Honda 5.1 Frankenstein 2023

[timbre4]

I curious as to why your find the home system unsatisfactory on this recording?
Or is it a across the board weakness with all Atmos recordings?
I very much enjoy this BD on my 5.2.4 rig.

There is nothing wrong with the recording. Once I heard it properly in 5.1 I knew it was great. The living room system is for the family and it’s compromised in terms of rear speaker placement and up firing front Atmos speakers, so not to judge with at this time. Made worse by a large roll of foam rubber that has to sit in front of the rear speakers temporarily.

 

[timbre4]

Taking the day off for 38th wedding anniversary, jotting some notes while we wait for severe weather to pass.

The random playback is steadily improving as I add more tunes. I'm kind of frustrated with the tagging mishaps this process makes glaringly obvious. I also need to get Foobar2000 playback monitor to be just artist & title in ASCENDING order default and not include all the other jazz I have to trim out. The tagging is the culprit for the information missing and that points to maybe a Wintertime (forever) project.

Anyhow here's what I got on the last drive:

BOOKA SHADE - Polar Lights (WITH JOPLYN)
Charlie Byrd Trio - Meditation (5.1 Mix)
The Band - [Live at the Academy of Music] Stage Fright
Be Bop Deluxe - Ships In The Night
Marillion - Heart of Lothian
Gentle Giant - So Sincere
Coldplay - Chapter 07 (Collidescope)
Al Jarreau - Random Act Of Love
Gentle Giant - Three Friends (Steven Wilson Mix)
Queen - Another One Bites the Dust
Genesis - [Seconds Out] Robbery, Assault and Battery
Hawkwind - Standing at the Edge
Jackson Browne - Running on Empty
King Crimson - Dangerous Curves
Jethro Tull - Only Solitaire
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird (5.1 mix)

I'm an odd duck; I would likely not choose to play Free Bird but I do enjoy it when I hear it. The random playback gets me into the listening game in a unique helpful way. I buy more music than I can probably ever hear; combined with the firehose of sources these days, it's a tad overwhelming. My playback approach gets me to enjoy more of my collection beyond my conscious choices in the moment, while also assuaging my guilt for amassing such a ridiculous collection to muddle through. Random is liberation in my book.

I intend to have a separate post about rear speakers but I'll spill it that I'm looking at a pair of Tannoy PBM 6.5 speakers for the Civic. I had a pair of these near-field monitors on the shelf doing nothing since my best friend gave me his powered Mackies for audio mixing and put them in the 4Runner. Stay tuned

 

[timbre4]

Week of July 3rd:

Not so good; I had to jump start the Civic as it sat for a week due to rain (the park and other things; you're old if you get that reference). It wasn't a parasitic drain anymore; the battery may be weakened from being frequently run down in the past.

I made plans to do something different on the 4th of July. It quickly went sideways as follows.
1. Despite the laptop FLAC system playing flawlessly last time out, I could not get it to output a center channel. The test signals lit up on screen and all speakers responded except the center channel. 90 degree afternoon heat is not ideal for troubleshooting but I persevered on this for 20 minutes. Surely not a speaker out? New cables? Switchbox? Center channel in 4 now 3 channel amp? Old cables to amps in trunk? I resigned myself to go on my outing as 4.1 being better than nothing.

2. I quickly put together a folder of 5.1 mixes of music I created to check the validity of the mixes. There were past mixes I'd labored over extensively but the failure was rendering some new 2023 versions with big flaws. One mix only emitted one sound out of the LR speaker (rendered when that track is in SOLO mode is a bad thing. Another mix file (5.1 WAV) was entirely blank; went back to that project in ACID and NONE of the tracks played. So I went back to stereo versions until I found one that worked and mixed that out to 5.1 to replace the blank one. Some of these mix projects are 10-20 years old so weird things happen when opened in the current version of ACID.

As for 4th of July, once I was out on the road, with all of the windows and sunroof open, breezes rushing over me, I realized having the freedom to be out there enjoying myself physically, put it all into perspective for me.

Today I am revisiting my ACID 5.1 mixes to improve the listening experience, hopefully today but there is rain expected. So what was the center channel issue? What I least expected - the CSW Ensemble III used as the center channel speaker. I had to buy a pair of them since I was too impatient to wait for a single speaker listing. I've got a spare! So I went to find it and unwrap it to swap it in and see if that works. It wasn't wrapped up and the CSW badge was removed. The badge produces a distracting reflection on the windshield.

