So tonight I installed the speaker stands and then ran the full Audyssey deal on my Onkyo. While it doesn't take forever, it is hard to sit there through 8 sets of microphone placements being as still and quiet as possible...

Then I checked out what it adjusted, and popped in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Holy crap. A LOT of sound was missing before that I was now hearing. I only watched up to where they "light the fuse", but wow, oh wow...

BUT...

The vocals were a bit light.

I went back into the settings and looked and it set my center channel to -4.0 db. That's odd, so I set it to +1.0, and tried again. MUCH better. And still WOW!!!

I have NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVEREVEREVER, loved the sound of my Axioms like I do now. I thought that they were good, but I still remember going to Randy's (SirQuack's) place a few years back and being blown away by how much better his setup sounded. In fact, truth be told, that he is one of the main reasons I even did acoustical treatments (yeah, I owe you one Randy). It was that "audition" back then that did it for me and drove me to build what I am building now. And the audition wasn't even for me! I had owned my Axioms for a few years, and he was doing an audition for someone. I brought over some demo DVDs, and the auditionee brought some stuff too. It was great...

But now, my Axioms are really singing!

The biggest shocker during the calibration was how "hot" I was running my sub. It says to manually set it to 75db, and I had it up near 100 db. I had to turn the gain down quite a bit to get down to 75 db before it would calibrate the room. And it sounds great now!

So after that, which I didn't start until 10:30 pm tonight due to graduation party shopping with my wife, I decided to start figuring out the game room layout. I had designed a cubby area for the Pachinko to go, but the layout got changed, and now that cubby is blocked by the pinball machine. Oh well. The pachinko will go elsewhere. I also managed to get the pinball back on its legs, positioned in its spot, and fully tested. I did have to tune a few of the under-playfield "gates" that activate when the ball rolls over that area in the playfield, oh and find the missing 4th ball, but all is well.

Tomorrow I will replace a couple of burnt out bulbs, and give it a good cleaning. Then, I might start setting up bass shakers in the theater, or get the MAME arcade started being put back together too... Then it is PROM for my graduating daughter, so that will take up a few hours with pictures and such.

Sunday is of course mother's day, so we will see how much time I get to work around here. I need to get the wood for the black panels for around the screen, so maybe I can at least squeeze a trip in to the home improvement store. Then I will at least have the materials to get them built. That will probably be the last thing that I will realistically get to before the grad party in 2 weeks. I really wanted to rope light up for the "cool" factor, but it will be difficult to get the time.


Farewell - June 4, 2020