Whenever I'm tweaking and calibrating my home theater and music system well into the night I get stupid. The late night sessions always end with me thinking I've done the best I can and I've set everything correctly. The next morning and into subsequent viewing and listening sessions I retain the confidence in my skills and blame any oddities or failings of the system on bad software and limited hardware. On closer inspection I find that carefully coaxed dials and user menus have not retained their sweet spots.
Some recent blunders:
* My Panasonic S97 HDMI DVD Player forgets its picture settings after a power cycle: In my second to last screen calibration I set the DVD player's sharpness to a perfect, edge halo free -4. Unfortunately I didn't save this setting into a custom user memory and the next time I watched a movie the S97 defaulted back to 0. This glitch led me to complain about Pirates of the Caribbean and Akira. After my last calibration, Akira looks great, with little to no halos. As a consequence, I now obsessively check the sharpness setting before every movie.
* Bypassing the benefit of the Onkyo TX-DS989 AV receiver's DAC: While setting up my Airport Express's digital optical audio connection to my receiver, I thought I would get the best sound by using the Onkyo's Direct Mode (it bypasses as much digital processing as it can). What I really wanted was the Stereo mode. In Stereo the Onkyo can employ its DAC's 192kHz/24 bit upsampling and jitter reduction circuits. Oops. I'll have to listen to my Apple Lossless tracks critically again.
* Subwoofer Level and Crossover: Toddlers, aren't they precious? ToddleroGeek likes to squeeze into the corners of the house and hide. One of these corners is where my Hsu Research VTF-2 subwoofer sits. Every once in a while my daughter will sneak behind it and play with the crossover and volume knobs. After having to recalibrate the settings twice, I took a picture so I could set it back without the aid of a Radio Shack SPL meter.
Except for the subwoofer, I can only blame myself and my lack of sleep. I promise to get more sleep and double check all my dials before any critical viewing and listening sessions when I intend on reporting on my results.
If you want to avoid such stupid blunders yourself, I find writing down all your custom settings and reviewing them in the morning helps.
Father, Husband and Geek. My geeky interests have not changed since I was a kid. I still love comic books, anime, role-playing games, console video games, indie rock, imported toys and mecha models, bad American and great British sitcoms, and all the tech that let?s me experience these hobbies to their fullest. Now that I?m married with children, I?ve had to strike a balance between supporting and pleasing my family and feeding my geekery hunger. Lucky for me, my wife is very accomodating and even geeks out with me on occasion (the ladies love Joss Whedon?s Firefly). My two year old likes anything that moves on the front projection screen and makes noise, so far she is easy to please. Geekwithfamily.com exists to enrich the lives of fellow geeks and the friends and family who put up with them.
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