Wait! Is this the CSW III I thought I blew out during a particularly loud playback of that Riverside - Oberhausen DVD-A? So I was already using the spare? its hard to keep track of all these spare items. Sure it beats finding and waiting for replacements. I cranked it up pretty loud and it didn't break up so I'll use if for now. If it proves to be bad I'll go back to the CSW III I took out today. Between the two I could still come out with one good one.

 

[timbre4]

PLAY / PAUSE: Still wanting to have basic remote control functions

Bought a $10 USB remote early on with indecipherable instructions in 2 pt font that is headed for the junk drawer. Thought about switching from laptop to a WIN 10 tablet with USB ports; that would be the most significant expense in this project. Foobar2000 is so wildly popular, try another search on that angle.

I found Beefweb, Telnet Daemon and MonkeyMote, the last one being the most popular it seems. They all rely on LAN (local network) connectivity which is not going to be common for a mobile application. The only solution I see for my situation is to get the MonkeyMote app from Apple store and use mobile hotspot for the required connectivity to use iPhone as the remote!

Got the lite (free) version of the Mote app= useless, uninstalled. Paid $1.99 for the full version and installed it. Took a couple tries but now have laptop connected to iPhone. Monkey Mote "automatic discovery" is not working for me. I have no idea what to enter in Manually Added Servers. 'Trouble Connecting?' Help page is 404 not found. Not a good sign.

Hopes are dimming on this; Apple Bonjour service (installed with iTunes) needs to be present for Automatic Discovery to work. Will try that. Thinking the hotspot idea is not going to work. It's raining so I'll tinker a while longer.

NOPE. Giving up on the remote idea for now. switching back to remixing ACID projects.

 

[timbre4]

STATIONARY UPDATE

Sat in the Civic with the laptop under the carport while it poured rain. I decided i could roadtest gear and files anyway. Here’s what I learned today while waiting for this thunderstorm to pass:

1. 5.1 FLAC delivery is operational now
2. My own 5.1 mixes still have issues to fix; short one-shot audio clips load as loops which play wrong. Some 5.1 project bus assignments are wrong - 123456 when 125634 is correct or vice versa. I forget.
3. Penteo upmixes better than I thought!
4. Foobar supports hot keys so I now have easy controls and don’t need remote:
Spacebar = Play / Pause
Z = Next track
X = Prev track
5. Not to play the system too long - I will need to jumpstart the car. Worth it for the knowledge gained!

 

[timbre4]

Monday update

Sunday was a micro-lap just a few tunes on a toasted CSW center speaker. I did destroy it earlier in this same lifetime. A few raindrops better get home. Deluge ensues.

Monday: After days of rain, today was cooler as a reset to 80s and ramping up towards Friday. My work day ran extra long so I couldn't get more road time before dark/dinner. I did manage a few miles after swapping the original CSW Ensemble back in. When I switched polarity on the fly, the speaker may not have had a connection it could not maintain. Today sounded wonderful, the material so rich, the weather so fine. I accidentially blew out the playlist that FUBAR was going to source. I introduced another drive with my own music on it and confused myself.

I do recall these:
Simple Minds - Up On The Catwalk, Birdsong At Morning - Logical, The Beatles - Eight Days a Week, King Crimson - Dangerous Curves, Ray Brown Trio - title,

NEWSFLASH: The Tears For Fears show we are attending tomorrow night (7/11 Franklin, TN) is going to be filmed for video!

 

[M-K]

Tim: great what you wrote so far. Enjoyed reading it. Homebrew 5.1 system in a car.

Did you ever think about an raspberry pi & KODi as 5.1 player? I use this at my living room (nor mobile) and I've a "hat" hat converts me the HDMI signal to 7.1 analog (I actually use only 5.1). Unfortunately this "hat" isn't available anymore. It's the same like a HDMI extractor but my one is capable to decode DTS-HD and TrueHD. Apparently yours wasn't capable to do that. There are some 7.1 HDMI extractors available.

KODi transforms often into PCM. And 192kHz sampling rate is supported. I think Garry (homerjau) is very experienced regarding KODi.

Otherwise foobar2000 is the way to go if you're on Windows.

Please go on.

And: your musical taste is quite close to mine.

 

[timbre4]

Thanks for your inte

Tim: great what you wrote so far. Enjoyed reading it. Homebrew 5.1 system in a car.
Otherwise foobar2000 is the way to go if you're on Windows. Please go on.

And: your musical taste is quite close to mine

Thanks. The current course seems to be adequate for my random playback needs. Just adding hot keys was liberating!

