How it went with the Room Eq Wizard (REW)

Ok, calibrated EMM-6 microphone... check. Art usb dual preamp... check. XLR male to female cable... check. Looks like it's finally time to take some measurements.

So yeah, I took the seating out of the home theatre room, moved the subwoofer to where the seating was, placed the calibrated mic on a tripod at various locations throughout the room, and then took readings with REW to determine the best bass response (from 80hz down). Where it's at its best, is the best spot for the sub to go.

First off, the right wall (where there's the big window) was total shit. Here's how that one looked halfway along that wall:

As you can see, that one goes to hell in the early 50's, and it ain't that crash hot to begin with. I then proceeded to try the front of that wall, with results that were pretty much just as bad:

Yeah, that's another epic dip around the mid 50's. I figured anywhere near the window was crap (as I've read others have generally experienced).

At this point I took a reading of the original spot, which was behind the seating position to the left:

That actually ain't that bad a spot. It does dip in the late 30's early 40's, but not by too much.

This next reading is along the middle of the left wall (just past the door):

I knew this would be bad, because I'd done the traditional subwoofer crawl playing the Ironhide flip from Transformers 1, and that had sounded terrible.

Next I moved on to the front of the left wall:

Much improved, although still something of a nasty dip in the early 50's (I figure still a bit too near the door). So here's a shot of the mic up to the left side of the front wall:

This is the money shot, if you ask me. The best spot in the house. It dips only a few dB's in the early 40's, aside from that it's just great.

Unfortunately, with the SubMersive on the table, it's height actually ends up a little above where the screen goes (wouldn't you know it), so I've had to put it closer to the front left corner, which looks a bit more like:

It dips a little in the early 40's and 50's, but once again, only by a few dB's. Nothing near the -15 to -20dB drop I was witnessing earlier.

I'll let you know how it goes after I've had a chance to recalibrate and then check out some bass-heavy content :)

Dragon Wars baby!

I finished my first-watch of Dragon Wars not long ago (purchased earlier today).

I don't ask for much, really I don't. Just give me some fighting, some action, something to stress out the Seaton SubMersive subwoofer a little bit, and wrap it up in a plot that doesn't suck. That's a pretty simple set of pre-requisites.

Dragon Wars did not disappoint. Yeah I'd seen it before, but not at that quality. I was always impressed with its fight scenes, but not impressed enough to splurge out the $40 or so they'd have been asking when it was a new release.

If you're into the sort of thing I'm into, I would recommended it. I suppose you could say it has the Venturai seal of approval then. Or something like that :)

Grand Theft Auto IV

I got quite a bit into GTA IV when it first came out on the ps3, but I always figured at some point after it's release on the PC (which was released a little later), I would pick it up on that platform. As usual with every game that has any kind of a shooting element, I figure I will enjoy playing with the mouse that much more.

As it happens, today is the day I have finally stepped into the world of Liberty City on the PC platform.

I'll open with this much; it's a great, great game. It's immersive, the world is huge and there's so much detail, so much you can do. You can sit back and watch telly, go pick up your girl and take her bowling, log online and buy a new ringtone for your phone. Hell, the independent radio station will even play your mp3s as you drive.

Right about now, you're probably wondering why I'm writing this like there's a great big BUT coming up. Ok, well, the fucking thing has been freezing on me. Everything was going great until the last couple of hours, but it has since frozen twice. And by frozen, I mean the video and audio just hang, and you have to alt-ctrl-del and force it down with task manager.

Granted, it saves your progress after every mission, but that's not really the point.

I googled the problem, and have tried a few suggestions, but it's late, and I'm not going to fire it up again until tomorrow.

Cross your fingers.

Oh yeah, and there's a pretty good chance I'm going to trade in a handful of old DS games I've got here for Rockstar's upcoming Red Dead Redemption that's coming out next week. Yeah I know, I'll have to get it on either the ps3 or 360. Nothing's perfect.

Gold Class vs La Premiere

The two major cinema chains in these parts, Event and Hoyts, both have luxury cinema solutions available to the moviegoer. Event have Gold Class and Hoyts have La Premiere, and they're like going to the movies, but on crack. The seats are a lot more luxurious, and you can buy food from a menu and have it delivered at any time during the movie.

We have frequented both establishments several times over the past few years, and I'm going to tell you all about them. I've done a lot of thinking about which is the better of the two. Bear in mind, I'm commenting on the Western Australian versions of these, and your experience in a different location could well be a completely different one.

I'll start with Gold Class. The setup there is exquisite. It feels more like you're dining in a posh restaurant than going to the movies. Everyone's very professional, polite and well-dressed. The food is pricey, and nothing's complimentary, but the seats are recliners, and the screen is always exclusively yours. It's cheap during the weekdays, but expensive in the evening, and very expensive anytime during the weekend.

La Premiere is something more akin to a makeshift setup. It's as if they took an old room upstairs, and made it into the lounge. It's reasonably well done up, but you know you're still just "going to the movies". The young guy serving you will be dressed the same as the one checking the tickets downstairs. Only one of the La Premiere screens is an exclusive screen, too, the rest are actually just balconies built higher up behind people paying normal price. The seats are comfortable enough, but they're not recliners, and the price is expensive and doesn't change nomatter when you go.

