Welcome Thread: New Members please introduce yourself here

[GOS]

Hello to everyone,
I'm new to this forum since today. I'm a german guy and live in Heilbronn, near Stuttgart.
I enjoy listening to 5.1 audio. Don't have an Atmos setup actually. Mostly I hear physical releases and love superdeluxeedition.com. Many very good BD-Audio released by SDE so far. Hope my favourite album comes out in 2025. The 40th Anniversary Edition for "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

Love good produced 80s material. I also like some progressive rock from the 70s. Genesis are my favourite band for that genre.

Welcome!

 

[LaurensDad]

Son of a…

I just spent 45 minutes introducing myself, only to somehow accidentally click on the ad on the bottom of the screen and I come back and now it’s all freaking gone.

Oh well, it’s taken me from signing up in May last year to finally get around to introducing myself, it can wait another day or so.

As I used to tell my reports after they’d just lost two hours of work due to not saving, “Just think how much better it will be the second time!”

 

[QuadSound]

Hi @LaurensDad . Sorry you had such an issue with the intro post. Nice to see you here.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Son of a…

I just spent 45 minutes introducing myself, only to somehow accidentally click on the ad on the bottom of the screen and I come back and now it’s all freaking gone.

Oh well, it’s taken me from signing up in May last year to finally get around to introducing myself, it can wait another day or so.

As I used to tell my reports after they’d just lost two hours of work due to not saving, “Just think how much better it will be the second time!”

Nice to meet you!
As a QQ supporter I think you can go in your profile settings & turn ads off. So it doesn't happen again.

 

[The Echoes]

Hi everyone! Thank you for letting me join! I’m a big music and surround sound enthusiast!

 

[mrcond]

Hi everyone! Thank you for letting me join! I’m a big music and surround sound enthusiast!

Hold on there. Before we can make it official, you need to correctly answer the following question: Is Jethro Tull heavy metal?

 

[SomethingAnything]

Hi everyone! Thank you for letting me join! I’m a big music and surround sound enthusiast!

Welcome. Looking forward to your posts. (And, don't worry, you don't have to find a funny comeback for that Tull comment, just a running gag that's been going on ... for decades actually. )

 

[MathieuW]

Hi all,

I'm Mathieu from The Netherlands. I've been checking out the forum for a few months and it seems like a great place with people who share my passion for (multi-channel) music.

For me it started in 2002 when I bought my first 5.0 set (Denon AVR 3802 and speakers from B&W 600 S3 range) and got some DVD-audio's. I think A Night at the Opera was the first, I already was a big Queen fan during my teens. This was followed by others such as Crowded House, Hotel California, Fragile and finally In Absentia. In Absentia was just released and it made a huge impression on me. The music was great and the mix was so spacious and detailed. Following Steven Wilson's output from his several projects and his multi-channel mixes for others has brought me much new and different music to enjoy. Same for Bruce Soord actually.

During the 2010's I purchased some discs, but there were not that many released (but maybe I was not looking in the right places). I bought a house with my wife and lost the discussion on how many speakers could be placed in the living room. So, the Denon moved to a smaller room in the house which had awful acoustics and in the living room I had a stereo setup (Marantz PM14 S1 SE + Monitor Audio Gold 200 4g). Fast forward to 2023 and we moved to a new house and I (kind of) won the discussion and now have a 4.0.2 speakers. And it is glorious! I updated to a Marantz Cinema 30 and use the PM14 to drive the front speakers.

When searching for 'immersive' music (still have to get used to the term after calling it surround for 20-years) I found this forum which helped me discover some great music I missed over the years or which is just released (E.g. Big Big Train, Howard Jones). Thus, thank you all for your tips and insights and I hope to contribute as well.

 

[HomerJAU]

Welcome Mathieu!

 

[MrBurns]

Hi, I'm Gary. I use Kodi a lot and wanted to join to clear up some questions about it that were asked recently.

Oh, best say hiya to Garry !! I'm sure he'll have worked out how he knows me

 

[HomerJAU]

Hi, I'm Gary. I use Kodi a lot

Welcome aboard Gary! I look forward to your input.

We now have Homer, Mr Smithers and Mr Burns here that use Kodi!

 

[LaurensDad]

Nice to meet you!
As a QQ supporter I think you can go in your profile settings & turn ads off. So it doesn't happen again.

Thanks for the tip, I was able to shut off the ads!

 

[esimms86]

Hi, I'm Gary. I use Kodi a lot and wanted to join to clear up some questions about it that were asked recently.

Oh, best say hiya to Garry !! I'm sure he'll have worked out how he knows me

You two should meet up in Gary, Indiana!

 

[cdheer]

You two should meet up in Gary, Indiana!

I do not advise that.

 

[LaurensDad]

I'm going to try again since I am on vacation so in theory have some time, and I'm on my dad's laptop with an actual keyboard. Though the way this computer has been acting, I won't be surprised if something happens and this post gets wiped out, too!

I finally joined in May last year after lurking for quite some time. I was going to do the new member introduction, but then I had an idea to try to take a panoramic photo of my little listening room to include in my posting or my profile.

Perhaps fate does not want me to introduce myself…. Dad needs the laptop.

I’ll try again later and hope the third time’s a charm!

 

[LaurensDad]

Here I go again, I've got a little time and I'm at a keyboard....

Anyway, I wanted to include this panoramic photo in my post, so I started thinking about that, and then it turned into two panoramas stitched together, which I felt was appropriate since we're talking surround sound here. But after doing that, I thought maybe my overhead speakers were feeling ignored, so I wondered whether my phone could do a VERTICAL panorama, which it turns out it can! I did a couple of tests of that, but realized it was pretty hard to hold my phone steady while I took an overhead panorama.

So now we're into June, and I thought there was probably a way I could make some kind of a thing to hold the phone and track it vertically for for overhead panoramas. Enter LEGO! So June into July and August, I built and refined a little caddy with gears and a hand crank that did a pretty fine job of tracking, though it was a little clunky. So I added more gears, and I bought a motor and got that hooked up, but then there was too much flex of the axles, so I found that there's a company that makes and sells metal axles for LEGO, and finally I had a pretty cool little thing that takes great overhead panoramic photos. Then I had to figure out how many different shots at whatever angles would be needed to be able to stitch together a super-panorama of the whole room. And that ended up being four panoramas at 45-degree angles to one another.

So I took another set of shots in August, and got to work in Photoshop, which for me is maybe Photoshop 5 (?) running in Classic mode on my 20-year iMac, so it's a little slow with these huge images.

Then fall hit and I fell into a funk, and then winter came and it got worse, and it was hard to do much of anything. Eventually got to my doc and added some supplemental medication which I am grateful to say helps a lot. So I went back to playing around with the images and have an OK prototype that is proving the concept.

So I'm going to try to shoot again. I am going to use focus lock and exposure lock this time, and I am going to do eight panoramas instead of four to make the stitching process a little easier. I'm going to attach a screen shot (as in pointing my camera at the monitor to take a picture) showing the current state of my prototype.

 

[LaurensDad]

Meanwhile I realized that companies make 360 cameras, but I’m going to do it the hard way.