Alpine HT

  

ALPINE HOME THEATER llc

Serving the Eastside of the greater Seattle area

home acoustics alliance

We are an
H.A.A. and I.S.F.
Certified company.

imaging science foundation

What is H.A.A. Certification?

Having trouble hearing what people are saying when you watch movies or listen to television?
Do you have to keep turn the volume up in order to hear better?
Are there certain frequencies that are difficult to hear?
Perhaps your system's bass is too "boomy"?
Having trouble hearing the "surround sounds" coming from behind or to the side of you while you watch movies?

These are all symptoms of an improperly calibrated sound system.

A brilliant sound system will have an all speaker response frequency range of 20Hz to 20kHz, which results in a nice graphic curve when displayed on one of our Sencore audio analyzers. This curvature matches the natural way we all hear with our own ears. If you do not have a gradual curve, with no dips or peaks, then you are either not hearing or distorting sounds coming through your theater system.

What can be done to achieve brilliant sound?

For starters, having a second sub-woofer can be extremely important in flattening the bass response to give you . We always recommend at least two subwoofers. Using a collection of professional, scientific Sencore Calibration devices and the extensive knowledge we have gained through our HAA training, we can tune your surround sound system to a level you never dreamed possible. Our HAA audio tuning and calibration service will provide your with crystal clear sound. You will be able to hear every detail of the soundtrack, even when the volume is turned down to a whisper. By precisely tuning your system, we will give you the most accurate frequency response possible in your theater room. The bass will be crisp and accurate, not boomy. Our audio calibration will provide the seamless 360° surround-sound experience you've been craving. Rather than hearing "your speakers" you will hear countless details of the sound environment that the director and sound mixer worked to achieve. This will completely surround you in a pure, natural way that's better than you can imagine.

We offer the following H.A.A. Audio Calibration Services:

Hookup and Programming - We inspect how your current system is hooked up to determine if all has been done correctly and that you able to maximize your system's performance.

Room Audio Calibration - We will bring our professional Sencore Calibration equipment to your home and tune your audio system to match your listening room for the most extraordinary listening experience you can imagine.

Specifically, we do at least the following:

Sweep Analysis - Which means we identify and remove hums and rattles that occur in your theatre room.
Noise Criteria - We reduce your inability to hear those softer, more subtle sounds.
Proper Hookup - To correct miswired speakers and improper amplification.
Cable Integrity - If there's a failing speaker cable, we can identify it for you and suggest or provide a replacement.
Real Time Analysis - We analyze and balance frequency response of your system.
Speaker Distortion Test - To identify failing speakers or correct any overdriven speakers you may have.
Sound Pressure Level - We balance the output levels of all of your speakers.
Speaker Polarity & Phasing - We identify and correct these speaker problems. You would be surprised how often they occur!
Proper Decoder Menu Settings - We match your surround-sound settings to your equipment and your preferred media.
Energy Time Graph - We correct problematic reflections (room echoes) and restore sounds you may not be hearing.

We are Alpine Home Theater, a family owned company, and we can be reached at (425) 890-5555 to professionally calibrate your home theater on the Eastside (of the greater Seattle area).

i.s.f.
 isf calibration seattle

Alpine Home Theater is an ISF Certified video calibration company.

MYTH...

Your projector or flat-screen TV works right out of the box.

FACT...

TVs are set up by the factory to look their best in a large, brightly lit store -- not your home. Surprised? You shouldn't be. Look at the "picture mode" that your TV defaults to. It will be called "Vivid", "Bright", or "Dynamic" but these settings are made to sell a television on a show floor lit by bright fluorescent lights. These are the WRONG picture modes for your home. You will be come very fatigued watching your TV in these picture modes, especially at night in a dark room. It may even be painful for some of you.

To get the most value out of your investment, please call us to properly calibrate your new TV or PROJECTOR as soon as you purchase it. We offer two forms of video calibration...

We offer full I.S.F. Video Calibration Service.

And make it easy for you.

One price and about 4-8 hours.

Please call to get a quote on this excellent service: (425) 890-5555

There are many benefits to proper ISF video calibration:

Your picture will be more film like. Look carefully at a movie's picture when you go to the cinema. You will see the picture looks like real life. Colors are accurate and you see many details in dark and brightly lit scenes. After proper ISF calibration service is performed, your projector image or TV picture will look very similar to a mainstream cinema's projected image.

Your TV will not be fatiguing to watch. It will be RELAXING to watch. That's right. ISF tuning reduces eye strain. Plus, if your TV comes with ISFccc modes we can calibrate it for both DAYTIME and NIGHTTIME viewing.

Your TV will last longer and consume less energy. Really? Yes, absolutely. Televisions come from the factory or store in what technicians commonly call "Torch Mode". Torch Mode?! Yup, that means many adjustments are set exactly at or near their maximum setting. Maximum setting is not a good place to be. This is like running a car at full throttle. When we I.S.F. calibrate your TV we turn many controls back down to where the TV or projector performs correctly, more like a car that's idling. This dramatically lowers the energy consumption of your TV and extends its life.

