August 3, 2018
#266
Gentle reader,
Many times I have mentioned "the office" and yet you probably have no idea to what I do refer. And yes, my referring to blogging my as "magic" was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.
At the top is a fisheye view of the "office" from 2009. Some has changed, but much of the layout remains the same. To my left is the walnut cabinet I built when I was 19. It holds the Rock and Pop LPs on the top shelf and Film and TV Scores/Soundtracks line the bottom shelves. ATOP that is the wooden cabinet seen in the center of the photo above.
This room is a typical suburban child's bedroom. With a twin bed, dresser, bedside table, toy box and perhaps a small shelf, there would be room to play, but not an abundance. The room was designated as our home office from the beginning, although only my wife worked in an office. We had planned to have two desks set up like police detectives, facing each other.
But that never happened. At first, I had a wooden computer desk, her dad's old oak filing cabinet which had been painted blue next to it on the right and a tall grey bookcase to the left and various other things. They can be seen below in an old film photo, dig that beige CRT monitor:
That is a photo of my wife at the top, she was 29 at that time. Anyway, you can see that corner was packed. Now the glass and steel desk sits opposite that space, as seen in the fisheye photo. This way I can keep an eye out front for visitors, deliveries, Nancy arriving home, etc., and enjoy a wall of sound. And yes, I know putting a speaker on the wall is a bad idea. Space was at a premium. One of my Dynaco A25 speakers from the 1970's, it is.
But, now, let me get to the first part of the subject of this article. I showed you recently, right next to me is a very nice Pioneer home theater receiver and a Denon universal player. They drive two Cerwin-Vega! LS-12 floor standing speakers and a pair of BOSE 301 speakers which are mounted near the ceiling. Since they have similar efficiency, I play them together. Thus giving me a "wall of sound".
This system is modest compared to what you have seen in the listening room. I always get around to testing new components and thus decided to listen to some of the FOCAL test CDs I had made. I know what the music should sound like as I have used them testing every new component for years. Which includes the four speakers in here, but they were then in use in the listening room. For more information on creating those test CDs, you may read it here:
I put disc 4 into the Denon universal player and pressed play. Hmm, something is off. Where is the crispness I should be hearing? Oh, the bass was there, but not the WOW that I usually feel when playing them. Odd....what could be wrong?
Remember those incredible sounding vintage Radio Shack Minimus 7W speakers which I had restomodded some years ago? Since remodeling the upstairs rooms, they had been relegated to rear channel status in the living room's surround sound system. Their rich walnut cabinets and brown grilles blended with the new acacia wood floors and brown leather chairs as can be seen below:
I thought, "easy enough to try them out to see if the sound improves." Which, I did, by placing them atop both LS-12 speakers, shown below. Since the only thing that remained of the original speakers were the cabinets and grilles, I had removed the original Realistic emblems that were on the bottom of the grilles and put these custom made emblems in their place. For information on what modifications I did and all that entailed, please look here:
CERWIN-VEGA! They are not shy about proclaiming their name. Below is shown one of them with the grille off. See how the woven Kevlar woofer matches the folded metal transducer ribbon tweeters? That is coincidental, but looks great.
Below is the right one, being guarded by a Tie Fighter pilot.
Shown below is a photo showing the physical relationship of the C-V LS-12s on the floor to the BOSE 301 speakers above, mounted near the ceiling.
A storm trooper watches over the left speaker. Those are two Airsoft AEG rifles above and behind the open office door on the left: an M4 and a SCAR. The
doorway that is visible leads to the listening room. We had talked of retiring to
Arizona, but that never happened, that is a photo of the state made by
satellite which is affixed to the door.
But, I digress, I haven't told you what happened with the little speakers. I pressed PLAY and in seconds as the music began, my mouth was agape. While the four large speakers provided a "wall of sound", these wee speakers did too, all by themselves. I could sense music floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall. I decided right then, these phenomenal speakers were staying in here!
Not only was the soundstage enormous, so was the sound! It was open, crisp, with tight, and surprisingly deep bass from such small woofers. I cannot express to you enough just what a HUGE improvement it made plugging these small beauties in has done! I am glad I rescued them from a life of servitude and anonymity as simple surround speakers.
Let me show you more of the room. At least from where I sit. For car enthusiasts, the car shown to the left of the BOSE is my 1941 Plymouth coupe. Transformed from 1941 Mopar to all Chevrolet drivetrain and converted to telescopic shock absorbers. A 1957 283 V8 and early Corvette manual transmission. I was eighteen or nineteen then. Despite my being a paid car mechanic, I was getting into a lot more than I expected taking on that challenge.
My wife buys me small diecast cars she thinks I might like, from time to time. And I do like them, but have no room on the collection's shelf, so they are consigned to the wall. Our first new car was a 1997 Dodge Stratus with a manual transmission. Dodge built two of them to race in the NATCC and did very well indeed. Thus the "Flight Stimulator" poster. The square framed photo is from 1965's 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France. It shows two of the Shelby Daytona Coupes that stole the manufacturers championship from Ferrari when the new Ford GT-40 race cars failed to finish. It is a print: #1 of 750. Below that is one from 1970's race. It is signed by Vic Elford who drove the #25 Porsche 917 long tail. We owned a black version of the red Porsche shown in the top left corner of the PORSCHE poster. A 1987 924S. Loved that car! Most of the poster can be seen below.
Paintings were done by my mother, the framed one in the 1960's in California and smaller one inset more recently in Georgia. Three different photos of my wife and one of my oldest daughter. Such beauties. Sigh. More racing posters and photos and a car key each from: The Porsche, Camaro Z28, Audi TT and Subaru WRX fun cars we have had since the kids moved out. Currently, my Volvo V50 T5 turbo wagon with six-speed manual transmission fills the fun bill quite nicely.
These are the music makers: Pioneer VSX-917V is the newest home theater receiver I've owned. It has HDMI in and out, but here it serves stereo duty only. Not bad for $14.99. I have written about the fans I added which keep it cool sitting atop it previously. Denon DVD-1920 universal player serves disc-duty, playing all formats save Blu-ray. It was also $14.99 via eBay. Normally, I would have the player on top, since it is lighter and shorter, but even with spacers the heat was too much from the receiver, so it is at the bottom. I've been told the heat is normal, but with 40+ years of audio equipment use, it concerned me.
Racing simulators XBox 360/Forza 4 and PlayStation 3 (PS3)/GT5
Prior to the speaker change, I had another ear-opening revelation. I am a believer in audio improvements through better quality cables. Since I only needed a short pair of RCA cables to hook up the Denon to the Pioneer, I decided to try these:
Years ago, I came across some of Radio Shacks finest RCA interconnect cables which are extremely well made, thick and heavy. As I was always trying something new, when I came across Liberty Cables, the Radio Shack cables were passed on to new owners. I had found a pair at a of RS cables at a thrift store, bought them and put them away. While looking for something else, I came across them and decided to give them a try with this small system. WOW! That was the first time the soundstage grew. Instantly convinced that the Knu-Kables now sucked, I set out to find more Radio Shack units.
Since I had used the Denon's stereo RCA analog outputs to the Pioneer's CD inputs, I decided to just the front analog outputs of the 5.1 outputs to go to the TV. Seen above.
The OFFICE a virtual tour This link will take you back in time to this room in former guise. I did not know then how to arrange photos back on Blogger, so it will seem confusing, but at least you will get to see things I did not show you in this article.
I hope you have enjoyed this quick look at my home office. It has served me well, and like the listening room has seen a LOT of changes over the years.
Thanks for looking!
Scott
August 3, 2018
#266
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