so warren, eric, ivy, and i went to the local magnolia audio/video store to audition some speakers. i already had a pretty good idea of what i wanted there. i wanted to give a listen to the mythos line again as a sanity check to make sure that the speakers that i wanted to get produced an acceptable sound. i also wanted to audition the surround speakers and subwoofer which i have been really unsure about.

this entire journey has been pretty educational. i never realized how much thought and effort goes into planning a home theatre solution. i never realized how much of a difference it makes to get quality gear. or, rather, i never realized how much of a difference it is from a home theatre in a box solution to something that is hand-picked. i’m sure that real audiophiles will still scoff at the compromises i’ve made, but there’s definitely a budget element here that i had to address as well.

something that really annoys me about the audio industry is that components are not readily and easily accessible online. once you go out of the consumer level of equipment, the rest of the gear is actually very hard to buy online. what’s worse is that it’s very hard to give the spearkers that you do want a listen. brick and mortars tend to carry a limited stock and they may not have the best environments set up to listen to the speakers. just yesterday, i listened to a $500 speaker that was positioned poorly and sounded worse than my $50 speakers at home.

it seems to be, amongst audiophiles, that they tell people to go listen, listen, listen. if you like what you hear, you should go buy it. don’t go for the hype, you don’t want to pay for hype, you want to pay for what you like.

eric and i ended up buying speakers at magnolia and ended up getting a pretty decent deal. i’m pretty happy with it so i’ll be soon hooking everything up.

that being said, here’s a rather verbose breakdown of what i ended up getting:
outlaw audio model 1070
ref=”http://www.definitivetechnology.com/loudspeakers/mythos/mythos_table.html#mythos6″>definitive technology mythos sixes for front left and right
definitive technology mytho seven center channel
definitive technology mythos gem compact for surrounds
definitice technology supercube III
16AWG oxygen-free copper speaker cable
dayton bags-g banana speaker plugs

i watched transformers last night and going into it, i figured that the movie was going to be just ok. there were mixed reviews of the movie and, really, this project is such an ambitious project that there are so many ways that it could just go wrong. i was fearing that it would go wrong. i was afraid that michael bay would not only ruin my most fond childhood memories, but that he would make such an incredible flop of a movie that no one would dare to try and make right with it later.

let me just say that transformers was probably one of the best movies i’ve seen all year. after watching some disappointing movies this year both on DVD and in the theatre, it is a welcome relief to see that transformers was able to not only welcome the summer box office, but blow it away.

yes, yes, there are some plot holes. yeah, sure, there are some pretty cheesy lines. what saved some of the cheesiest lines in the movies is that right after they spit it out, the characters make self-deprecating comments about what they said. i love that the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously in that way.

so, if you weren’t a transformers fan back in the 80s, would you still like this movie? you might not get all of the references or cheers in the movie when certain characters show up, but they do a good enough job to give you background information that i think even a non-fan would enjoy the movie.

i give the movie a 5 pearl tea rating. go watch it!

i went out to play volleyball yesterday in the hot sun and got sunburned…bad. what’s worse is that i was wearing a rather high collar so not only am i sunburned bad, i have a farmer’s tan that is prominently displayed to anyone who looks at me. this is not something that you want to brag about.

so my neck hurts, my face hurts, and i think that the rest of my body is just a little sore from all the volleyball that i played yesterday.

i’m excited, though, i’m going to go watch transformers tonight. some friends are going to go watch it this weekend and i was bummed that i had conflicting plans. but it all works out now!