So what do guys like us do when left alone for a Saturday & Sunday to baby-sit the dog? Well, we sort of neglect the dog and get seriously involved in spending some quality (alone) time with our beloved audio-visual gear. So what I did was to first get rid of some excess speaker cable lengths that were just lying around in a heap behind my audio set-up. I then, on the spur of the moment, decided to experiment with lifting the angle of my rear floor-standing speakers by screwing back their front spikes. I am fortunate in having a roughly 7 x 4 meter listening room and being able to position the main seating couch pretty much in the middle with my front and rear speakers positioned sufficiently away from the respective walls. I have all four toed in slightly towards the outer sides of the couch with the centre channel aiming right at the middle. The problem with having medium sized rear floor-standing speakers is that the sound is being directed towards the back of the couch, even though they are positioned a good 3 meters away. So seeing that I was considering adding 2 old Boston VRS dipoles in a 7.1 set-up just the other day, I was thinking - let me try this and see what happens. And what a brilliant idea it turned out to be. Suddenly the rear and for that matter the entire soundstage opened up completely and I found myself in a truly amazing immersed surround sound field. I started off by taking out my trusted Brothers In Arms multi-channel SACD and it proved to be stunningly brilliant? The best that I have ever heard it. Then it was time for Eric Clapton?s famous Unplugged, this one was the recently released remastered DVD/CD version. Again, the remastered DTS surround mix was just simply superb. By the way, they also changed the video format to widescreen 16:9 and it looks much better than the original footage. Later, after the exciting rugby test match and a dinner with jazz, I quickly toured through the available HD movies on DSTV. Apart from the disgusting lip sync problems and poor audio quality of Fast & Furious, there were a few good movies available and I was pleasantly surprised by just what a difference an angle brought about by approx 3 centimetres elevation can make in terms of creating a well-balanced and effective surround soundstage. Then it was time for John Mayer?s Where The Light Is together with the rest of the red wine and again I was left in awe. Daughters, Free Fallin, an excellent blues track close to the end of the trio set (I think it is called Out Of My Mind) as well as Gravity are all jaw dropping stuff. I had to eventually drag myself to bed at the end of a very pleasant evening. The next morning I just had to take out The Eagles? Hell Freezes Over and all that I can say is bloody amazing? What a pleasure! The dog was not very impressed with me though?
