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Up NextA Home Theater Build Project - Part I

Thank you to all of the CAVE Members…….we have awarded the Lexicon, as announced in the CAVE…….The winner of  the Blu-ray discs will be announced on Friday!!   The next CAVE award will be “Officially” announced in next week’s Newsletter…..(HINT:  something special from our friends Downunder!!)  So if you haven’t signed up for the Newsletter, please do so now…..

Sign up as a member in the Secrets CAVE and you will have a chance to win our reference Lexicon MC-12B SSP (we are changing it out for a different SSP because we need HDMI audio inputs). The MC-12B is a superb product that can be used as a two-channel preamp if you wish, and it includes the four-microphone kit for room correction. It also has a full set of pre-ins for all channels, so you could connect your Blu-ray player’s analog pre-outs to the Lexicon and listen to your movies in Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio. All output channels are available as fully balanced XLR or unbalanced RCA. It can be set up as 7.1 with a discrete left subwoofer and right subwoofer output along with an LFE output.

The retail price on this SSP was $10,000 (not including the microphone kit and room correction upgrade), so don’t miss your opportunity to have one. Second prize will be a big box of Blu-ray movies that we have accumulated over the past months.

Lexicon-MC-12B-Preamplifier-Front-Main

Lexicon-MC-12B-Preamplifier-Rear-Panel

I wish I didn’t have to move this unit out of our setup, but we need HDMI inputs that process audio, for the purposes of testing other products.

After I took the MC-12B off the rack, I tested it with our Audio Precision analyzer.

Here are the graphs.

At 1 kHz and 2 volts output, two channels driven, THD+N was a very low 0.005%. That is really excellent. There are second and third harmonics, but nothing visible beyond that.

Lexicon-MC-12B-Preamplifier-1-kHz

Using a combination of 19 kHz and 20 kHz sine waves, the B-A peak at 1 kHz was 88 dB below the fundamentals. Notice also there are only a few peaks surrounding the 19 kHz and 20 kHz fundamentals.

Lexicon-MC-12B-Preamplifier-19-kHz-20-kHz

THD+N vs. Output Voltage is shown below. The output starts its sharp upturn at 2.3 volts RMS, and clips (1% THD+N) at 2.6 volts.

Lexicon-MC-12B-Preamplifier-THD-Plus-N-vs-Output-Voltage

Here is the box of Blu-ray movies that will be given as second prize.

Lexicon-MC-12B-Preamplifier-Second-Prize-Blu-ray-Discs

So, sign up, and good luck.

The winners will be randomly chosen from the list of CAVE members on January 15, 2010.