It’s been almost a month since my last post, so I figured an update is due. It felt like nothing worth reporting has really happened in the last month, but after thinking about it there are three things that are worth a mention at least. First, and least interesting, I started my second to last college semester and things are going fine so far. There is a good bit more group work than I’d like, but it seems that most everyone else in my classes is interesting in pulling their own weight.
Secondly, I have a totally new TV set up in the living room:
I was browsing Slickdeals mindlessly late at night a few weeks ago, and I saw a deal on this set of speakers. It was a five-speaker package of Jamo’s best speakers for $379 at Adorama. After some quick research, I decided it was a reasonable deal and ordered them. I think $379 was a good price, for an average of about $76 each. The normal price for the package at Adorama was a little over $1,000, which I think says more about the markup on home theater products than the quality of the speakers. I think there’s definitely $379 of sound here, but I would never spend $1,000 on these speakers, or probably any speakers for that matter. Which brings me to a little rant/ramble.
I mostly listen to music through Spotify, which while compressed, sounds totally fine to my ears. I really doubt that I could tell the difference between high-quality Spotify and a lossless source, and even if I could, I think it would be impossible to hear the difference between a $400 set of speakers and a $10,000 (or more) set. “Audiophiles” are probably the only group of people who are worse than camera people. I definitely love cameras and taking pictures, but I don’t have the best gear and I definitely don’t have all the skill. It’s very easy to feel inadequate in the photography world when it feels like every review or forum post or comment is talking about how you just have to have this new super sharp $5,000 lens for your vintage Leica so you can take make amazing pictures photographs/the next great American “photo essay” (whatever that is) in some lush tropical destination. Anyways, it’s a tough community to be in and deal with. Audio equipment feels about the same. If you don’t have a $10,000 Marantz amp connected to 50 different $2,000 speakers from a brand you’re not rich enough to have even heard of are you even watching the movie? Or if you’re not playing a 5000 gram vinyl record through a vintage grass-fed organic tube amp are you really listening to the music? Both hobbies can easily make the regular Joe feel like it’s not worth bothering getting started if they don’t have an unlimited budget.
With that out of the way, I knew I was going to need a new receiver to work these speakers. I already had two receivers, but neither was up to the task. First, I have a late 1980’s JVC quadraphonic receiver, which works perfectly fine, but is just too old to be relevant anymore. I also have a mid 2000’s era JVC 5.1 channel receiver, but it can only work with Dolby Digital signals from a single optical input (no HDMI or anything like that) and the buttons on the front are messed up and don’t work properly anymore. Initially, I was willing to spend a little extra money to get a new receiver that can handle variable refresh rate through its HDMI ports, has Spotify built in and can do Dolby Atmos. After reading some reports that suggest all recent VRR capable receivers have a hardware problem, I decided to get something cheap for now and then maybe upgrade in a few years.
I settled on a refurbished version of Denon’s least expensive receiver, the AVR-S540BT. It can do all the normal Dolby Digital and DTS formats except Atmos or similar, it has five HDMI inputs and two optical inputs, with five speaker channels and two subwoofer outputs. It switches sources automatically when possible and chooses the correct output mode 99% of the time. I’m very happy with it, and I really doubt a more expensive receiver could give me better sound quality. I am interested in an Atmos setup at some point though.
I knew I was also going to need a subwoofer, and in a bid to save some money, I grabbed an old unused JVC sub from my parents’ place (it came with the 5.1 JVC receiver). My parents retired this one for the same reason I eventually did: it has an automatic sleep/power saving function, but it’s much too eager to enter the sleep state. This means the bass cuts in and out almost constantly and always very noticeably. After a couple days I decided to get a new subwoofer. The internet says the Dayton Audio SUB-1200 is the one to get if you don’t want to spend a ton of money, so that’s what I got. Just like the speakers, I’m sure there are better ones out there, but to my untrained ear it sounds fantastic. I could foresee upgrading to the 15 inch version of this sub if space allows in the future, but the 12 inch is an incredible upgrade over anything from a home theater in a box.
I got the receiver set up with my five-ish year old Vizio 4k TV via the HDMI ARC connection. This presented a problem right off the bat. The TV is old enough (and cheap enough) that it only has one HDMI input capable of 4k at 60 Hz. Having a refresh rate of at least 60 Hz is totally essential to using a computer on any screen, and at least strongly recommended for everything else. Unfortunately, the HDMI port with ARC is not the one with 4k 60 Hz capability, so I had to keep all my video sources plugged into the TV and then rely on ARC for audio output to the receiver. This got the job done, but I was plagued by the video from any source cutting out and flickering for about ten seconds at unpredictable intervals. On the PS4, I could just pause the game, but watching TV though the computer was frustrating. The cut would happen at really inopportune times and occasionally the audio would return but the video would not, so I’d have to stop and restart playback. My assumption was that this was due to conflicting HDMI versions between the TV and receiver, but I didn’t put too much effort into solving the problem. Instead, I set my sights on a new TV, one that I’ve had my eye on for a year.
This time last year, in the before times, I was very interested in a new TV, and TCL had just what I was after. They had just debuted their 2020 line, which included a 55 inch QLED TV, with HDR, variable refresh rate and Roku built in, for an excellent MSRP of $699. I kind of forgot about to thanks to the turbulence of the world, but it popped into my head a few times and I read the reviews, all of which just about said it was the best bang for your buck TV in 2020. Thanks to this glowing reception and manufacturing problems due to coronavirus, supplies were short and demand high for much of 2020. I decided I was going to buy one from Best Buy once they had stock available near me, preferably at my local store. I also opened up Walmart and Amazon pages for the TV to up my chances of snagging one. And it’s a good thing I did, because one afternoon I refreshed the Walmart page on a whim, and found the TV on sale for $578, well below the usual $650-$700 price. I grabbed it before it could disappear.
It showed up on Friday, and just like the speakers and receiver, I’m sure there are better TVs out there for more money, but I don’t know that I could see the difference, and I don’t think the performance per dollar is beatable. Even the regular SDR picture is an enormous improvement over my old Vizio, the built-in Roku apps are great as usual and the modern HDMI inputs on the TV mean I can route all my stuff through the receiver first, then into the TV. To be honest, HDR (both HDR 10 and Dobly Vision) isn’t as life changing as I expected, but after watching a few episodes of Our Planet and Planet Earth II in 4k HDR, SDR content just feels like it’s missing something. It’s kind of like cooking without salt. It’s alright and it works, but just a dash of salt takes things to the next level. This TV has a 120 Hz panel and will do VRR, but unfortunately I don’t have anything to take advantage of that. My living room computer has a GTX 1080, but it can’t quite make 1080p at 120 fps, and Nvidia is stupid and doesn’t support VRR over HDMI on cards older than the 3000 series. Forza Horizon 4, my typical couch game, looks amazing in 4k 60 fps with HDR. I suspect playing at 60 Hz on a 120 Hz panel has some benefit because the action looks much smoother than my 4k 60 Hz monitor in the office. The PS4 Pro, in contrast to contemporary Xbox models, has no VRR capabilities. It will do a sort of fake 4k at 60 fps and it’ll do HDR, which I’m satisfied with.
I’m really pleased with my new set up and the value it offers. It’s just nice. My third thing worth mentioning will come in my next post, and is a lot more interesting than this I think.