This stereo iPad playlist might more fully express a broader musical range.

#14 Maturing Rapidly Random Pool Jukebox

Joe Satriani - All For Love
Robert Fripp - Breathless
The Smithereens - Only A Memory
Sparks - Achoo
Happy The Man - Stepping Through Time
Paul McCartney - Another Day
Suzanne Vega - 99.9 F
Sonny Landreth - Gone Pecan (live)
Snarky Puppy - Semente
Bill Nelson - When Your Dream Of Perfect Beauty Comes True
Sonny Landreth - All About You (live)
Opeth - Death Whispered A Lullaby
Beck - See Through
Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime (live)
U2 - Until The End Of The World
Leonard Cohen- Almost Like The Blues
Death Cab For Cutie - This Charming Man
Procol Harum - Businessman
Masters Of Reality - Tilt-O-Whirl
Adam Holzman - Oslo
Area Code 615 - Sligo
Joe Satriani - Sahara
Tom Jones - Thunderball
Joe Satriani - All My Friends Are Here
Roxy Music - Amazons
Beck - Hyperlife
Levin Minneman Rudess - What Is The Meaning
Blow Up Hollywood - Headed For The Sun
Wayne Krantz - Kulturny
Adam Holzman - Stockholm
Bill Frisell - Cluck Old Hen (reprise)
Death Cab For Cutie - Summer Years
Bob Schneider - The Way Life Is Supposed To Be
Anathema - Everything
The Doors - Wild Child
Jake Johnson - Flake

 

[timbre4]

Adjustments:

I removed 125 songs (sure thing go to’s) and then replaced them with 175 other lesser known, okay totally unknown tracks.

It was a revelation today! It really hit the goal of exposing me to so much lurking within my collection.

Thankfully, today I got a playback file. The previous session was lost and there was a lot of great stuff played that day. I learned that Library View is NOT the same as a playlist. Once I defined that it was all good now.

Porcupine Tree - The Yellow Windows of the Evening Train
Marvin Gaye - Trouble Man
Jethro Tull - Mrs Tibbets
Be‐Bop Deluxe - Axe Victim
Foreigner - Long, Long Way From Home
Tom Cochrane & Red Rider - Lunatic Fringe (5.1 mix)
Queen - The Prophet’s Song (5.1 mix)
Steve Pierson and Blues Head - Bad Condition
No-Man - Wherever There Is Light
Nightwish - The Islander
Randy Newman - Sigmund Freud's Impersonation of Albert Einstein in America
Larisa Stow - Blue Mountain
Jaco Pastorius Big Band - Barbary Coast
George Strait - Honkytonkville
Paul Draper - Grey House
Depeche Mode - Jazz Thieves
Björk - Hunter
Béla Fleck - Buffalo Nickel
Genesis - Man Of Our Times
Barenaked Ladies - Adrift
Joe Beck & Ali Ryerson - People Make the World Go 'Round
Take 6 - Gold Mine

Realization today: This curated random approach also removes any bias and prejudice in my musical selection. Getting joy from music I wouldn’t likely select to play otherwise!

 

[timbre4]

July 19, 2023 drive:

This was an abbreviated because I left late and I had to return home to man the BBQ grille. Mixed feelings; here is what was played and their status:

Willie Nelson - Night and Day KEEP
Dave Brubeck - It's Deja Vu All Over Again DELETE
Afro Cuban Latin Jazz Project - El Vuelo DELETE
Stone Temple Pilots - Wicked Garden KEEP
Aaron Neville - Morning Has Broken DELETE
Yes - Close To The edge DELETE

DELETE = I like jazz but not when uncompelling, weak mix and CTTE because it's just too long for this scenario.

July 22, 2023 drive:

Had to jump start the Civic since it sat through too many days. This 2021 battery is probably weak from being run down before I corrected the wiring.

Once I got going, it was a fabulous ride. It's mostly the same route for now, selected for scenery, low traffic and good quiet pavement for the most part. I left a little earlier to get a longer playlist out of the laptop rig. The more I use it, the better it seems to behave. I was having so much fun I asked my son to pickup dinner so I didn't have to wrap up when I was having so much fun. Then I wanted to get in the pool for random stereo soak afterwards.

