I have a whole bunch of ideas on the boil for #blogjune, but right now, none seem to really fit. I had my first regular day in a while: wake up – work – home for the evening. A few glasses of red, some leftover pizza and time in front of the TV…or at least a DVD. Alas, I’ve discovered there’s a vertical black line on my new LCD so I will need to return it. I bought it just before filmfest so it is well and truly under warranty. I’m not looking forward to the hassle and can’t spare time off work at the moment…which is why I had it delivered it prior to filmfest.

Oh well, other than the line, it looks fab and I have no regrets. Admittedly the sound quality is not as good as the previous LCD I had. This could be a little problematic as I’m definitely not ready yet to invest in a sound system. That’s a dangerous path to go down, though it may be one time where my deafness is to my advantage. Being partially deaf means I’m unlikely to pick up the sound differences between an expensive high end system and something low to middle range. Plus my needs are different to many folk: I need a sound system that is good for dialogue, whereas big, booming soundtracks and explosions are stuff I need to dull down. I suspect this means that I can consider rear speakers at the low end with some reasonable side speakers.

The most important one is likely to be the centre speaker as I think that’s where the dialogue comes through. I was in a hifi shop a few weeks ago and tested a few centre speakers and did notice substantial differences in my ability to discern individual sounds; speaking parts had a greater clarity on some of the more high end options.

My deafness isn’t so much about volume as tone and pitch: I’m mostly missing the lower and upper registers. Some levels of sound I don’t need my hearing aids at all, some I can’t hear without them. Consequently, I’m probably looking for a good receiver, a decent centre speaker and low end back and side speakers. It sounds reasonably straightforward but again, it’s a path I’m not ready to go down just yet.