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Post by rooster on Feb 2, 2010 20:21:27 GMT -5
Dan, agreed. I would upgrade the cable pronto if it didn't involve going through the walls again. ctbarker - yes, i would say 30 ft is pushing it considering what i paid for the cable. i believe the longest "spec-compliant" cable available is 45 ft. thanks for remiding me of the ethernet option.
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Post by moe on Feb 2, 2010 20:38:34 GMT -5
I use a 50 ft hdmi with no problems.If you have sparkles this is a sure sign of inferior cable for it's length,if it were any longer you would get no picture.
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hemster
Global Moderator 
Particle Manufacturer
...still listening... still watching
Posts: 51,950
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Post by hemster on Feb 2, 2010 21:17:35 GMT -5
I'm using a 30 foot HDMI cable from bluejeans. The image quality is excellent and no issues with sparkles etc.
Opted for the thicker premium cable which is more like the thickness of a garden hose.. but now that it's installed, nobody cares and it works great. I was careful to not bend it too much (so for this thick cable the bend radius is quite large).
FWIW, with other cables, YMMV.
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Post by jmilton on Feb 2, 2010 21:30:01 GMT -5
Bootman, well explained "it is only 0s and 1s theory"  in layman's terms Stop it! I have a reputation to uphold as the useless poster. No worries. You will always be useless in our hearts. |
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Post by roadrunner on Feb 2, 2010 21:34:15 GMT -5
Last year Audioholics did a thorough white paper and testing on HDMI cables of many price ranges. The results pretty much supported that "short" cable lengths work no matter the cost or quality of the HDMI cable. Long cable runs revealed that only 1.3 certified, high bandwidth cables were able to pass acceptable picture quality. I believe they listed a number of brands and model numbers of those cables able to handle the long lengths.
This article may be worth you checking out Audioholics if you are one of those who has long cable runs for your HDMI connections. Lots of luck replacing the the cheapie cables with a minimum of trouble.
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Post by zductive on Feb 2, 2010 23:12:30 GMT -5
To be accurate, the digital waveform does consist of a very wide spectra of analog waves. Go to the wiki and look up what the spectra (Fourier transform) of a high data rate fast risetime signal is. Without going into the details, a fast risetime digital signal consists of analog signals that go up to many multiples of the digital data rate. The problem with cheap hdmi cables can be that there is a time distortion v. frequency caused by the cable. This results in a distortion of the digital signal's risetime. With a really bad cable, the digital waveform can start looking like an analog signal.
Therefore, as you use a longer HDMI cable, the distortion, filtering, temporal smearing etc., caused by the cable becomes more serious. Sparkles etc., can be caused by the decoding circuit's making bad decisions because the 1s and 0s look too much alike. In the extreme, the signal is so messed up that the data recovery circuit can not track it.
This distortion is a little like the distortion that you can get with a DAC. If the digital data is distorted, the result is jitter at the signal detection point. That means that the signal is not sampled at the correct time. The result of all this is that the number of usable bits of digital data at the DAC is not as high as you thought that it would be. Consider that the bit resolution might be 24 bits. This means that the DAC has 2^24 states. If the jitter moves the sampling point back and forth in time enough that it causes the least significant bits to be useless.
Bottom line (and I don't know why I got into this thread) use as good a cable as you need so that you don't see or hear problems. If the cable is short, the cable doesn't need to be very high performance.
Most of the above is correct and some of it is simplified a lot.
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Post by jmilton on Feb 3, 2010 7:16:31 GMT -5
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Post by snodog on Feb 3, 2010 18:55:23 GMT -5
Ok so what about the 6' cables from monoprice? They seem to be pretty good and I have never had any poor images from them.
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Post by moe on Feb 3, 2010 19:13:49 GMT -5
I'm sure they would be fine,I wouldn't give it another thought.
Since this is the listening to the umc thread,thats' what I'm doing,the Who,Live at Royal Albert Hall SACD,three disc set,most enjoyable.Any body else listening to the UMC?
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Post by darien87 on Feb 3, 2010 19:32:10 GMT -5
I'm sure they would be fine,I wouldn't give it another thought. Since this is the listening to the umc thread,thats' what I'm doing,the Who,Live at Royal Albert Hall SACD,three disc set,most enjoyable.Any body else listening to the UMC? I haven't done much critical listening yet, but what I have listened to, I've liked. One weird thing though, I had a guy out to calibrate my TV and he did my audio as part of the service. Even though he had all speakers putting out 80db with his test tone disc, when we played some movies, the bass was very quiet. Anyone else have this issue? |
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Post by moe on Feb 3, 2010 19:41:20 GMT -5
When you say bass you talkin' sub or mains?