Aaron Neville - The Shadow of Your Smile
Andy Jackson - The Boy in the Forest
Anthony Phillips - Sojourn
Cowboy Junkies - State Trooper
Widespread Panic - Sparks Fly
Steve Hackett - Spectral Mornings
Bryan Ferry - Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Devin Townsend - Genesis
Paul Weller - If I Could Only Be Sure
Eleanor McEvoy - You'll Hear Better Songs (Than This)
Neil Young - Motorcycle Mama
Steve Stevens - Cinecitta
Chick Corea feat. Bobby McFerrin - Armando's Rhumba
Nosound - Constant Contrast
RPWL - Opel
Michael McDonald - Reach Out I'll Be There
Robert Cray - Distant Shore
Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band - Swingin' For the Fences
Mark Knopfler - Our Shangri-La

 

[timbre4]

Another good brief session; getting it dialed in as far as new and familiar material:

Katatonia - The Racing Heart
Spyro Gyra - Bump It Up
Persuasions - From Me To You [Sing The Beatles]
Paul Weller - If I Could Only Be Sure
Fleetwood Mac - What's the World Coming To
Sam Cooke - Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen
John Lennon - Instant Karma! (5.1 mix)
Depeche Mode - Jazz Thieves
Ryan Adams - Firecracker
Paul Gilbert - Individually Twisted
Jethro Tull - To Cry You a Song
Pixies - Here Comes Your Man

 

[marpow]

Wow, Tim, I'm following you, and your going at light speed.
I noticed after I built my 5.1 for the car, then hours of putting music on the USB's, that when I get into the car, of the 20 32gig USB's I have indexed on a spread sheet in Google Docs that I can access on my phone so I always no what to pick. I took sharpie and each USB numbered corresponds with the spread sheet. Any way, my point.
It seems I always tend to listen to the same 4 or 5 USB's out of the 18 I have.
I don't have single track playlists like you do, maybe I should do that.
Good job man, your new avatar fooled me for awhile.
You look like James Hetfield of Metallica in it.

 

[timbre4]

You look like James Hetfield of Metallica in it.

Nothing Else Matters.

Thanks, you get it. This is an interesting beast every time. As mentioned, I want to be surprised and surface the cool stuff I’ve had all along. My reluctance to start unfamiliar stuff is conquered this way.

Ultimately, I could use: 1) use the 5 TB drive but that would be INSANE on random (Quad, 5.1 Popular and 5.1 Classical)! I’m just 2) using the laptop HDD for 800 random single tracks. I may settle on using 3) spare 2TB drive of favorites from new random favs to go with old favorites.

The road goes ever on.

 

[timbre4]

Short but rewarding jaunt on some different backroads for a change. The laptop is pretty much grab and go now which is a treat. Some cool stuff in here being "discovered" as the rush of open air driving makes the picture complete. I've been driving this car for 35 years; suspension re-worked, quiet full OEM exhaust replacement. It fits and I enjoy it.

Peter White - Pedro Blanco
Giancarlo Erra - 169th Tape 5.1
Opeth - Cusp of Eternity (5.1 mix)
Guano Apes - Innocent Greed
Gene Clark - Life’s Greatest Fool
Ghost Community - Blue December Morning (5.1)

 

[timbre4]

Very nice trek today, not as hot as last week. Nice variety of great stuff, just a couple familiar tunes. That's the way I like it, pleasant surprises:

Jaco Pastorius Big Band - Las Olas
Grover Washington, Jr. - In the Name of Love
Anthony Phillips - Moonshooter
Little Feat - In a Town Like This
Earth, Wind & Fire - Shining Star (Multi-Channel)
Nat "King" Cole - (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66
Blackfield - Family Man
Beth Quist, Kailin Yong, Kimba Arem, Michael Stanwood, and Jesse Manno - CELADON
Luis Conte - Memories Of Rio
Larisa Stow - Blue Mountain
Nickel Creek - Hanging by a Thread
Caravan - Golf Girl
The Polyphonic Spree - Section 12: Hold Me Now (5.1 mix)
Nosound - Places Remained

 

[timbre4]

Back from Aug 03-10 vacation in Oregon, right into hot and or rainy days. So the Civic sat outside while I sat inside. We've had a lovely break in temperatures and rainfall this week and I've taken a couple drives (Wed/Thurs) to check out new tunes.

Pleased that the laptop is fully plug & play now with no setup steps or adjustments. Just plug the USB cable for the ASUS interface box, turn on the Pioneer head unit (for the amps to come on) and start.

