Someone needs to fill this dang hole after all. I might be a good one for now. The only reason I thought so was because we had started a little side business, an audiophile buddy of mine here in Tucson that I met in the AVS forum. He being the carpenter and general contractor, me being the electrical contractor we came up with the idea to combine our state registar of contractors licenses under one roof to have some fun. Nothing serious, no big agenda, just fun. Start a lil business and call it Audio Video Professionals. After all, we had seen the talent level of the so called home theatre professional running around town. I have seen these guys freash out of the audio store calling themselfs installers. While they may know their product their construction background is VERY lacking and these are some hammered together installations. My buddy and I are skilled tradesmen along with being avid audio/video junkies. Our installations are sweet and our passion in the hobby drives us to do it right. Along with that, the wealth of information on line to answer any questions and his serious connections in powerful forums.

I recently got done doing a 7K gross wide screen installation to get my feet wet. We have since made a business card on the ole puter here and pegged it up at our local health club. Cards are getting yanked off the board and we had some attorney call the other day wanting a front projection H/T installation. My accountant also is doing a complete house remodel and wants front projection and other related whole house music installed. This should be a major hoot! Individual room IR controls etc. What he is talking about is easily 40 50K gross I am thinkin. Hmmmm profit on that is...SHHAAA ZAAAMMMM. And this is for fun!!??

:yippy:

So as we start stealing all this money out there why LOL, I will post here about our adventures and the related gear that someone else is going to buy for us to audition. LOL Might be some good information for people at times. We should always be on the cutting edge of the latest products and formats so I will post if I feel it is worth reading.

I will see if I can get my partner to drop in here from time to time. He is always good for home theatre information. You should see his Divas! Soon also he will be driving those Diva's with the new Outlaw gear everyone is waiting on. Also he is one of three (I believe 3) Beta testers for the complete new line of Swan Diva speakers in the United States. They had to drop that top mount tweeter design due to B&Ws lawsuit against them and few others using that design. The new line up from Swan looks and sounds great, should please many tastes.

So pop in that DVD, tweak the LFE up +5db and enjoy!!!

:beer:

WW,

I LOVE it! This is my favorite kind of story, the kind where a dude takes a little basic knowledge, some passion, and turns his hobby into a money making side venture! That's the biggest giggle I've heard today!

I hope you guys run the rabble outta town and coin the money!

YEEE-HAAWWW!!!

P.S. you wouldn't need a helper, would you?

Well we will see Jay. Russ and I are just doing this for fun as of now, no agenda. A chance to play with gear that we couldn't have before. We feel confident that our customers will get state of the art professional service for we already are in business in the trades and act that way. If we make some good coin while we play then GREAT. I won't bish about it. :king:

Originally posted by jay
WW,

I LOVE it! This is my favorite kind of story, the kind where a dude takes a little basic knowledge, some passion, and turns his hobby into a money making side venture! That's the biggest giggle I've heard today!



Does that mean I should become an alcoholic, headbanging, porn star ????? :D

Thor I thought you WERE an alcoholic, headbanging porn star!!


:puke: :zoom: :throwup: :tongue: :beer:



Mike

Well not the porn star part....yet :D

I thought you were a Thunder God! If you are called that because of the louder after effects of beer consumption then you would be lucky to get someone to watch porn with you!

Thatch:eek:

I am the :beer: gawd. The only Thunder comes out of my speakers. (and my ass the next morning if I drink Budwieser ;) )

Ya,
you a Miniesorta boy, I bet you like that Heilmans oop ter. I rote a poem fer ya.

There was a young girl named Ann Heiser
Who swore no man could surprise her
But an old man named Pabst
Found Shlitz in her pants
And now she is sadder Budweiser.

Seriously the God of Thunder is a serious job. I know I couldn't do it like you do. But my subwoofer is blown so you need to watch your back because I can use the work. By the way how do you get MP3s off the puter and how do they sound. I tried some web radio but it cut out a lot if I was using to much ram so I went back to FM and the adds.

Thatch...

There are a number of file sharing utilities out there that allow one to share MP3 files. Right now I use WINMX. If you have cable or DSL you should be able to get MP3s pretty good. I keep a second hard drive in my puter just for MP3s. It prolly don't hurt either to have a better than average sound card. Personally I don't much care for any of the ready made puter speakers on the market so therefore I output my signal to a H/K pre, Marantz 240 amp and hard poundin 1964 JBL Lancer 66's. I use Win Amp with the Marantz skin and those neat add on VU meters. I can build all sorts of MP3 folders for various styles of music to suit my needs. They sound just fine too. (nuthin like my LPs but what does?) Hit play and it plays and plays and plays and plays and, well you get the picture. ;)

Hey WW I found the marantz skin but where do I get the VU meters ? Also is there a way to configure it to occupy the entire screen. My player is very tiny.






Mike

Say Mike...

Someone over at AU once posted the various Marantz, VU meter, Sansui skin links. A WinAmp search there might turn em up. I sure don't have em sowwy. You know, I have been able to get into the settings and make the player larger. But not as large as the whole screen sadly. It enlarges it to a bit larger than half the screen but that was it. Right click on the upper left corner button and then go to options. You can bump it up to a large size there. Maybe Thor will chime in with that link. I was thinkin he might have it.

Search the plug ins ant www.winamp.com for VU meters, after you install it then start your winamp, right click on it and go to visuilization preferences and you can start and configure the meters ;)

You can make winamp bigger but it looks like crap when you do, you can make your playlist viewer bigger by clicking and dragging the corner of it down, once you get used to the size it is OK and the silver marantz skin has nice big easy to see buttons. I also suggest using the EQ and using the "Rock" preset. They have plug ins that make little half naked women dance on your puter to the music too, there are alot of really neat plug ins to fool around with.

Heres a pic of the classic marantz skin:

Here is what the VU meter looks like:

Here is the Holiday Dancer:

Thor I dloaded the vu meter plugin and unzipped and installed it. Now I still can't seem to locate it within the visualisations section of winamp. HELP!!





Mike

First hint anytime you dl stuff from winamp just choose the "run this program from current location option" it is easier.

Start winamp and put your cursor on it, right click, choose options then preferences, now you will see a bunch of drop down boxes, choose visualization under plug ins, then look for VU meter in the list that comes up choose it, push start at the bottom and then close the preferences box and you should be good to go.

Yeah the problem is the BRS labs VU meters doesn't show up in the box with the plugins.




Mike

It okay THor I got it now. I should have chosen the plugin folder when I selected where to install the program. DUH! It's all good now.
Thanks for the help!



Mike

One last problem. Can't get WinAmp to play .wma files. It plays MP3's and .wav files just fine but can someone tell me how to configure WinAmp to play .wma files?


Mike

Hmmmm does it play those?? I don't know? check the help section on the website