CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

**kal** · Last edited by kal on Tue Jul 29, 2008 8:58 pm; edited 3 times in total

I get emailed a lot of questions on where people should be spending their money upgrading their existing HT. On average the HT's are around 5-10 years old and were put together with DVD in mind and may not have been set up correctly in the first place.

Here's my list of the best 'bang for the buck' upgrades:

1. HD: By far the biggest upgrade is going from standard definition to high definition. The difference between HD and 480p DVD is shocking on a large screen. It's not just the x6 more resolution, but the wider colour range (gamut) and much better transfers without [as much] macroblocking, edge-enhancement, and other problems. Blu-ray and HD satellite/cable boxes are the easiest way to add HD to an existing home theater with the PS3 still the best Blu-ray player in my mind (read why).

2. Greyscale & Colour Calibration: This is often overlooked. Correct colours is crucial. Most people do absolutely nothing and don't realize how off their colours and brightness/contrast settings are. See: Greyscale & Colour Calibration for Dummies.

3. Minimize light reflections: Too many rooms are far too bright with bright walls that reflect light back on to the screen killing the contrast ratio. Keep area within 6 feet of the screen completely dark, including the side walls/ceiling/etc.

4. Lossless audio / accoustic treatment / hushbox projector: Upgrading to the new lossless audio formats, properly treating your room for audio, and making sure that the ambient noise level is as low as possible (ie: hushboxing a projector) is my #1 audio upgrade suggestion and would be higher in the list for someone who places audio above video in terms of importance. Keeping the noise floor low (no fan noise) is especially crucial for best sound reproduction as it increases dynamic range greatly. You can't just "turn it louder". That doesn't make any sense.

5. Using HDMI instead of component: Too many sources have crap component outputs. Use HDMI and a good HDMI to analog converter (or just go HDMI direct into your display if it has an HDMI input). It's easy to add HDMI to any TV using various popular converters. (No need to get a new TV or projector).

I'll add more info as I think of it. These are the items that will (in my eye) give the average 5-10 year old HT the biggest performance boost.

Thoughts?

Kal

ecrabb · Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 7:15 pm Post subject:

Kal, great idea and an excellent list. I'll add a couple of comments.

1) Depending on the projector, 1080p may not even be necessary. For instance, if you have a lower-end projector that's set up well, even 1080i can be a huge upgrade from well-scaled SD.

2) Absolutely. Huge.

3) You're just talking about contrast. Light surfaces and objects around the screen can also be distracting, which reduces immersion. We're creating an "alternate reality" in our HT's and you want to eliminate or reduce anything that takes away from that.

4) Acoustic treatment - even the little I did - was some of the most effective money I spent in my room. It took my room from sounding good to sound really, really good. Even excellent, maybe. The hushbox is next on the list. That's a HUGE upgrade, since it directly affects your audio system's noise floor and therefore dynamic range capability. Why spend a lot of money on amps, speakers, and acoustic treatment if your noise floor is at 40 or 45 dB during a scene which should be silent? I'd make an order of priority: hushbox first, acoustic treatment next (or vice versa), but lossless audio last. I might even go so far as to say that if you have no room treatments and no hushbox, there's little reason to even bother with the lossless audio.

5) Absolutely.

SC

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

If we're talking upgrades to an established theater... than i'm agreeing w/ Kal.

Too many rooms have horrible acoustics the sound is boomy and has echoes. Really good acoustic treatments will enhance the HT experience.

Light treatments can make a huge difference. If you have light spill around windows and doors. Poorly installed lighting. Light colored walls. It kills the contrast and makes everything look bland.

Speakers. I hate cheap speakers. Not cheap in price but cheap as in badly constructed bad sounding speakers. If im ok in the other areas, i'm saving my pennies to upgrade my audio chain. Starting with speakers.

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

You know, I built some major sound-treatment panels for my HT shortly after I built it: huge 4'x8' panels of 4" OC703 rigid fiberglass behind L & R, and 2" of OC703 mounted 2" off the wall behind the center and on both side 1st-reflection points. See diagram & pic below. I expected major improvements in dialog intelligibility and other areas. In reality I hardly noticed any change at all. It may have been because of the low-end Onkyo HTIB speakers I was using, but I was pretty disappointed.

So maybe room treatments only give major benefits if you already have pretty darn good speakers?

