IAC DISCUSSION FORUMS

We're thinking of upgrading our audio at Staines. Whilst I'm reliably informed that despite their age and tatty appearance our speakers sound pretty good, we've had occasional comments from visiting clubs that it could be better.

We currently run a Roland Mixer amp through a pair of old Soby's. It may be the mixer/amp is the weaker link, being designed more for small PA use. I have to admit, it is handy from time to time to have several channels so we can also mic up visiting speakers.

So, we're after (potentially) speakers and amp.
We cannot leave them in situ.
Because of this (and lack of demand) we're not bothered about surround sound, but we would be quite happy to consider smaller speakers and a subwoofer.

For those who aren't aware, the environment is a pretty typical size brick built village hall. The screen is at the back of the stage. We currently mount the speakers on chairs at either side of the stage. We run the speakres from the amp that sits at the back of the hall which is where the projection team do their stuff.

Any recommendations or advice and experiences would be most welcome.

Tim

When we upgraded our projector to a HD type we then started to look at amplifiers and with a budget of around £300 we got a home cinema version which has HDMI inputs and an HDMI output to the projector, the sound quality is very good and it is capable of powering up to seven speakers including a sub-woofer.

We do not use the full surround sound but have the capabilities to do so at some stage in the future.

The speakers we use a Mission 300 and these are rather large but we are in the position of having secure storage at our hall so size is not an issue.

The great thing about our setup is that we can maintain HD quality throughout as we also have a HD media player.

Now a problem that you are likely to come across is that home theatre amps do not tend to have many (if any) analogue inputs, they are mostly HDMI with generally one component set of inputs

To get around the limitations we feed the amp with components from our DVD player/recorder and feed any other analogue input via this unit

So if you have a look at home cinema systems they can come as a set including speakers but just be careful about veryfing analogue inputs, we fell foul with ours as the reports for the amp were excellent and the image of the connections showed an s-video input which when we got the amp we quickly found that it was only for an Apple interface, the test reports did not pick up on this and it is hence why we had to use the component input

Good luck

Thanks col, that's really useful info.

We also use a BluRay Recorder for our HDMI signal - for similar reasonsto you - we use it for connecting up all our analogue devices (I say all, it's a JVC MiniDV/VHS player/recorder)

You also mentioned the other device on our shopping list - a media player. Our BD Recorder takes USB sticks but after hours of testing and numerous emails to Panasonic, we admit defeat and Panasonic admit it will only play streaming media, not the sorts of files we, and other clubs, are likely to be delivering. So suggestions for media players are also welcome.

Tim
I know what you mean about the Panasonic, I have a recording Blu-ray unit with inbuit hard drive and the USB connection on playes certain files and also the SD card slot only plays AVCHD files that have been shot on the TM 900

As for a media player the Western Digital Live hub is the best unit

HDMI output, internal 1Tb hard drive

It plays MPG, MP4 and a variety of other formats but not AVI's

Connected to a PC via a network hub and drag and drop movies from a PC into the unit

I have had one for a couple of years which is connected into my home network and also to my TV on it I have my own movies, images from the DSLR and a selection of favourite commercial movies that I have ripped from my DVD's and Blu-ray's it is a very convient way of "boring" visitors with my movies and holiday images

We have just got one for out Club where I am in the process of transferring our archive of Club and member movies into the unit.

I am saving SD movies as MPG2 and HD as MP4 or as HD MPG2, this way it is easy show our movies to guests and also to make DVD/Blu-ray compilations to send to other clubs as all the movies are in one location that can easily be transferred from member to member for them to use the files to make the compilation disc

As it is seen as a network drive images of compilations and any other data can also be stored on the unit.

I also have a loose 1Tb hard drive that I can connect to my PC via a USB hub unit so that I can backup all the movies and data that are on the Club's media player

Thanks again col.

I seem to recall Paul Strutt (Chairman at Norwich Movie Makers) found it was common that media players would not play avis. I'm not sure if he ever cracked it, but for SD, we're used to seeing them on DVD anyway so mpef2 would seem to be the way to go.