Above the Masses

Early Saturday morning I left with a friend for a 6+hr drive to Cherry Springs State Park. This park has a protected DarkSky site with an astronomy field for camping out with your scopes and photography equipment.  Cherry Springs is located at 2400 feet on the top of the mountain and is known for its Dark skies and great views. It is said that it is the darkest sky east of the Mississippi though there is a place is West Virginia that some say is slightly darker.

Upon Arriving my friend and I unpacked the scopes and gear and setup camp. With the tent up and scopes in place it was time to collimate the scopes. Mine was quick and easy with a solid tube. We did a little more work to Pats 14 inch truss scope bringin his to perfection.

So it was around 3pm at this time and we decided to take a walk around and look at the scopes around the field. There were some big scopes out there. After chatting it up a bit we ate our subs and talked with a good bunch of guys on the plot next to ours. After dinner Chuck, Karen and family arrived.

Finally all the gear and tents were up, we had my OrionXT10, Pats Orion xx14i and Chucks 16 Meade Lightbridge. and the sun was finally about to set!

Just as the sun was setting over the field we were treated to a very rare phenomenon known as crepuscular rays. This image looks something like what we saw. It was one end of the sky to the other and it was awesome. I wasnt near camp at the time and didnt have my camera in hand sadly. After the rays we headed back to our camp and got ready for darkness.

The sun set and the stars started popping. We checked out Saturn which is getting low in the sky and saw a few moons.  Before long Darkness had arrived. It was Breathtaking. The milky way was treeline to treeline and was like an arch over us the entire evening. It was so bright. You could see the bulge in the milky way extend all the way thru scorpius. The detail was spectacular. You could naked eye many star clusters such as M6 and M7, the double cluster in Perseus, and M13 in Hercules. You could see with unaided eye Andromeda, and the Lagoon nebula. It was like nothing I have ever seen before or imagined. We hit so many tagrets looking in all our scopes sharing the images. M4, M6, M7, M13, globular cluster after globular cluster they all went down!. We saw M101, M51, M31 M110 M32, The fireworks Galaxy among others. Chuck made sure we looked at M101 the pinwheel galaxy thru his 16 inch scope. It was unreal! You could see all the arms. It looked like a hurricane! We checked out the Nebulas, The Lagoon, The Omega (Swan), The ring, and The Eagle. Once again Chuck called me to his scope. Thru his scope utilizing averted vision and a little help in telling me what I was looking for you could see the Pillars of creation, WOW!

We saw so many other objects to many to list. Eventually my scope started to dew around 2:30am and I hopped on Patricks 14 inch scope and we did some Bino viewing. One of the last things we did was check out Jupiter rising. We Hit it with 350 power. You could see all the bands and all the colors tans and reds  and several moons. It was rock steady seeing. Jupiter was so clean and so clear and so vibrant it looked like a computer image or like zooming in on Stellarium(a computer program). As we were tiring backs aching dew setting in strong we decided to kick back in some chairs and watch the meteors fly and there were many of them all night long due to Delta Aquarids and Capricorids. The combined efforts of these showers kept many meteors per hour flying overhead and thru the eyepieces.

Finally we were wore out and retired at about 3:40am The night we never wanted to end was indeed over.

It was more than worth the trip.

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Posted in Astronomy

Ah the moon especially when its near full sets me on to other things and this week its been my surround sound. I have been feverishly working with it. Trying new things. Doing research as to what I may have done wrong. Trying once again for perfection. Probably never getting there of course but certainly making it better. Yesterday I saw Transformers3 and the sound was incredible so loud clean and smooth. Never underestimate the impact sound makes on a movie. A bad soundtrack or mix will kill a class A action movie. But when you hear a good one you know it. Bad setup will also kill a sound presentation. Lets try to remedy some of our own setup issues at home.

On to some things I have run across that make for some good easy tips.

1. Easy tip, Make sure your speaker wires are connected tight and properly phased. Positive to positeve, Negative to negative. Doesn’t matter if you use stripe or unstriped, black or red for which one just positive to positive, negative to negative.

