Mel MartinMel spent most of his life working in television journalism in Ohio, Florida, the BBC in London, and in Seattle, WA. He won a few EMMY awards along the way which most people mistake for bowling trophies.
Being around all those expensive monitors frustrated him when he got home to his threadbare TV and stereo, so he began to improve things, brand by brand, upgrade by upgrade. He’s got a lovely OLED TV now, flanked by Magnepan 3.6r speakers, and a Home theater with an Epson Projector and Focal speakers. Also scatted about the house are HiFiMan headphones, and 6 Sonos Connect devices that are spraying his rather large music collection from room to room. Other equipment is from Oppo, Sony, Aurender, PS Audio and Emotiva.
Musical tastes range from Classical to Jazz to New Age to classic Rock and Roll. Mel has written a biography of film producer Samuel Bronston (El Cid, King of Kings) and is working now on a second film related book. He resides in Arizona where, when he’s not adjusting his home theater, he dabbles in landscape and astronomical photography.
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I've put off buying a new receiver because of all of the change and complexity. I use the 5.1/7/1 analog outputs of my OPPO player - of course I give up some of the processing options. I recorded the setting of my Marantz and set them into my OPPO manually - but I do want to get a new receiver again - mine is 12 years old - with DVI inputs! But the speaker thing is a killer. Most people would hate to spend good money for a new receiver and NOT add an additional speaker pair to their surround. THe only reasonable way I see myself (and probably a lot of other people) doing this is to add an ATMOS reflected channel near my center channel speaker - or maybe above my 2 front speakers, Of course - it is hard to control the reflected audio energy when the speaker is so far away (> 10 feet). I would think that this would be an issue with ALL atmos enabled speakers. Maybe it would be better to jsut put them up high on my front wall - or along the 2 sides and aim them down ?
I just got a Denon HDR receiver. When you mention that "people don't read manuals", well FOR GOOD REASON! There isn't even a "paper manual", it's a CD that has to be accessed via a laptop or tablet with an attached DVD player. What an effing HASSLE! Oh, not to mention that it's also ****145**** pages. The speaker setup alone is over 40 pages, with references to "other pages whilst you're dicking around with 'settings, modes, cinema modes, music modes, height and frequency and OHM rating of the speakers.
Technical writers engineers. Only they can decipher what crap they've scribbled down and put in an "owner's manual". No wonder 98% of people don't touch them. True, my sound could be better, but I really don't have an entire weekend to devote to dicking around with it............