Audio

The Path To Whole House Audio: Parts 1 & 2

Part 1 – Death By Canine Misadventure

Perhaps I should title this series as “A Geeky, Mildly Unorthodox Approach To Whole House Audio.” I’m not kidding. That bit about the dog really happened…more or less.

This is Shadow our five-year-old purebred Labrador Retriever. He is responsible for very little around la maison du Espinosa-Graves, being the lesser quadruped of the group. Yet in January of 2006 he brought about the expiry of my older, much loved Carver stereo system. This set in motion a series of events that has me rethinking my understanding of whole house audio, home theater, networking and media.

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Rave: Slim Devices Squeezebox Audio Player

Every now and then  something takes me back to a time and place where I haven’t been in a long, long time. It’s usually enjoyable, but often a bit of a ride. Bear with me as I lay out how and why this little device has found a favored place in my home.

In high school I had been a disk jockey, both at school dances and on a local community cable access channel. Musical reproduction (a.k.a “stereo stuff”) had been very important to me at that age even though I didn’t have the funds to pursue the interest in any depth.

I went on to study music, and eventually recording and live sound reinforcement. I have engineered studio sessions and live performances. However, as I wound my way through my twenties home audio was not a subject of much interest. My career path drifted from the purely musical to into broadcast video production.

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Going Back to Analog For TV Sound

If you listen to all the hype in advertising for just about everything you’d think that something “digital” is just plainly better than any analog equivalent. Digital Cable TV is better than old cable TV. Digital phone service is better than traditional phone service. Digital television (DTV) is better than analog TV, right?

This is not necessarily correct. It’s funny how the collective common wisdom is impacted as much by the frequency of occurence of a message as the validity of its content. Here’s a case in point.

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