2. Check your speakers specifications and set your base management settings. Be sure to experiment. Guides yes even mine are not set in stone. Unless you have tower speakers with subs built in set speakers to small. Crossover should be set to 60, 80,100,120. The guides others and mine help. It still doesn’t hurt to try different crossover points to make sure which sounds best to you.

3. Set your speaker delay settings. Follow the instructions as per your reciever. Mine a Denon is simply to measure the distance of the speaker to your seating area and input the distance. Newer Receivers have auto setup modes with a microphone that can be used. Another tip on this is to remember that every foot of distance is 1.1 millisecond delay of sound. the subwoofer due to its reflective nature in sound and slower frequency may benefit from this tip. In my system for example my front speakers are 10.1 feet away. The sub actually measures 12 feet away to the center of the sub. I brought the sub setting down to 11.1 and the base tightened up. Experimentation and patience is key.

4. Ported speakers should be at least 8  inches from the wall. At least. Here are my front towers and sub.

5. Tow in front speakers. From the seating area tow in the fronty speakers towards you. Be very careful to not tow in so far that tweeters or speakers are aimed at your  ears. this kills the sound field. Something like 10 degrees roughly should  be good.  My speakers are towed by 1 inch as shown in the images above.

6. Surround speakers in a Dolby Digital, DTS  5.1 setup should be placed at the sides and slightly behind the listener. Optimally they should be a few feet above the listening area. As we all know to well optimal isn’t always real world. Once agian it is important to not have the speakers or tweeters pointed directly in your ear.

7. Aim the center channel right at you and your ears. Tilt  the center channel so that it aims right at your ears. Not doing this is often a FATAL mistake. Most everyone does not have the center channel speaker at the same height as your ears are. They are either lower or higher as the monitor is usually right in front of you.  This results in dialogue that is hard to hear. People often complain  they cant hear voices or enough sound from the center channel. And all to often the masses advice (which we are above mind you) is to turn up the center channel volume.  All speakers should be set to proper decibel with a spl meter. Turning up the center channel  is not the solution. The fronts and rears pointed in your ears will drown out the center. The center NOT pointed in your ear will drown itself out so to speak. So get to tilting those center channels.

I hope you guys enjoyed the tips and they help you find audio nirvanna.

What are you still doing here, get tweakin!

Posted in Home Theater

Bass Management are the settings in your receiver that control how the low frequencies in the audio track are handled. In other words which speaker the bass frequencies are sent to and at what range.

Bass is the low frequency levels in the sound. In a 6 speaker or 5.1 home theater you have a set of front speakers, a center channel, a set of rear speakers and a subwoofer. In newer 7.1 surround systems there is also a set of back channel speaker. This is of no consequence for the sake of this conversation.

There are many guides to be found out on the net from some of the most respected sites on the net and they have their standardized recommendations for settings. And generally they are spot on. There is an area where I disagree with the recommended setting and it has been causing issue with my sound systems for nearly 15 years. I finally figured it out after much trial and error and I am going to tell you guys my findings which should improve your sound dramatically.

Over the years I have had three different sets of speakers in place for my theater setup. I have used a setup that consisted of Infiniti kappa series speakers which consisted of floor standing front speakers and a center with bookshelf speakers for surround channels. I also had used a set of Klipsch Quintet series speakers which are small satellite type speakers for a few years during the time when my young children may have tipped an extremely heavy  floor standing speaker on themselves.  There is also my current speaker setup consisting of Klipsch Reference series speakers. They are RF-82 fronts, RC-52 center channel, and Rc-42 surround channel speakers. the subwoofer currently in use is a Klipsch Sub12. There were 2 other subs used over  the time period I am talking about. A different 12 inch Klipsch sub and an Infiniti dual 12 inch corner mounted sub. I give you guys all the speaker setups not to brag but to show that the issues I was having over the years was settings related and not speaker related.

