MojoLists

Big bass from a booming sub is the cornerstone of any good home theater. Unfortunately, people that live in apartments or watch movies while the rest of the house is sleeping are forced to live without the realism a subwoofer brings to the game.

There is a great solution and it fits in even the tightest budgets. Bass shakers are a great addition even for those who already have a sub and they are easy to set up. Low frequency bass transducers are mounted under the seating in your theater or living room, depending on your system. They take the signal from your subwoofer output and vibrate, sometimes violently with the low frequency signal.

The realism bass shakers bring to your movies and games is impressive and it is one of the best upgrades you can make. It also impresses friends and to my surprise, are very friendly on the wife acceptance factor.

ButtKicker is the most common brand of low frequency transducers however lower cost alternatives that work as well are easy to find on Ebay and other sites across the web.

Bass shakers use an amp, which may be included in a kit, or you can use an old receiver, subwoofer amp or anything that delivers 50 watts. No need to worry about high quality power here, any old amp will do.

Stop living without the bass you so badly need to maximize your home movie experience and install bass shakers now.

To upgrade or make do with what you have is a constant question home theater enthusiast must answer on a regular basis. The most common problem facing us today is to upgrade our old receivers to one that can handle HDMI. Even receivers purchased today may not handle HDMI or only switch the video, as is the case in my living room where my Harmon Kardon passes two HDMI signals.

This works in that room as the speakers are hand me downs from my first 5.1 system 10 years ago and HD audio isn’t an issue. My problem comes in my dedicated theater where I have a Kenwood Sovereign receiver, one of the few I have found capable of driving the power hungry 4-ohm load of my Magnepan system through a full on action movie without overheating.

The Kenwood doesn’t even do component video switching but I am not giving it up, I love the warm sound and frankly, can’t afford to upgrade right now. I had to ask myself if HD audio was worth it and I decided it was so I waited until a Blu-Ray player came out that was capable of sending all of the HD audio formats via analog outputs. I settled on the Sony S550, I love it, the sound improvement over standard Dolby, and DTS is impressive, more open, detailed and enveloping.

HDMI switches are readily available at reasonable prices if you are running out of connections on your television. These switches can be manual, automatic or remote controlled depending on your budget.

I decided I could live with the Kenwood for a while longer, not that I have much of a choice and the cost of the Sony S550 was significantly lower than upgrading my receiver. For those of you who want to keep your DVD-A/SACD player connected to your receiver inputs look to Zektor for a high quality 8 channel analog switch or consider the budget solution of using a A/V switch.

In addition Denon has a universal Blu-Ray player, priced somewhere close to new car territory that solves this problem altogether. Oppo is also jumping into the universal Blu-Ray market with a rumored MSRP between $499 and $599 and considering the quality of their DVD players, this may be a real bargain.

If you enjoy the sound of your current receiver do your wallet a favor and keep it, you can still enjoy the sound and visual improvement of HD without falling into the upgrade trap. Besides, the receiver you want to buy today will likely be outdated next week.

 I have a sizable collection of DVD-A and SACD discs and I love most of them. I know vinyl is the perfect format but I just couldn’t talk myself, OK, I couldn’t talk my wife into restarting my music collection in another format which would require a considerable investment in a player and the records themselves in order to hear a difference.

 Despite the naysayers, I can hear a difference on well-recorded DVD-A and SACD discs but there is a new format for music that is just getting off the ground. Blu-Ray offers the potential for uncompromised sound, although it is digital and that is good enough for me. I don’t have my cables running through boxes of Peruvian sand and yes there are people who swear it makes a difference.

I am talking about music only discs here, not concert footage, which is readily available. My search was nearly fruitless aside from 30+ classical titles on Amazon. I was thrilled to see there is a market but I didn’t find anything I was interested in buying again. A few hopeful articles are out there but nothing concrete for future mainstream releases. This puzzles me as Universal Music was an early addition among Blu-Ray supporters.

Blu-Ray has potential because of the number of players, including PS3’s that are out and with the format war over this seems to be the next logical step for those who realize that all MP3’s sound like crap on a good system.

*UPDATE* Neil Young is releasing a 10 disc Blu-ray music collection available 2/24/2009. This is a great opportunity to see what the format is capable of. The projected price, well over $300 will mean I will not be hearing these anytime soon :(