Kasper Connections

How do you find the best speaker placement for a subwoofer in a Home Theater installation?   We'll outline a very simple method that anyone can do.  

Remember that there are many things to consider when placing speakers.   Obliviously sound is one of them but also we have to think of how it looks in a room.   Many times the best place to put a speaker is determined to also be the ugliest by our spouses.  :-)   This leads us to compromise.   That being said lets talk about Sub woofer placement.

Make sure you have a CD in hand a receiver and a subwoofer with a long cable connecting your sub and receiver.   Do you know where you are going to sit?   I hope so.  If so take your sub and place it right by your prime seating location.  Then crank up your CD with the sub booming away walk around the room and listen to where the bass sounds the best.    Mark a couple of your favorite locations with painters tape on the floor.  

Then move the sub to another main listening location and do the same thing again.  

After you have done this 3-5 locations you should have a good idea of the best place to get the bass to sound the best in the room.   If you are more concerned about your prime listening locations in your Home Theater then you can take that into consideration when placing your sub.      

This is a quick and easy method that anyone can do.  The thing to remember is that everyone has their own listening preferences so where you would place your sub is not the same that your neighbor wood.   

I'd recommend going for a placement that allows the bass to blend in smoothly with your other speakers too.   

I hope that gives you a great starting point for your Home Theater.  

LED vs LCD HDTV

LED is the latest and greatest HDTV technology out there. So that means it's  what I need to have right?

There is no doubt the new LED TV's have a lot of neat advantages. The most noticeable is that they are a lot skinnier than LCD TV's. I just can't stand those deep 2.5" LCD's anymore. Well not quite, but it is interesting that a big part of what we look for in a TV is not only how the picture looks but what the TV looks like even when it is off. This being said LED TV's because they use LED lights instead of traditional lamps in the background are much thinner around 1.5" depending on he particular brand of LED HDTV you are looking at.

Another advantage of LED HDTV's is that they use less energy and last longer than the traditional LCD HDTV's. Just like lamps in flashlights that use LED's.

You may be surprised to find out that LED TV's are LCD TV's. The only difference is that the LED TV's use LED lamps to create the light in the background. The LCD's then open and close to let the varying amount of light come through as needed.

So are LED HDTV's better than the traditional LCD HDTV's?

This is very hard to answer generically, because there are many types of LCD and LED HDTV's. Just like you can not compare the entire line of Toyota and Ford Cars.

The higher end of LCD's have a higher quality image processing engine than the Low end LED TV"s. One thing to be aware of when you are buying TV's is that the manufacturing companies like to use the "new technologies" to sell TV's. So they will just make LED backlit TV's and people buy them even though the LCD TV in the same price range has a superior picture.

The high end LED HDTV's do have a better picture, and this is because they are locally dimable. What this means is that if a part of the picture needs to be black they can actually turn the LED's in that section of the TV off. Of course there is nothing darker than no light? The TV's that have this technology are much more expensive, but if you are going for the best picture money can buy, it is what you should look for.

Please let us know if your feel this information has been helpful either by commenting or through our facebook fan page. www.facebook.com/KasperConnections

How Does Lighting Control Enhance Your Life?

Do you have a place in your house where you would like to have fully dimmable two way lights, how about being able to dim them or turn them on or off from a third location?  This is something you can do with lighting control. In fact it’s just the beginning of what you can do with lighting control.   

What is Lighting control?  I’m glad you asked, you are most likely accustomed to turning on a light switch when you walk in a room.  Your experience has taught you that when you flip that switch the light turns on.   You are also familiar with two way lights.  In this scenario there are two switches that can both control the lights.  A typical example would be at the top and bottom of stairs.   In this example the two switches are tied in together, flipping either switch would allow you to turn the light on and off. In this case either switch controls the lights. 

Usually the term lighting control is referring to lights that are found in a home automation system.   In this case lights can be controlled by many types of activities. The easiest to understand is a wall plate with buttons.  In this case you would press one of the six buttons and a light could turn on and off.  Pressing another button on the same wall plate could turn a different light on and off.   This probably reminds you of the two way light switches by your stairs. Yes, you are right. In this case we are using lighting control to mimic a two way lighting scenario, but in this scenario it is not electricity being turned on and off that controls the light. It is a radio frequency being sent back and forth between the six button wall plate and the light switch that the light is on.   It seems the same but the difference allows lighting control to give you the ability to control lighting scenes.  If you have a good home automation integrator they will most likely help you program lighting scenes.  This is one of the real benefits of lighting control.  In lighting scenes pressing one button can control many various lights from the press of one button. 

One of the first places people use lighting scenes is in their kitchen/dining room.  This is because we typically have 2 rooms that are open to each other but used for many different tasks.  What do you usually do in these two rooms, cook / clean, eat dinner, entertain, perhaps study or read at your table?  Most people have 6-8 light switches between these two rooms.  In the Kitchen you may have overhead lights, pendant lights, a sink light, under- cabinet lights, and over-cabinet lights.  Then in the Dining room you may have a chandelier and wall sconces.    Let’s say it was time to cook.  You’d probably want bright lights in the Kitchen and maybe ambient light in the dining room for setting the table.  So let’s say you want the under cabinet lights and sink light and the main overheads on full bright.  When it is time for Dinner you want only the chandelier light brighter with the kitchen lights set to an accent level. 

When was the last time you ran around your kitchen and dining room and actually set the dimmers on each light for the two tasks?   What most people normally do is either turn all the lights on or don’t use their accent lighting.   Creating lighting scenes that are controlled with the touch of a button will make it easy to have the lighting you need when you want it, and it will become something you use every day.   Instead of running around the room turning on and off light switches you will simply be able to change lighting scenes with the touch of a button.  This not only accents the beauty of your home, it saves you energy by only using the lights you really need.    So you can see the benefit to using lighting control.