The problem I ran into thru all these different setups and 4 different houses was either boomy distorted bass or low bass where you couldn’t hear it. I tried and tried raising and lowering the subwoofer channel level in the receiver and raising and lowering the gain controls on the subwoofer. Trying to gain balance and this was futile. Never ever accomplishing the goal of smooth theater sounding bass. What I finally discovered is that it was the combination of speaker setting and crossover that has been killing my bass.

Anyhow on to the bass management settings. There are 2 settings that control how the bass is funneled and to which speaker in the system.

Speaker size- This settings seems to cause the most confusion even among those more seriously involved in the hobby. The truest explanation of the setting is as follows. The setting refers to the frequency response range of your speakers rather than actual size.

Crossover point- This is the point at which low frequency information on ALL speakers set to ‘Small’ will get routed to the subwoofer and the high frequency information to the speakers. Frequencies below the set point are sent to the subwoofer. Frequencies above the set point are sent to the speakers. There is reason that I Bold type these two words.

First lets get into the speaker size setting. There are two choices for this setting. There is “Large” and there is “Small”. Far to many people believe this means if you have floor standing speakers this should be set to large. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The setting “Large” is for speakers that can accurately  reproduce  full range (approx. 20Hz – 20kHz) frequencies. If your speakers specs do not meet this statements criteria then you must set your speakers to “Small”.

The setting “Small” is for speakers that cannot accurately reproduce full range (approx. 20Hz – 20kHz) frequencies and which would need a subwoofer to compliment lower frequency response. this represents speakers that most of us own. If you are reading this there is an extremely high percentage chance that you should set your speaker to small. Very few people have full range speakers in their house that can be set to full. If you have a subwoofer then set to small and forget it.

Now that we have got the first setting  sorted out lets move on to the next setting. Crossover point. This is where I wholeheartedly, disagree with most of what is written and accepted as if it were a commandment. This is why I highlighted the word ALL in the crossover description earlier in this article. As earlier described this setting tells the receiver at what point to send the lower frequency sounds to the subwoofer and send the higher sounds to the other speakers.For most receivers at this time this means ALL the speakers in the system not just the front speakers. Some newer receivers do have crossover settings separate for front, center and surround channels. This article is not for those systems. This is for people with receivers with one crossover setting.

The setting that is recommended for this crossover point by THX and just about every guide you will read on the net says 80 hz. This is a great setting if you have floor standing speakers AND you have separate crossover control just for the front speakers. Most receivers out there have one crossover setting. This setting tells the receiver to send all sound frequencies below the set point to the subwoofer. What this means is if you use the recommended setting of 80 all sound below 80 hz will be sent to the subwoofer and all above sound above 80 hz will go to each speaker.This would work great for your floor standing front speakers but your center and surround channel speakers are not covered for base with this setting unless they aree floor standing speakers also.

Look at it this way. Bass signal is generally 20-120 hz. this is what the subwoofer was specifically designed for. If you look at your speakers as tools there is no better tool in your arsenal for 20-120 than the subwoofer. While your floor standing speakers with 6 1/2 to 8 inch woofers are up to the task of  going down to 80hz bass. Your center channel and surround channels with 3, 4, and if your lucky 5 1/4 inch woofers are most certainly not.

So how do we set this mysterious crossover setting. Simply put set the crossover to the highest frequency your subwoofer is designed to put out. Most likely this will be 120hz. The home subwoofer will be better at producing 120hz than any speaker you have in the rest of the system because that is what it is specifically designed to do. Do not forget to set the crossover on the subwoofer to max(also usually 120hz).

From there you should be set and subwoofer placement and gain will be the adjustments you need to make for superior bass performance.  Those  settings are for another discussion.

Have a geek day everyone!

Posted in Home Theater

Monitor calibration is something that should be done to all quality monitors. So many people spend a lot of money on thier monitors only to display inferior image quality.  The reason to buy a good tv is to display a good image. Most all televisions default picture modes they come in are designed to catch your eye when they are setup in the store. They are usually set extremely bright and tinted blue to catch your eye on a wall of televisions. Watching a monitor this way can cause either eyestrain and or headaches.

