'm feeding 480i/576i direct from the Oppo DV-980H player, and I'm very pleased with the deinterlacing and scaling provided by the amp. Scaling is beautifully clean and seems to be very close to completely ring-free; and the diagonal interpolation for smoothing out video jaggies is fantastic. It passes all the important film cadence hurdles, too. I'm disappointed that Onkyo didn't implement any of the chip's Detail Enhancement or Mosquito NR functions, but I'm happy with my projector's Sharpening feature for SD DVD anyway (trust me, at 8 feet wide, a little bit of sharpening can go a long way).
Next up: calibration!
Good sound arrives Tuesday
Remember how I said I was going to upgrade my audio setup? You'll never guess what I just did. Yes, I got a taxi into town (and then upgraded my audio setup by using a VISA card after hearing it demo'd). Then I got home and after wincing at blowing almost all of my last paycheck, I blew the rest of it by buying an amp to drive it all.
So, here's what I'll be using to listen to movies for the foreseeable future (why do I sound like a press release tonight?)
Front Left & Right: Monitor Audio Silver RS6s
Centre: Monitor Audio Silver RS-LCR
Rear Left & Right: Monitor Audio Bronze BRFX
LFE: MJ Acoustics Pro 50
For the amp, I managed to find one of the last Onkyo TX-SR875s for £650 (it still retails for £1000 in some places). The reason for the bargain being that this is an outgoing model. Not only should that make everything sound great, but the 875 also has the Silicon Optix REON deinterlacing and scaling chip inside, and apparently it's a good implementation too. So, I'll be able to take 480i or 576i DVD video from the Oppo DV-980H via HDMI and have the REON chip deinterlace and scale some of the more troublesome content, which confuses the player's own such capabilities.
Begone, unintelligible dialogue! Oh, by the way, in case you're curious, I'll be fixing up the design of this front page soon to get rid of this bland Movabletype generic layout.
The empty space on my desk
 What's missing from this picture? If you said "an Xbox 360", then you are correct. It's been about a month and a half since my 360 broke for the second time, and it took a little while longer for me to get it sent off for repairs. I usually end up in email or text message exchanges (or, more outlandishly, actual physical conversations) with people about technology-related stuff. Every so often, I'm asked, "What next-generation console should I buy? A PS3 or a 360?" Just yesterday, for the first time, I recommended that a reader of this site buy a Playstation 3 instead of an Xbox 360, based almost exclusively on the latter machine's reliability problems. The 360 has a great library of games and a nice controller, but quite frankly, the best exclusives have already appeared, and the hardware is a complete and utter joke. If/when I get another 360 (or a repaired 360) back, I'm literally going to be afraid to use it in case it breaks again. That is not the case with the PS3, which, despite being ugly as sin, having a relatively nasty game pad, and not having Halo 3, will probably still actually WORK by the time Resident Evil 5 and Brutal Legend (and whatever other multiplatform titles I want to play) appear on it.
We'll be back shortly...
You're probably wondering what the hell's happening right now, but sit tight, Lyris-Lite.net will be back up and running shortly.
If you really want to know, I got so sick of Wordpress' utterly baffling... sorry, I should say, "charmingly peculiar" way of doing things, that I've gone back to a FRESH INSTALL of MovableType, the system I turned my back on only a few months ago. MT seems to be running much smoother now that it's been installed afresh, so hopefully in a few hours time I'll have a properly functioning blog again, WITH an Archives page I can actually edit.
Seriously guys, how hard is it? I mean, JESUS. All I want to do is post entries, manage comments, and see the stuff appear in an archival listing. Makes me long for Newspro...
Attention, attention, your audio setup sucks!
Did that grab your attention? Well, by "your", I meant "my", because my audio setup certainly is nothing to shout about. Actually, last year when I bought an entry-level Yamaha amp (RX-V359) and matching budget speakers, the purpose was not to reach for the stars, but to have external sound at all. Now that I have a projection setup, having speakers and an amp which are "better than nothing" grade do not cut it and in fact, can be quite frustrating when you're having to pick muffled dialogue out from unconvincing background clutter.
The more I read up on speaker terminology, the more I can easily indentify just what's wrong with that I have right now. So: I'm now looking at all-new stuff. The plan is to get a bargain on the outgoing Onkyo TX-SR875 (after investigating alleged lag issues) and pair it up with speakers from Monitor Audio's Silver series (for Left, Centre and Right) and use some step-down Bronze speakers for Surround Left and Right to save a little cash. I don't know who's sub I'm buying yet. Nor do I know if floorstanding left and right speakers are necessary (or perhaps even detrimental) for this room. All of this is looking to cost almost exactly 10 times more than what I bought before.
The two things scaring me with audio right now (despite the learning experience) are how much your room and receiver/amp can colour the sound. I understand the room is inevitable (but knowing just how much it's enhancing/detracting from things seems to be difficult), but I'm still somewhat confused about hearing comments which state that one manufacturer's amp is better paired with another's speakers, and what combinations work well. Is this purely down to matching specifications, or do amps all alter the sound enough to make their output incompatible with certain speakers on the other end? It's going to take a while to get my head around, but at the moment I don't really have too long, because what I have is pretty much intolerable now I'm starting to identify the issues.
The Nightmare Before Dirt and Scratch Removal Artefacts
I just got The Nightmare Before Christmas on Blu-ray this morning. On the whole, it looks good. It's been extensively processed so is unnervingly grainless, but this doesn't hurt detail (or perceived detail) too much (I'd rather they'd just left it alone, though, it's a film, not a video production). There are some areas which look a little "waxy", but it's difficult to tell when this is due to having no film grain present, or when we're actually seeing the texture of the puppets/animatronics.
So yes, good on the whole, but unfortunately, there are some DVNR artefacts present which aren't on the DVD release I have (the Scandinavian PAL version, which up until now was the best copy of the film available). Yes, the BD release of Nightmare features dirt and scratch removal artefacts. If you don't know what these are, it's when an expensive video processor at the studio is used to automatically detect black and white scratches and specks on the film, and remove them by filling them in with information from surrounding areas. The only problem is, it tends to get mixed up (hey, it's a computer), and worse still, the studios often do not notice the processor getting mixed up and allow the artefacts to appear in the final product.
Blu-ray:
Scandinavian PAL DVD:
The BD release of this film is still the best one around, and these mistakes only crop up once or twice. But, they are there, studios do need to be more careful, and on the whole, we need to be more objective. It's one thing to say "Well it's only on a few scenes so it doesn't matter" or "STFU it looks great!!1", and another to appraise a disc for what it is and isn't. That's the thing with film: each and every frame matters, so we have to flag these problems up when we see them so the studios can improve.
(On the plus side... look how much better the detail is on the BD version!)
For what it's worth, I spotted each of these problems on the first viewing (but then again, I'm hoping to do this sort of thing for a living). It's a good effort on the whole from Disney, but one with flaws which shouldn't have slipped through.
Disney: please, please, please don't let this appear on your Platinum Blu titles. I wish I'd seen this before flying out to IFA because I'd have asked Disney's representative about it there.
IFA 2008: Sony's ultimate BD player
I've just posted info about this tank of a machine over at DVD Times. I mean the high quality audiovisual kind of tank, by the way, that wasn't an insult.
Oh, and when we were handed our press passes for IFA, imagine my surprise when I saw the official word on the site I was representing:
Yes, DVD Times and HDTVtest are fine sites, but apparently Lyris Lite is Sony's page of choice...
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