[Wednesday - I had to make dinner so very short trip]

Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi
Birdsong at Morning - Devil's Stomping Ground
Buddy Guy - D.J. Play My Blues

[Thursday was a full trip around my circuit]

Ian Anderson - Doggerland
Chis Botti - Miami Overnight
Ghost Community - Mirror Lakes (5.1)
Quatermass - Gemini
Neil Young - Old Man
Richard Thompson - Mystery Wind (5.1 mix)
Foo Fighters - Times Like These (5.1 mix)
Motorhead - Motörhead (live)
Lowell Fulson - I'm Tough
Krausberry - Na peknu notecku
Kiama - Cold Black Heart
Gus Black - Cadillac Tears

Outstanding variety and fun surprises along the way.

 

[timbre4]

Summary post about rear speakers and ELS implemetation

 

[timbre4]

And now a twist: I switched my library content over to a 2TB drive loaded with PENTEO upmix albums I've been tinkering with the last 18 months. The good news is that most are much better than I'd given myself credit for. The duds are the ones we know are tough to begin with. The bad news is that most of these 5.1 FLAC files were deemed temporary test files and so are not tagged! With a little searching I was able to ID all of the tracks and here are two resulting random playlists:

August 27th, 2023
- Beck - Cycle
- Blow Up Hollywood - Oceans
- Joe Satriani - Flying in a Blue Dream
- The Police - Omegaman
- Elbow - The Blanket of Night
- Blow Up Hollywood - Born
- Riverside - Wasteland
- Eddie Jobson - Nostalgia
- Wendy Carlos - Spring
- John Pizzarelli - Stray Horn
- Steve Hackett - Can Utility And The Coastliners
- Beck - Blackbird Chain
- Jeff Buckley - Corpus Christi Carol

August 29th, 2023
- Esquivel - Canadian Sunset
- Eddie Jobson - Transporter
- Led Zeppelin - Boogie With Stu
- Steve Hackett - The Chamber Of 32 Doors
- CSNY - Military Madness (1974 Live)
- The Who - Postcard
- Max Taylor - News Of The Flood
- Dixie Dregs - The Bash
- Riverside - Forgotten Land
- Rick Miller - Delusional Psychosis
- Led Zeppelin - Down by the Seaside

I enjoyed a long session yesterday (of true 5.1 files by accident - let it go) but FOOBAR failed to record them to the Recently Played list.

 

[timbre4]

Today I finished tagging all these upmix album files so the report is faster to edit now. Report still includes album title and sometimes peculiar text that needs to come out. I suspect when I get time to hose this down (study parameters) in FOOBAR I can get the report in ascending permanently rather than descending and the text I don't want. (find and edit that string)

Yesterday's ride was superb and I got at least an hour's worth of listening / upmix evaluation enjoyed:

Eddie Jobson - Colour Code
Love - ¡Que Vida!
Levin Minnemann Rudess - The Tort (Ver. 2xb-74)
Blow Up Hollywood - Cello/Piano/Radio/Woodwinds
Joan Armatrading - Peace in Mind
Eric Johnson - High Landrons
Levin Minnemann Rudess - Fossil Fool
Randall Bramblett - I Just Don't Have the Time
Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra - Movement 3
Blow Up Hollywood - Shots Fired
Edgar Winter - Fire and Ice
Van der Graaf Generator - Still Life
Joan Armatrading - Get in the Sun
Kayak - Give It a Name
Blow Up Hollywood - Caged
Strawbs - We Have the Power

 

[timbre4]

Weekend review - I've found an alternate drive route that is pretty scenery with plenty of curves to make it interesting. It also keeps me closer to home.

I had to jump the Civic again; sitting idle for 3 days is now apparently too long for this battery that got run down so many times. If I start it every day or every other day it's fine. Day 3 is like avocados; too late! That $60 battery is $180 these days. But having solved the drain issue, this new one would last a very long time.

CONTRAST: Our Acura TL has an Acura 100 month battery in service for 115 months so far!

Back to random playback of Penteo upmixes and most are great fun. Bryan Ferry - Let's Stick Together doesn't impress; it's one of those albums that doesn't translate much. I don't value that album enough to pursue trying to improve it. This was a request by a friend and I'll probably drop it off the <Vehicle> 2TB drive. Beck's brief orchestral intro hints what a great listen Morning Phase is.

The Aristocrats with the orchestra rocks hard from all 4 corners! It's diabolically clever musically. The Caravan track was new to me, need to hear that again. Double dose of Brand X is never a bad thing and the mix was pretty good after all. Echolyn was amazing; this came from 2012 vinyl album.

Bryan Ferry - Casanova
Beck - Cycle
The Aristocrats With Primuz Chamber Orchestra - Stupid 7
Caravan - C'Thlu Thlu
Brand X - April
Brand X - Dance of the Illegal Aliens
Echolyn - Island