It's not all bad for La Premiere though. If you want a drink at Gold Class, you've got to pay, but La Premiere offers up complimentary soft drink and popcorn. The cups are small, but there's nothing stopping you from going back for more while the ads are showing. La Premiere food is better value for money too, you pay slightly less, for what feels like slightly more.

Despite all of this, I can't help but feel like La Premiere is the poor man's Gold Class. I don't know if it's just because La Premiere hasn't really caught on, but if you want Saturday night Gold Class tickets to the latest blockbuster and you've left it even a little too late, forget it. They get snapped up in a right hurry. La Premiere though, we've never not been able to get tickets.

That said, I couldn't really blog about all this without mentioning how the Gold Class experience has become something less than what it started out to be. The food prices have stayed the same, of course, but serving sizes have gotten smaller and smaller; you're getting a lot less than you used to. The pizza is a great example; way back when, you'd get a big ole' 12-slice round pizza. Then it was 10. Then it was a rectangle 8. Now it's a square 6. The dimensions, not to mention number of pieces, are shrinking and shrinking. I've also noticed it with the chunky chips, which I've always particularly enjoyed, but they went from a big bowl to a smaller disposable paper cone, because it saves on the washing up. The service has gotten a little sloppy too; on occasion we've been brought out the wrong stuff, sometimes it's been late, and (with the pizza we had recently) not even really all that warm. Incidentally, they used to offer a service where you could ask for a blanket, but not now; just the other day, I got "sorry, we don't do that anymore".

A lot of people might read this and think I'm mad for spending the big bucks to watch movies this way, but I live for this sorta thing, and I just can't do the normal thing anymore. Granted, IMAX is an ok alternative, but you're still just waiting in a queue while your drink gets warm.

Ultimately though, I've got to admit that the only reason I go to the movies is because they get it first. If they were released on Blu-Ray on the same day as they showed up in the cinemas, I'd never go back to Gold Class or La Premiere ever again.

Upcoming Home Theatre improvements planned

I'm going to run through the list of home theatre improvements I have planned over the next couple of weeks (while on holiday).

Tomorrow morning we're heading out to Ikea for an hour or two to have a look at shelving units (on our way to seeing Iron Man 2). The projector has been sitting on a couple of boxes for much too long now. I'm thinking, then, that something spacious, tall, and with at least 4 adjustable shelves should hit the spot. The projector will sit on the topmost shelf.

At first I was also planning on storing our Blu-Rays on this unit, but that's not going to happen now. For starters, I was never keen on housing them on a simple shelving unit (that's what bookcases are for; less deep and with backing).

It occured to me though, while watching Iron Man tonight, that I'd really like to get the receiver and the Blu-Ray player back there too. The Blu-Ray player isn't so bad, but with the room's lights out, the receiver's front panel is lit up like a Christmas tree. It will be really nice to be able to look straight forward at the screen and not also have that bright light staring you in the face. Granted, I'm going to have to follow this change up with quite a bit of rewiring, but hey, I live for this shit!

The other change involves the front wall itself. We're renting, so we can't exactly mount up a projector screen, but a workmate (who watched my Seaton SubMersive Youtube video) recommended sticking up some dark wrapping paper on the wall around where the image hits. Getting some of that should be easy enough, and I like the thought of such a change bringing some much-needed emphasis to the screen itself, but I am a little concerned about double-sided tape taking off the paint when I try to remove it down the track.

We take pretty good care of this house though (have done so for years), and if such a change can make our experience that much more rewarding, it's a chance I'm willing to take.

The shelving unit is first in line though, and with that said, I'm outta here. Wish me luck :)

Steam, still blowing chunks!

I'll start with a picture:

For anyone who's wondering, I convered this sort of thing not long ago.

This time around, the top half of the picture is the Steam price if you're connecting to the store from the US, and the bottom half is if you're connecting from Australia.

Unbelievably, both prices are in US dollars.

There's not a lot more that needs to be said about this. It was disgusting then, and it's disgusting now. The upcoming Civilization V is $49.99 vs $79.99, which is particularly disappointing because, unlike Red Faction Guerrilla, it's a title I was actually considering purchasing.

Not now though.

Fucking Australian banks!

If you kinda like money, you know, value the necessity of using it to buy food, pay the bills, put a roof over your head, all that kinda stuff... I wouldn't go to Australia anytime soon if I were you. I swear, we have the worst fucking banks on the planet.

Not all that long ago they introduced a fee where you're charged $2 if you have an account with one bank but use another bank's ATM to withdraw funds from it. So I'm with National Australia Bank (the gay!) and I use a BankWest ATM (the even gayer!), I'm charged an extra $2 on top of my deposit amount. So I can withdraw $50, and pay $52. Sweet deal, huh?

More recently, myself and the missus thought we'd set our savings accounts up with the same bank so that transfers would be more instant between them. Or so we thought. Because a $400 transfer from her account to mine that was done 30 hours ago still has not arrived. I feel like I want to ask; where's the money now? I mean, it's not in her account, and it's not in mine... so where is it?

Yeah, I know the answer. It's in a temporary account of theirs, earning them interest. Fucking unbelievable how they get away with this shit.

Humanity; being a cunt to one another since... forever.