Newsletter
June 2010

If there was ever a better time to buy an A/V receiver than now, I'll stand naked in George Street in the middle of winter (not a pleasant image, I'll grant you - but it shows my commitment to my belief). The reason is, every manufacturer is crapping themselves over the fact that they think all new customers need HDMI 1.4a compliance. This is rubbish of course as the only reason you need HDMI 1.4 is to throughput 3D signals from a 3D source (Blu-Ray Player) to watch the one movie currently available (Monsters versus Aliens) and the odds of any decent 3D movie being released over the next few years is highly dubious, with the exception of Avatar which has no Australian release date anyway. Even then, all you have to do is run the HDMI direct to the TV with digital audio cable to the receiver for the sound, or get the Panasonic 3D blue-ray player with 2 HDMI outputs. 3D TV doesn't need it as the internal tuner doesn't need 1.4 to go anywhere and quite frankly, after watching the State of Origin in 3D, I only lasted 2 minutes before the headache kicked in (30% brightness loss, lack of focus, inability to watch in the vicinity of any florescent lighting etc). I truly believe that until lenticular or holographic imaging is mainstream that 3D TV is a dead loss.
Where am I going here?, well, the forums are awash with "I must have 1.4a compliant receiver" and, indeed, every second e-mail I get is about whether the customer should hold off for a 1.4 receiver. The answer is an emphatic NO for reasons previously outlined. That means the current run out models from most manufacturers are going for a song with the last of the Yamaha RX-V2065's at $1399 and we just received a few more RX-V1065's at $899 (down from $1899). We have the last of the Onkyo TX-SR707's at $1099 (normally $1999) - these are ex-display, as new and never turned on but in crappy cardboard packaging. Sorry if you bought these lately at slightly higher prices but we've only just been offered the products at these clearance levels (in fact, we actually lose money on the items we had in store before the drop). Other stores are also doing deals on various brands so shop around and save some $$$$.

If you buy Australian HiFi (and you really should) there's a very interesting editorial from Greg Borrowman. I'll quote in part "All warranty claims by consumers, either within the "official" warranty period, or outside it, are their (the retailers) problem and not a problem for the local distributor or manufacturer. If your speakers, amplifier, DVD Player or other component fails, and you have to claim under warranty, it's the retailer who is legally obliged to repair it, replace it or refund your money. No-one else." Now, the interesting thing about this is that if the product has been parallel imported or purchased from another store for resale by a second store (not of the same chain) the backup from the authorised importer is an extremely grey area so if that retailer goes broke or can't get replacement parts then the consumer could be well and truly screwed. You may notice I mentioned stores buying locally for resale, a little bird told me that a certain small store is purchasing product from a larger chain for resale, the warranty in this case can be tricky as it could be construed as being used for "commercial" purposes hence the warranty (say three years) could drop to one year - just check to see that when you buy a product that the store is an authorised reseller of that product and if not, just check the warranty issues with the official importer.

You may have read David Richards comment on this
http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Home_Cinema/Industry/H8M2G5B4?page=1
which is almost correct except for a few things, including the bit about Yamaha, Digital Cinema did indeed have an account with Yamaha for a couple of months last year but the agreement was terminated by Yamaha in December 2009 and all Yamaha products purchased by Digital Cinema during that time are fully backed by Yamaha. Digital Cinema however have quoted on several Yamaha products not purchased by them from Yamaha Australia (we know because we actually called them for pricing on products we knew they didn't purchase during that period) so there's some stretching of the truth there. No doubt it will all come out during the court case (we, of course, are countersuing - and for a heck of a lot more than $2000). Who said HiFi was boring!

Another financial year over and another record sales period for us, in fact June 2010 was our biggest month in terms of both sales and profit ever, quite an achievement considering December is traditionally our best month. Thanks to all our loyal customers and the A/V Forums from which we get so many referrals. It's not that we're necessarily the cheapest (although we try to match or beat the other stores) but we also offer advice as a result of our 32 years in the business. Most people make use of our HELP page for assistance in making decisions for their Home Theatre or Music system.

We've had a lot of questions regarding subwoofers lately, mainly because of the lack of impact they have in some rooms. The main culprit is the room dimensions, if the room is square (ish) then it is generally prone to standing waves - that means in certain places in the room the bass frequency waves actually cancel each other out. You can check this out by moving around the room and hearing significantly more bass in one area than another. There's a couple of ways to overcome this, the most effective is to put a second (preferably identical) subwoofer on the room in opposing corners (not critical however, anywhere will be an improvement), this reduces the nodes and anti-nodes that occur and your bass should be getting to you as it was intended. Another solution is to try the single subwoofer in different parts of the room. Best way to work out the ideal position is to place the subwoofer in the listening position, play some music with constant bass and then move around the room until the bass is strongest. That then is the ideal position for the subwoofer (sort of reverse woofing). The latest fix is using frequency modeling, a few companies now use this, the best we've found (albeit expensive) is the Paradigm PBK-1 which is compatible with all Paradigm V2 subwoofers over $1000 retail. It's free with the more expensive subs ($4000+) and a $499 option with others. We're offering a 2 day loan of the kit for $50 for people who just need it to set up their Paradigm the once.

Unfortunately, with business the way it is currently, I haven't more time to go into some other issues I'd like to discuss (I'm answering around 30 e-mails a day and at an average of 10 minutes per e-mail, you can see where the time goes) - I still have to talk to people and try to negotiate prices with suppliers so maybe July's newsletter will be a bit meatier.
 

Later

Steve

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