chit chat thread

P_Roloff

I’d agree with @SteelBlue that the Denon is a good choice, we have an older version and it’s been great, lots of features and pretty easy to use and set up. I personally went used when buying my receiver, but I did a lot of looking before I found one that I liked. HDMI comparability was the biggest thing for me, along with some sort of wireless connectivity to my phone (AirPlay in the case of the receiver I picked up, a Harman Kardon AVR-1700). While it’s not the best money can buy, for $100 I’ve been pleased with it and it allowed me to spend the extra money on better speakers where I feel that money is better spent, at least for now.

TL;DR: Don’t be afraid to buy used, just do your research first and make sure it’s actually what you want and isn’t going to stop working within a month.

SteelBlue said:

Wharfedale Diamonds? I bought a $90 Yamaha center channel that has worked pretty well for what I wanted out of it. Definitely plan to upgrade in the future based on how much audio is pushed out of it.

Yeah, the Wharfedale Diamond 10.1’s. For what it’s worth, I way prefer the Chane’s. The mids in the Wharfedale’s seem to be more recessed and veiled, and they just don’t sound as fun/aren’t as enjoyable to listen to. They’ve been excellent surrounds though, especially for the $125 I paid for them.

GunMetalGrey

It's amusing to think that all end users can have different takeaways when it comes to audio equipment.

ChrisO

I knew it was cold this morning because the screen on the cluster in my Passat was frozen. Never seen anything like it. Took about 30mins of heat for it to come back from the dead.

P_Roloff

@straight6pwr also had some interesting experiences with his gauge cluster this morning per his Instagram. I for one have not set foot outside my building and don't plan to until 3:00 tomorrow when I have class.

Rekpoint

Yeah no class from Monday till Friday for me. Woot Woot

ChrisO

P_Roloff said:

@straight6pwr also had some interesting experiences with his gauge cluster this morning per his Instagram. I for one have not set foot outside my building and don't plan to until 3:00 tomorrow when I have class.

Damn they didn’t cancel class? uwec was canceled today and tomorrow. Where do ya go?

straight6pwr

LOL, yeah my cluster was freakin. but the car started, so that was a miracle.

gas gauge = non op

temp gauge = non op

OBC display = said "Code?"

tach = pinging back and forth like it had ripped some coke

also, my 5 speed refused to stay in 2nd or 4th gear until it got warmed up. i had to hold the lever until i shifted to the next gear.

power steering was struggling, too. the load it put on the car when i backed out from my parking spot dipped the rpms so much it killed the motor

coldest day I have ever experienced.

jc43089

I didn't try starting my e36 today. I did start my Sienna and it puked a bunch of oil out around the oil filter for about 30 seconds and sounded really angry that I woke it up. It wouldn't shift into gear until I let it warm up for several minutes.

I like this being a teacher thing, cancelled Monday, Wednesday, Thursday this week. I was super helpful because one of our gilts had piglets on Sunday afternoon so I have been able to care for the animals better with the frigid temps. She is doing great and the piglets seem to be doing good buried in the straw bedding.

Tomorrow I will see how the BMW does when I have to go do some work for my father in law.

HipMF

straight6pwr said:

If i decided to spend $200 on a receiver and some speakers for a small basement game room TV, what brand would you point me to?

Find the best hand-me-down receiver/amp that you can get for $20 or less and spend the rest of your budget on speakers.

A decent sounding amplifier can be built at just about any price range. My old bookshelf speakers are connected to my computer with a $30 plastic amplifier that's designed to run on AAs (og Tripath T-Amp) and it sounds almost as good to my ears as my Brio which retailed for $595 back in the 90s. You just need to find something that was designed by someone who cared enough to put in an off-the-shelf amplifier circuit and follow the recommendations in the application note. I'm not trying to say it's easy to build amps, just that a good one can be built cheaply if you don't need a lot of power. If you're powering bookshelf speakers at any reasonable volume level, you don't need a lot of power, so a cheap amp will work as long as it's reasonably well designed.

Speakers on the other hand require a large material and labor cost to build, and are probably more difficult to engineer. Choosing/designing multiple drivers that, together, can get you a reasonably flat frequency response curve, designing a box that doesn't vibrate, but also doesn't cost a lot to manufacture... probably a fair amount of testing and revisions on the engineering side to get something that actually sounds good. It's pretty rare that I'm pleasenty surprised by the sound of cheap speakers...

patsbimmer1

My wife got me a Yamaha rx-v377 receiver and speaker combo package for Christmas a few years ago and it's served my video game/movie purposes very well. I don't know anything about it other than I plug things in, noise comes out.

HipMF

As far as on-topic updates go, my OBC temp read-out was more accurate today than it's ever been, because it's said -40F as long as I've had the car (no sensor hooked up)

P_Roloff

ChrisO said:

Damn they didn’t cancel class? uwec was canceled today and tomorrow. Where do ya go?

Milwaukee School of Engineering. We had class cancelled Monday, today, and tomorrow until noon. They almost never cancel here, so even this was a big deal. I’ll only have 9 class periods this week though, and a test got pushed back a full week so I’m pretty okay with it.

Jdesign

anyone run into brake issues with the cold?

SteelBlue

Worked a half day Monday at our Appleton location and then went home to finish due to the snow. Went to Fond du Lac office Tuesday to work. Worked from home yesterday and today. I work a half day tomorrow that I usually work out of the Appleton office, but with the soft phone on my computer, I'll probably just finish the week off from home.

straight6pwr

Jdesign said:

anyone run into brake issues with the cold?

nope!

suspenceful

Finally starting to warm up around 9am this morning. Some of my water lines at home froze and one of them cracked last night. Never good when you hear running water behind one of your walls. Worst part is, it happened in my bathroom and I only have one bathroom. Not sure what I'm gonna do about that yet, never had to rip down drywall before...

*

Jdesign

suspenceful said:

Finally starting to warm up around 9am this morning. Some of my water lines at home froze and one of them cracked last night. Never good when you hear running water behind one of your walls. Worst part is, it happened in my bathroom and I only have one bathroom. Not sure what I'm gonna do about that yet, never had to rip down drywall before...

It sounds like a fun time. Dry walling and fixing houses is easy peasy. If you can build a car, you can fix a house.

suspenceful

Jdesign said:

It sounds like a fun time. Dry walling and fixing houses is easy peasy. If you can build a car, you can fix a house.

It'll be another good learning experience. I've already learned so many things as a homeowner. Replacing a toilet, repairing the internals of a washing machine, removing/repairing an in-wall microwave, fixing leaking faucets, tracing down electrical shorts and rewiring outlets, the do's and dont's of tearing down and replacing a roof.

And it's only been 3 years!

Nick_F

Yea, I'm really starting to wish I had a garage. My car has made some interesting noises these last two days... On a positive note school got cancelled all week and work has been a ghost town

HipMF

I've been wearing more hats than usual at work due to people being out. Nice to get some experience doing different things, but I'll still be happier when things are back to "normal".

WIBIMMERS

chit chat thread