StuntDummy · Joined: 08 Aug 2007 Posts: 59 Location: San Francisco, CA

The answer to this question probably lies in these forums but I will ask anyway. Is there a simple method for determining the size and placement sound panels? In my limited searches on the matter, theories seem to vary quite a bit.

dochlywd · Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 8:05 pm Post subject:

Sorry to hear that. Crying or Very sad

I can say, without a doubt, that acoustic treatments made a HUGE difference in my room. I had Mark Seaton come down and tell me where to place the treatments. One of the most improvements gained was from hanging three panels on the ceiling in front of the screen. Most people don't think about this location and if it wasn't for Mark, I wouldn't have either. Mark arrived on a Friday night, popped in to tell me where to hang the panels I had made, and then headed back out. I hung the panels that night. Mark came back the next day and spent about 6 hours fine tuning the system. When it was all said and done, I could not believe the difference. It was like having an entirely new system. My wife even noticed the difference!!!!! Thumbs Up

Mark had told me that I had all the pieces to the puzzle in the room but I just wasn't using them correctly.

I STRONGLY recommend having someone come out and do an audio calibration if you want a major upgrade without actually uprgrading ANYTHING!!!

For what it is worth, Mark Seaton is a very stand up guy, loves what he does to the point of getting a grin on his face when he reaches BEYOND what you thought your system was capable of, and is reasonable in price.

Doc

ecrabb · Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 8:14 pm Post subject:

Gary, how's your hearing? I'm only half joking. Obviously, the better the speakers, the more difference the room treatments will reveal. Also, the level at which you typically listen will have an effect. If you don't crank it up much, you won't expose as much of the room reverb. As for dialog intelligibility... If you're using discrete surround, most of the dialog will come from the center... and none of your treatments would have that much audible effect on the center center channel. Now that you have your new speakers, I bet if you listened for a month, get used to the sound, then took out those side panels, you would notice a significant difference in how much more articulate and crisp the sound is with the panels in place - stuff like plucked strings, foot steps, drum rim shots...

r.bauer · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 280 Location: The Netherlands

David_Web · Joined: 02 May 2007 Posts: 418 Location: Sweden

I would put color filtering pretty high. Filtered lenses, C-element or glycol.
If applicable that is.

Sound treatment or at least rethink the speaker positions is a big step in the right direction.
Most people just slap them up and be done with it while the reality is that one inch can make or break.

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

I agree that color filtering is critical. If you have an unfiltered projector (e.g. Marquee 8500), a set of HD144/145's will give your picture a LOT more pop and vibrancy. I think unfiltered projectors look fairly flat and dead.

SC, my hearing has been better. I'm over 50 and I attended a few loud concerts in my misspent youth. (Not quite as many in my misspent adulthood. Mr. Green

) Given my choice I run the volume reasonably high, roughly reference -10dB or so but that's a guess.

I'll give the new center a chance when I get some time to listen to the system. Time is in short supply these days. Somebody took all my spares and left me with only 24 hrs a day. Very Happy

**kal** · Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 9:00 pm Post subject: Re: Top 5 home theater upgrades

**kal** · Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 9:03 pm Post subject:

GarenT · Joined: 02 Oct 2007 Posts: 38 Location: Chicago,USA

For me the best upgrade was getting AMPS for my speakers. WOW!!!! I was using M&K's that were way underpowered, starved actually.

Got three used Crown amps off Ebay and man what a difference. The ROI was the most of any upgrade I've done!!

Garen

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

dochlywd · Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 10:05 pm Post subject:

I used 2" OC and mounted to pegboard. I then "framed" the perimeter of the pegboard with with quarter round so I could do a nice clean wrap with black speaker cloth. It kind of gave me a 45 degree angle all around. For mounting, I used the french cleat method which does allow it to sit off the wall a little bit. They probably could benefit from being further off the wall but I'll take what I can get. I also have my center channel under the screen and was still advised by Mark to add absorbtion to the ceiling. Keep in mind that I went from nothing to everything. Maybe I should have tested along the way as to which panels were actually making the major difference. But, if Mark says it was needed, then it was good enough for me as I don't fully understand all this anyways! Smile

Doc

David_Web · Joined: 02 May 2007 Posts: 418 Location: Sweden

I would say that diffusion is better than absorption. It adds "room" and "volume" to the sound. (it's more complicated then that but it's OK to generalize)
Absorption might make it dead. Unless you have terrible problem with ringing and stuff like that.

I would say that group delay and standing waves (and ringing) is more important than frequency response (which will be ugly regardless)

It's easy to experiment. Some plants usually does wonders. At least for testing. (just don't let the significant other catch you if you don't want it permanent regardless how it sounds).

paw · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 1176 Location: Arvada, CO

6. A beer bitch

This thread was WAY too serious!

ecrabb · Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 10:53 pm Post subject:

wallace123456 · Joined: 14 Aug 2006 Posts: 2236 Location: Northwest VA area