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Post by darien87 on Feb 4, 2010 12:22:58 GMT -5
When you say bass you talkin' sub or mains? Subs. I have the fronts and subs crossed over at 40Hz. |
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Post by darien87 on Feb 4, 2010 12:24:18 GMT -5
So I finally got a chance to sit down and listen to some music through my UMC-1 last night. I kept saying the same word over and over, "Wow".
I spent about 2 hours listening to many types of music to try to get a broad sampling (David Sanborn, Bob James, Branford Marsalis, Book of Love, Duran Duran, Def Leppard, Ozzy, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Journey). One of the first things I did was listen for noise from the unit itself. Without any music playing I put my ear up to my right front speaker and started cranking up the volume. There was nothing but silence no matter how high I turned up the volume. There was a VERY small humming sound that I could only hear when I had my ear right up against the speaker. I think that might be the amp though as when I turned off the UMC-1 and just had the amp on the hum was still there.
I don't think I ever really understood what people were saying when they described a unit giving them a wider or deeper soundstage, but now I think I do. Before, my system sounded good to me, but it always seemed like the sound was coming from the speakers. Last night, sound seemed to be coming from up near the ceiling, a couple feet from the sides of the speakers, even directly to the right of my seating position in one song. It was amazing. With just about every song, the instruments seemed to be just a couple of feet in front of me. I actually got up and put my ear to my surround speakers just to make sure that I wasn't accidentally in some type of surround mode.
With almost every song, mid-bass had more impact. When listening to Sunrise by Duran Duran, the kick drum hit me like a punch in the chest.
I noticed some sounds in songs that I had never noticed before. In the song Breakdown by Mariah Carey, I don't think I had ever noticed that there are birds chirping in the background. While listening to Michael Jackson's Dangerous, I could hear him snapping his fingers while he was singing. I never noticed that before.
There were a couple of instances where the mids and highs were a bit bright and harsh, but I think that was just the UMC-1 bringing out the details inherent in the recording.
I never would have believed that a pre/pro could make such a noticeable difference if I hadn't heard it with my own ears. I was absolutely stunned. I'm rediscovering my music collection. When Emotiva finally comes out with the firmware update that will fix all of the unit's little quirks, I'm sure I will be even happier. But last night really solidified it for me, separates are the way to go and Emotiva has hit a home run with the UMC-1. It was tough for me to spend $700 on this thing, but now I know that it was money well-spent.
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NorthStar
Seeker Of Truth
"And it stoned me to my soul" - Van Morrison
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Post by NorthStar on Feb 4, 2010 15:25:14 GMT -5
Thanks Darien for your feedback from your great post just above.
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venaka
Emo VIPs 
There is always something bigger!
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Post by venaka on Feb 4, 2010 18:38:41 GMT -5
Wow..Just started to listen to music with my umc..!Ive been real busy just listening to games on my ps3, and the umc is what blu-ray gaming is all about..
I finally decided to plug in my little iAudio7, Holy heart failure, Batman!
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Post by moe on Feb 4, 2010 19:17:08 GMT -5
That's what I been screamin'! I'm just diggin' the hell out of my whole cd collection,the clarity and dynamics,top to bottom,really good.
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NorthStar
Seeker Of Truth
"And it stoned me to my soul" - Van Morrison
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Post by NorthStar on Feb 4, 2010 19:32:32 GMT -5
That's what I been screamin'! I'm just diggin' the hell out of my whole cd collection,the clarity and dynamics,top to bottom,really good. I know moe, but some people have just a clearer way with words, that's all. * Darien just happened to be one of them. |
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Post by moe on Feb 4, 2010 20:22:49 GMT -5
That's what I been screamin'! I'm just diggin' the hell out of my whole cd collection,the clarity and dynamics,top to bottom,really good. I know moe, but some people have just a clearer way with words, that's all. * Darien just happened to be one of them. Yep,the dudes a wordsmith.Me, not so much but I am unmatched in my love of music. |
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Post by Woodpecker on Feb 5, 2010 9:34:03 GMT -5
I'm sure they would be fine,I wouldn't give it another thought. Since this is the listening to the umc thread,thats' what I'm doing,the Who,Live at Royal Albert Hall SACD,three disc set,most enjoyable.Any body else listening to the UMC? Well heck moe, I thought this was the hdmi cable shootout thread... LOL!!! Thoroughly enjoying my UMC-1 here. Very dynamic and a perfect mate for listening to sacds and dvd-a. Cd's also have much more dynamic range. I am really wondering now how the ERC would sound paired with the UMC? |
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Post by Woodpecker on Feb 5, 2010 9:37:01 GMT -5
Nice post Darien! In much fewer words, I totally agree! ;D
The depth, clarity, and dynamic range increase is real. No placebo affect here.
MY sub output seems to be much more hot than usual. All your settings check out ok?
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in layman's terms
