There are a number of us in Winnipeg that participate on the various HT boards so once in a while we all get together and someones house to watch a movie and review each others latest toys
This time Jeff Kowerchuk hosted the event and Jay Mitchosky, Matt Broeska, Jeremy Santos, Luc Labelle and I were in attendance. I've been to Jeff's numerous times but hadn't seen his latest rearrangement and I must say he's done a bang up job with his HT room. He has now got his TV and gear flush with the rear wall in a similar fashion to Obi and IMO this really helps the front soundstage and greatly improves the look of the room.
This was my first listen to SACD and to put it bluntly I'm sold on it. Flipping back and forth between the redbook version and the SACD version of the songs (these are hybrid discs containing both versions of the tracks) it was very evident that the SACD sounded much less digital and was IMO more pleasant to listen to. The first thing that jumped out at me was the warmer top end on the SACD version. It almost seemed like the tweeters were been rolled off but as you listened a little closer you realized that what you were hearing was a more natural sound.
Our SACD player was the Marantz SA-14 SACD which was a very sexy piece of gear. I think all of us there fell in love with this item at first glance. It has a retro look is some respects but all in all it just looks elegant and expensive
Our demo of the super bit 5th Element disc vs the regular one didn't surprise me too much given the excellent examples of the differences done by some other people but both Jay and I commented that the dialog also seemed a little clearer (we were using the DTS track on the super bit disc)
The anthem pre amp is quite feature packed with THX Ultra certification and the ability to do 7.1 and has balanced inputs and outputs which was a nice surprise. It does lack Pro logic II though if thats a feature you're interested in. My first impressions were that there are way to many buttons on the front but thats a personal preference and not a deal breaking flaw.
I also got to see the Panasonic RP-91 DVD player that Jeff reluctantly bought, i use the A320 so I'm fairly familiar with its interface and ergonomics but a few things were new. I hardly ever use the A320's remote but I did notice that the 91 now has all the buttons exposed where the A320 remote hid some under a sliding panel. I'd have to spend time using both remotes before I could say which I preferred though.
Our movie for the night was an advanced copy of Willow. It had been a long time since I'd last seen the movie so a lot was new for me. The transfer looked very good for the most part esp considering the age of the film. We took a quick spin though some of the extra's and it was fun to see lucas looking so young I'll let Jay comment more on the extra's on the disc though since I'm sure he's spent more time with the movie then we had time for.
Thanks Jeff for the great meet...and a special thanks to our sponsors.
Alpha DVD that sponsored the DVD give away thanks Ralph!
thanks to Ron Epstein for providing us with the Willow DVD
This time Jeff Kowerchuk hosted the event and Jay Mitchosky, Matt Broeska, Jeremy Santos, Luc Labelle and I were in attendance. I've been to Jeff's numerous times but hadn't seen his latest rearrangement and I must say he's done a bang up job with his HT room. He has now got his TV and gear flush with the rear wall in a similar fashion to Obi and IMO this really helps the front soundstage and greatly improves the look of the room.
This was my first listen to SACD and to put it bluntly I'm sold on it. Flipping back and forth between the redbook version and the SACD version of the songs (these are hybrid discs containing both versions of the tracks) it was very evident that the SACD sounded much less digital and was IMO more pleasant to listen to. The first thing that jumped out at me was the warmer top end on the SACD version. It almost seemed like the tweeters were been rolled off but as you listened a little closer you realized that what you were hearing was a more natural sound.
Our SACD player was the Marantz SA-14 SACD which was a very sexy piece of gear. I think all of us there fell in love with this item at first glance. It has a retro look is some respects but all in all it just looks elegant and expensive
Our demo of the super bit 5th Element disc vs the regular one didn't surprise me too much given the excellent examples of the differences done by some other people but both Jay and I commented that the dialog also seemed a little clearer (we were using the DTS track on the super bit disc)
The anthem pre amp is quite feature packed with THX Ultra certification and the ability to do 7.1 and has balanced inputs and outputs which was a nice surprise. It does lack Pro logic II though if thats a feature you're interested in. My first impressions were that there are way to many buttons on the front but thats a personal preference and not a deal breaking flaw.
I also got to see the Panasonic RP-91 DVD player that Jeff reluctantly bought, i use the A320 so I'm fairly familiar with its interface and ergonomics but a few things were new. I hardly ever use the A320's remote but I did notice that the 91 now has all the buttons exposed where the A320 remote hid some under a sliding panel. I'd have to spend time using both remotes before I could say which I preferred though.
Our movie for the night was an advanced copy of Willow. It had been a long time since I'd last seen the movie so a lot was new for me. The transfer looked very good for the most part esp considering the age of the film. We took a quick spin though some of the extra's and it was fun to see lucas looking so young
I'll let Jay comment more on the extra's on the disc though since I'm sure he's spent more time with the movie then we had time for.Thanks Jeff for the great meet...and a special thanks to our sponsors.
Alpha DVD that sponsored the DVD give away thanks Ralph!
thanks to Ron Epstein for providing us with the Willow DVD
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