Digital Sound Issues - what are your solutions?

[John Roberts]

Hi to everyone on the forum

My club are in a transition phase regarding sound, as I'm sure other clubs also find themselves to be. We have a Panasonic Blu-Ray player (I'm sorry I don't remember the model) with analogue audio outputs. These are then connected to an analogue amplifier and conveyed to the speakers. All works fine and without issue in respect of Bluy-Ray and DVD presentations.

However the player has no facility for connecting additional devices such as USB memory sticks or memory cards and we do increasingly find visiting clubs are bringing these along. We have access to a Sony BPD-S3100 Blu-Ray player which has USB capabilities, but it doesn't possess an analogue audio output. Some kind of black box is used from the HDMI output to convert the digital audio to analogue and this is then fed to the amplifier in the usual way. However, it appears any Dolby encoded audio will not play back.

I note there are a plethora of black (and white and grey) boxes available that purport to convert either HDMI or coaxial digital outputs to analogue component, varying in price from around £10 to over £100, but I'm wondering what other clubs are doing? We still need to keep the Blu-Ray player, but is the way to go a stack of different converters, a separate media player (with analogue audio outputs) or an upgrade to a digital amplifier? What are your solutions?

Regards - John

[col lamb]

John

Start by changing the amp, go for a specific AV model, you can get a pretty good Denon, Yamaha or Pioneer for about £200.

These will have a few HDMI inputs and at lease one component set, what they will not have is s-video but there is a workaround for that.

We get around the s-video issue by feeding our miniDV player into our Panasonic recording DVD unit and using it as a pass through device.

On many Bluray players there are USB connectors but what the file format and stick structure the player will see is problematic, you will probably have to ensure that anyone bringing a MS has it in the correct format

There again a media player is fairly cheap, see a recent thread for more advice I have already given. If you want to be really cheap get a Raspberry PI computer for £30, they have HDMI output and SD input for a card with the media player operating system, they play mpg and mp4 files great just have a max data rate in the file of 25mbps.

Finally an AV amp will be far better at keeping sync between a and v during projection than seperates.

[John Roberts]

Thanks Col,

Yes - I had forgotten about our occasional use of a Mini DV player which outputs to s-video. I am also reminded of the use of a laptop for other presentations as well. Both these devices have their video outputs connected directly to the projector (I'm pretty sure the laptop at the moment doesn't have HDMI output, but I'm not certain) and their analogue outputs fed into the amplifier. Unfortunately we don't own any other equipment that can be used as a pass-through device for s-video so the Mini DV player will still have to be connected directly to the projector, as will the laptop, but this is no real hardship.

I'll have a wander over to your 'media player' thread and see if there are any other options for us.

Cheers!

[John Roberts]

Col...

One thing I am reminded about - I have a Panasonic AV amp as part of my TV system, which everything is routed through. But I note that the Front L and R speaker outputs are not full range but instead processed to roll off the low bass, which the sub woofer is supposed to handle. As an experiment I connected my studio 3-way JBL monitors to the AV amp because we weren't happy with the sound quality when listening to music, and the JBL's sound exactly the same as the bookshelf sized speakers that were supplied with the AV system. I expected them to 'walk' across the floor as they used to with the analogue amplifier we used to use!

Setting the AV amplifier to 2-channel mode is in effect 2.1, because the low bass still needs to be handled by the sub woofer - the Front L and R outputs are still processed and not full range. Obviously to aid setting up at the club a strict 2-channel system would be ideal with no additional subs - we have to set up and pack away at every meeting and the least complicated the equipment is, the better! Do you have any comments or experiences of this at all?

Secondly - can you give me the link to your media players thread, please? I had a quick look but couldn't spot it. Must be old age

Regards - John

[col lamb]

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3305

Western Digital sell a few media players, the one with integral hard drive and usb connections is now called the Elements Play.

Interesting about the limited frequency range, ours seems OK to me via our pair of Mission 330 speakers. In fact if we leave the speakers on the floor we get comments that there is to much bass so we usually put them on a pair of tables. I will take my HiFi test disc to the club when we start up after the Summer break and see what results we get.

[Dave Watterson]

The techie stuff is a bit beyond me ... but I do know the basic rule for any loudspeaker system:

Everyone in the audience should be able to see the loudspeaker. (You can paint it to camouflage it if you wish.)

A loudspeaker at floor level provides great sound ... to the knees of people in the front row. Everyone else gets sound bounced off the front row, to the wall and then forward again.

[John Roberts]

Thanks Dave and Col,

I'm assuming the high pass filtering of the front speakers is literally to save them from exploding as the drive units are pretty small. If a full frequency range was presented to them then they would simply overload and distort, eventually destroying themselves. Upgrading the speakers seems to make little difference as the bass roll-off is quite severe and needs to be backed up by the sub bass unit at all times. It's probably the way that particular system has been designed.

Just out of interest Col, do you remember the make and model of the AV amplifier you are using at Preston?

PS: I don't think the sound we have at Sheffield is too bad and is certainly capable of a lot more than it is allowed to do - just ask Bob Lorrimer

[col lamb]

John

Pioneer, but not sure of model, however we as a club are now not meeting in our hall until the start of Oct.

Knowing the model number will probably not help as we bought an end of line unit cheap.