We could make your existing system outperform a brand new system. With proper calibration, we may even be able to make your existing system's picture look as good as or better than a new system. This is not uncommon.

Our ISF Certified video calibration includes these adjustments to your picture:

Brightness Levels
Color Accuracy
Color Phasing
Resolution and Sharpness
Picture Geometry
Proper Hookup
Custom Menu Settings
Day / Night Modes
Picture Interference

home movie calibration

We are Alpine Home Theater, a family owned company.

We can be reached at (425) 890-5555 to professionally calibrate your home theater on the Eastside (of the greater Seattle area).

You can research more about ISF Calibrations by clicking on this link to go to the Imaging Science Foundation:
ISF Calibrations

ALPINE HOME THEATER llc
Serving Seattle's Eastside

Snoqualmie - Sammamish - North Bend - Woodinville - Carnation - Duvall
Issaquah - Bellevue - Redmond - Kirkland - Madrona - Mercer Island - Broadmoor - Ames Lake

We are a highly-trusted, licensed, and insured calibration company.

As residents of the Eastside, we deal only with the Eastside. We are enthusiastic about watching movies at home with the best picture and sound possible... and we pass that knowledge and passion on to you. We deal with high-class equipment in high-class houses and offer premium calibration services suited to the specific needs of your equipment.

Alpine Home Theater is a family owned business. We are as enthusiastic about watching movies at home as you are! We are Home Acoustics Alliance (H.A.A.) Certified and Imagine Science Foundation (I.S.F.) Certified calibration experts and our home theatre specialists have a combined knowledge of two decades worth of audio-visual experience. We're equipped with the latest Sencore professional calibration devices, which are, themselves re-calibrated annually at Sencore's own facility in South Dakota to maintain absolute peak precision.

We use professional
sencore seattle
calibrated devices

Let us save you time, gas and money by "coming to you!"

We are a licensed and insured video calibration service company serving the Seattle area Eastside. We will meet you at your home and provide you with custom tuning of your home theatre you can enjoy better picture and sound out of your existing system. It is possible for us to make your video and audio look and sound better than if you purchased a brand-new system and had it delivered and installed in your place.

 

THE MOST COMMON HOME-THEATER CONSUMER MISTAKES

(1) Buying based on numbers
Retail markets would like consumers to shop with the most simple, effortless strategy because their retail stores are in the business of "pushing tin". If they can make consumers believe that importance lies in High Numbers for Low Prices then they push the most tin and make the most profit.

Numbers like 720p and 1080i and 1080p are important, for sure. Have you heard terms like 2K or 4K yet? You will. But, to the unsavvy consumer, these numbers are commonly mistaken to imply "quality".

Consider this, you have two cars: An old Volkswagen Bus and a Ferrari. Both are capable of going 80 mph. But are they the same car? Hardly.

How well does it handle? How fast did you accelerate? What happens when you have to turn at that speed?

Many TVs and projectors are capable of displaying 1080p (or claim they are) but this doesn't really mean much at all. In fact, a properly tuned 720p can actually look better than a 1080p system. How would you feel if someone showed you their 720p system and beat the socks off your higher-resolution system? It happens. In fact, Resolution (640 and 720 and 1080 etc) is actually less important than Brightness and Contrast Range and Color Accuracy anyway. If they were, we at Alpine Home Theater would be pushing clients to buy higher resolution systems instead because we want our clients to have the best home entertainment system they can afford.

Don't let the numbers fool you. Don't buy a family car and think you're buying a sports car. Make wise, educated decisions. If you have a quick question or need some quick advise as to what to buy, you can contact us here and we can try to steer you in a good direction. We're Alpine and we're here to make your system the best it can be. We're in the business of tuning your 'sports car', your high-performance theater, not selling you one... but you need to have a sports car first.

(2) Buying based on buzz-words
So many consumers don't understand the terminology or the numbers. Here at Alpine we can help you understand the basics. This is what you need to know...

High Definition (also referred to as or HD) doesn't mean anything. It is NOT a standard. HD can mean whatever promoters want them to mean and these terms have been used for decades.

Your screen's native resolution is not represented by a term or phrase but by actual numbers, such as: 640x480 or 720x480 or 1280x720 or 1920x1080 and the first number represents the horizontal resolution and the second number represents the vertical resolution. 720 is short for 1280x720 and 1080 is short for 1920x1080. The key word here is "native". You are only getting true 1080p resolution if you are buying a native 1080p system. Watch out for words like "capable" or "conversion" or "up-conversion" because all of these essentially mean you are not getting what you think you are getting.

Consider this: Look at a picture in a newspaper through a magnifying glass. Are you raising the resolution of the picture? No. You're only making it bigger and magnifying everything in that picture, including the imperfections. By up-converting your picture, you are essentially doing the same thing.

