Just curious what the time delay adjustments are and what modes they're available for in the new 950.

Those of us who can't place speakers optimally find this kind of thing very useful.....

Charlie

The manual should answer a lot of those questions when it appears, but I would expect adjustments equal to or more extensive than the 1050 has, and I found the 1050's adjustments pretty good.

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Gonk

Personally I'd like to at least see a discrete delay for each channel adjustable in 1ms increments.

Phase adjustment for LFE would be nice too.

The 'last mile' - the point where the signal is converted from electrons to pressure is the weakest link and often most overlooked.

I would guess that all distortions and noise combined in the travels from media to speaker input pale compared to those from speaker input to eardrums.

Charlie

As for modes, I believe time delay is a pro-logic only feature. In DD or DTS you shouldn't need a time delay because the channels are discrete. I could be wrong but I think that's how it works.

Not true. You need delay if your speaker runs are of varying lengths or your speakers are not equidistant from the listening position. You need to make sure that the sound from all the speakers reaches you at the same time. If one of your speakers is closer to you than the others or has a 10 ft shorter cable run, you need to delay that speaker, regardless of format.

brianca.

[This message has been edited by brianca (edited February 01, 2002).]

Not sure what cable run length has to do with it, but yep - I want to compensate for non-optimal speaker placement.

The mode-centic adjustments probably would be summed with this global set of delays.

A quick bit of computation shows that electricity will travel about 1 million feet in a millisecond, so unless we're going have very fine grained adjustment (or REALLY long wires) I doubt you will be able to compensate for wire length.


Charlie

If you're compensating for wire length, then I guess you also need a HPS (head-position-sensor) to automatically correct for a moving listener... Hey, maybe I'll add that to my features list...

Granted cable length needing delay is one of those fine (questionable) HT teaks. I'll have to look back at some of the articles I have from when I was building my theater. There was a 1ms delay for every x feet of cable. Some of my speakers are ~30ft longer runs than others which is why I was looking into it.

But certainly, as you mentioned, non-optimal placement of speakers is the main reason to need delay.


brianca..

You're right, you do need to adjust for cable length if your cables are long enough.

Since electricity passes through a cable at essentially (close enough for our purposes) light speed - 186,000 miles/second - and since a millisecond - the proposed adjustment resolution - is 1/1000th of a second, you would need to adjust to compensate for each 186 miles or 982,080 ft of cable. This of course is important when you buy your cable in 1,000,000 ft lengths.

Sorry. I guess I was wrong. I just though I remembered someone suggesting that you should make your cable runs the same length in one of the home theater construction articles I read a few years ago.


brianca

These characters are picking on you. Spk. wire length is of no importance, but I would make it good quality 2 conductor #12 stranded. Low oxy. content is easy to get these days and relatively cheap. You will not hear it but it looks nice after a few years.
Time delay on the left/right channels relative to the center is the only concern for reasonable image stability. Place the spks. on the same horizonal plane. Then recall that the delay is about 1 ms per foot, and this is how you would move the left and right spk acoustically to achieve an arc in front of you with the center channel at the max distance (on the top view of the semi-circle). The left and right spks. should be on this arc. Fine adjustment would be handy (.1 ms) but lateral reflections (or lack there of) will swamp the detail. It depends on your room size and spk placement relative to the floor and ceiling.

That's cool. I was just mistaken. I was trying to offer advice as to why delay is still important regardless of format. I'm in a dedicated room with full control of speaker placement, so I didn't end up usign the delay setting. I posted what I recalled without thinking about what I was saying. I would have slammed me to if I'd read it.

My idiocy aside, the original point it that delay is not just for pro-logic.

brianca

Sorry if it came across that way - it was too good to pass up. Keep watching - you'll get a shot at me soon enough!


Charlie

I do think speaker cable length is important, but not for delays. It's better to match the cable length for pairs of speakers and for the three fronts if you can, so that whatever distortion is caused by resistance, capicatance, inductance, or whatever else is going on in your speaker cable isn't done more to one speaker than to the other.