Many people may not be aware but there are strict standards to television and monitor calibration so that the image can look proper and as intended by directors and producers. What this means is when calibrated the image on your monitor will look like it did in the theater or that the tv broadcast will look like it should with proper skin tones and colors.

There are several methods out there for calibrating your monitor with various accuracy levels and costs. The first and least expensive method is to use a calibrations DVD or Blu-ray disc. This method known as disc calibration is the least accurate method. Going from uncalibrated to using a disc calibration will give the viewer huge gains. Using this method will give you proper brightness and contrast settings. This will give you the blackest color black your tv is capable of. Along with a proper level of white. This helps bring out the colors so that they are not washed out and so you can see all the detail in shadowy areas of the image. Setting the brightness of white is what will reduce eyestrain and headaches in darker viewing environments. The disc calibration method also helps to get the color adjustment and hue and sharpness adjustments closer to what they should be.  When done this simple method of calibration you’ll be amazed at just what your monitor can look like. There are discs ranging in cost from free to around 25 dollars. Some examples are AVSHD709 which is free from

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=948496&highlight=get+grey+disc or DVE(Digital Video Essentials, Avia, or Spears Munsell calibration discs. Also of note is all THX movies such as star wars and Pixar movies have free simple calibration on them. They however do not come with a blue  filter which is needed to do color and hue calibration.

The next method is to use a color meter. They can be purchased for around 100 dollars on up to sky is the limit. The use of a meter is higher in cost and accuracy. The adjustments to color and hue will be spot on. Another advantage of using a meter is that you can they calibrate something called grayscale. In brief grayscale is all the shades of black to white and all the gray in between. This has a big impact on image accuracy and overall pleasure.  This page here has some examples of how different images can look with improper white balance.

http://ronbigelow.com/articles/white/white_balance.htm

This method requires some more effort on your part as you can buy the meter and software though it may take some time to learn and get good with it. There are some people out there who have home level meters and may calibrate sets for a fee. These fees can vary greatly. They shouldn’t be more than around 50 to 125 dollars.

The next method I will discuss is ISF or THX. This is when a certified ISF or THX calibrator comes to your home to do a calibration which can take up to a few hours using equipment in the thousands of dollar range. This is obviously the most expensive calibration ranging from 300 to 500 dollars. It is also beyond the shadow of a doubt the most accurate. I personally wouldn’t recommend this unless you have top of the line or near monitors which are very expensive. Though that is just my opinion.

So now you have learned a little about calibration and why its good. You bought that great tv. Go out there and see what it can really do!. And most of all, have fun doing it!

Posted in Home Theater

Today I Finished off the Flocking of the upper inside of my telescope tube. For those who may not know,  Flocking the tube of your telescope is done to bring down reflection of light on the inside of the tube onto the optics. This increases the contrast of the image by making the sky deeper and darker black.

When light reflects onto the mirrors you lose contrast and detail in the image. This does not matter to much at a dark site. But it can help alot in the backyard where street and porch lights can reflect onto the mirror.

There are several ways to flock the inside of the tube. Some paint the whole inside the tube matte black. Another method is felt the inside of the tube. Some people do the whole inside but you dont actually have to do the whole tube to see decent improvements. You can flock the upper area of the tube around the secondary like so.

If you want to go a little further you can do the same down by the primary mirror also but at the bottom of the tube go all the way around. I don’t have an image of that because at this time at least I have not done the bottom. I used self adhesive felt least reflective I could find at the craft store. For those that want a little less reflective material you can goto scopestuff on the web and order sheets of flocking material.

Clear Skies everyone!

Posted in Astronomy

Hello to all my friends out there. This is my new little blog where I will discuss anything geek. Mostly Astronomy, Home Theater, Computer and Video games, Sports. but also whatever else is on my mind.

I look forward to having fun discussing all things geek.

Serialmike

Posted in Astronomy