Now consider this: If you get a printer which can match the resolution of the original photograph and print it down on paper, then you have actually improved the resolution on the paper.

What about the quality of the ink and the quality of the paper? These are vital as well. Poor ink can make sloppy, inaccurate colors. And if the paper is not correct, the high-resolution printer may not even be able to print a low-quality picture. Now consider the data cable used by the printer, the workmanship of the printer (its longevity), and even the person operating the printer. These are all vital to accurately reproduce the original picture, which is what Alpine ultimately sets out to do: Make your system match the Movie and TV producer and director's vision as accurately as possible.

Digital.

Guess what? We're not digital creatures. If we could look at a limitless series of ones and zeros and decipher them using our brains in real time to appear as sounds and pictures--then we could be digital-ready. Amid all the hype and buzz-word usage, people forget that using digital translation is only as a means of getting back to analog.

Great example of how this was over-hyped: Digital Cable. How many of us saw a drop in broadcast quality as soon as they went digital? Yup. Just like "high definition", "digital" is not synonymous with quality.

What is important is that you get a TV or Projector that can be hooked up via HDMI and that you actually hook it up using these cables, which brings us to the next topic.

(3) Ignoring the weakest link

The weakest link principal can be applied universally, and it certainly applies to entertainment system hookup as well.

This is what you need to know: Your player needs to be hooked up to your projector or TV via quality sound cables and a quality HDMI cable.

Alpine can help you inspect your cables to make sure your system isn't being compromised by one of the least expensive and easily fixable components in proper home-theater hookup. If you're in a pinch, we may even be able to provide you with a quality replacement cable on the spot as well and install it up for you.

Incorrect hookup using the wrong cables is one of the most common errors we have found. Imagine going to a fancy restaurant and they served you a splendid prime-rib dinner but only provided you with cheap, plastic silverware. The food can still get to your mouth, right? It's just not quite the same. Now what if you dumped a bunch of flour and water all over your plate and then began eating. You're still eating, right? Sure, it's just not the same. Now, what if you were only allowed to eat certain ingredients off of the plate... say you separated it all out, left off the sauce, could not touch the side dishes, and could only consume the bare basics? You're still eating prime rib, right? You get the point.

This is exactly what you're doing to your source material (your DVD movie, for example) when you hookup with incorrect or bad cables.

Cheap cables, such as the ones pre-packaged with your system, can introduce noise into your picture. This is not up to par with Alpine standards. "Noise" referres to anything about your picture that is something other than the exact picture. (Like dumping flour and water over your finely prepared meal, if you will) Common examples of noise can include ghosting or lines around subjects in your images, static, or computer "glitch" type images. Proper cables are designed to eliminate noise.

Incorrect hookup may, in fact, get you a picture but you could easily be using 1970's, 1980's, or 1990's technology to try to reproduce an image created for and by today's technology. You will automatically lose much, if not most, of the information originally provided. (Think of removing half of the ingredients from your plate, wiping off the sauce, and eating the bare minimum components of your meal--a plain hamburger, so to speak, with nothing on it)

Incorrect hookup is one of the most common mistakes we encounter. One of the reasons it continues to happen is because people are so accustomed to "plain hamburgers", if you will, that they don't realize what they are missing... all the rest of the ingredients. The same goes for uncalibrated theatres ... if you aren't viewing a calibrating system, you probably don't realize what you're missing, which is the rest of the sound and color and resolution information that has been provided by the Movie and TV studios for today's world that your system is not reproducing.

Call Alpine Home Theater out to your home and we will inspect your cables for proper operation and proper hookup during our signature I.S.F. or H.A.A. calibration and tuning service. Our goal is to get you the best theater experience possible!

(4) Sound is everything
Hollywood moviemakers know it, and you should too. Don't make the mistake of improving your picture quality without first ensuring your sound system is the best it can be. The most significant improvement you can make to a theater system is to upgrade the quality of its audio components and properly calibrate the system. These go hand in hand.

(5) By all means, get your system calibrated
This is the final and most important step! All the money and time you've invested in an impressive home theatre system is for nothing if your system is not hooked up and adjusted correctly for your room.

A great many people out there have High-Def (HD) compatible systems but are not even watching a High Definition signal... they aren't even aware of what they're missing! Federal law requires that electronic devices include "legacy" hookup ports to be compatible with older technology. So what happens? People hook up their systems using these "familiar" ports and they completely miss out on the benefits their new system has to offer. Hookup doesn't have to be complicated but it has to be done right.

For starters, you MUST use a HDMI cable. But it doesn't end there. If your menu settings are not correct, the signal may not even be passing through this required cable. You may still be watching a standard definition picture -or- you may be watching a less defined version of High Def.

To solve these problems and a whole lot more, give us a CALL and ask for our Home Theater Calibration Service. It may be the best home entertainment investment you make.

(425) 890-5555

or Visit the Alpine Home Theater Website

 
 

theater tuning