MASTERING SOUND & VISION

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MASTERING SOUND AND VISION — COMPLETE CHAPTER LIST

Building a Home Cinema

Every volume. Every chapter. Nothing curated, nothing left out.

The bundle page shows a sample chosen to make the case quickly. This page is the opposite of that — the complete, unedited contents of all seven volumes, exactly as they appear inside the books, for anyone who’d rather judge the whole thing for themselves before deciding.

VOLUME IFoundations
13 chapters
1. What Sound Is
2. Human Hearing
3. Psychoacoustics
4. Loudspeaker Physics
5. Room Acoustics
6. Bass Behaviour
7. Stereo Imaging
8. Dolby Atmos and Immersive Audio
9. Digital Audio
10. Amplifiers
11. Digital-to-Analogue Conversion
12. Measurements
13. Putting the Foundation Together
VOLUME IIPractical Optimisation
22 chapters
Foundations of Practical Optimisation
1. Optimisation Before Upgrade
2. Knowing Your Room Before Changing Your Room
3. Optimising Stereo Loudspeaker Placement
4. Optimising a Home Cinema
5. The Listening Position
Measurement and Low-Frequency Optimisation
6. Before You Measure
7. Measuring Reality: An Introduction to REW
8. The Measurement Chain
9. The Art and Science of Bass Management
10. Subwoofer Placement
11. Phase, Polarity and Time Alignment
12. Level Matching and System Calibration
13. Understanding Frequency Response
14. Time-Domain Analysis: Waterfall Plots, Decay and Energy Storage
15. Impulse Response and Early Reflections
Digital Room Correction
16. Digital Room Correction
17. Audyssey MultEQ XT32
18. Dirac Live
19. ARC Genesis
20. Trinnov Optimizer
21. MiniDSP
22. Critical Listening: The Ultimate Measurement Instrument
VOLUME IVHome Cinema Masterclass
24 chapters
Designing the Experience
1. The Home Cinema as One System
2. Formats Without Confusion
3. Designing the Listening and Viewing Geometry
4. The Front Soundstage and Dialogue
5. Building the Surround and Height Field
6. Bass Management for Cinema
Picture as Part of the System
7. HDR, Dolby Vision and Tone Mapping
8. Projection: Screen, Throw and Light
9. OLED, Mini-LED and Direct-View Displays
10. Motion, Frame Rate and Film Presentation
11. Colour, Black Level and Shadow Detail
12. Matching Picture Scale to Sound Scale
Sources, Processing and Operation
13. Disc, Streaming and Source Quality
14. Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Auro-3D in Practice
15. IMAX Enhanced and Alternative Presentation Modes
16. Dynamic Range, Dynamic EQ and Night Listening
17. Lip-Sync and System Latency
18. Gaming Audio and Low-Latency Video
Calibration, Verification and Ownership
19. The Complete Cinema Calibration
20. Dialogue Intelligibility and Accessibility
21. Multi-Seat Performance
22. Reference Scenes and Demonstration Material
23. Everyday Reliability and Family Operation
24. Knowing When the Cinema Is Finished
VOLUME VIReal Rooms, Real Systems
24 chapters
From Empty Room to System Brief
1. How to Read a Room
2. Writing the System Brief
3. Mapping the Acoustic and Visual Geometry
4. Budgeting by Bottleneck
5. Predicting Problems Before Installation
6. The Design Review
Complete Stereo Design Studies
7. A Small-Room Stereo System
8. Stereo in a Shared Living Room
9. A Music System for Several Listeners
10. A High-Performance Two-Channel Room
11. Stereo with Subwoofers and Room Correction
12. Improving an Existing Stereo System Without Replacing It
Complete Home-Cinema Design Studies
13. A Modest Living-Room Cinema
14. A Shared Stereo and Home-Cinema Room
15. A Small Dolby Atmos Room
16. A Multi-Seat Family Cinema
17. A Dedicated Reference Cinema
18. Improving an Existing Cinema Without Rebuilding It
Difficult Rooms and Difficult Decisions
19. The Asymmetric Room
20. The Room with Almost No Placement Freedom
21. Neighbours, Night Listening and Limited Volume
22. Designing for Hearing Differences and Accessibility
23. The Upgrade That Did Not Work
24. The Finished-System Handover
VOLUME XThe Picture Equipment Guide
34 chapters
How to Judge Picture Equipment
1. Begin with the Room, the Viewer and the Material
2. Specifications: Useful, Misleading and Missing
3. Measurements, Reviews and Demonstrations
4. Comparing Picture Equipment Fairly
5. Compatibility, Reliability and Product Life
6. The Picture-Quality Bottleneck
Direct-View Displays
7. Choosing the Right Screen Size
8. Understanding LCD Television
9. Mini-LED and Local Dimming
10. OLED Television
11. QD-OLED and Alternative Display Technologies
12. Brightness, Black Level and Contrast
13. Colour Accuracy, Gamut and Volume
14. Motion, Refresh Rate and Processing
15. HDR Performance and Tone Mapping
16. Gaming Displays and Low-Latency Operation
Projection
17. Is Projection Right for the Room?
18. DLP, LCD and LCoS Projectors
19. Lamp, LED and Laser Light Sources
20. Throw Distance, Lens Shift and Installation Geometry
21. Projection Screens, Gain and Viewing Cones
22. Ambient Light, Black Level and Contrast
23. HDR on a Projector
24. Maintenance, Alignment and Equipment Life
Sources, Processing and Infrastructure
25. Ultra HD Blu-ray Players and Disc Transports
26. Streaming Devices and Media Players
27. Local Video Players and Media Servers
28. Video Processors, Scalers and External Tone Mapping
29. HDMI Switching, Distribution and Cable Systems
30. Calibration Equipment and Software
31. Installation, Ventilation and Power
32. Buying New, Used or Ex-Demonstration Equipment
33. The Intelligent Picture-Upgrade Path
34. Knowing When the Picture System Is Finished
VOLUME XIThe Picture Troubleshooting Guide
68 chapters
A Disciplined Diagnostic Method
1. Establishing a Known Reference State
2. Separating Source, Signal, Display and Room Faults
3. Changing One Variable at a Time
4. Substitution Tests and Direct Connections
5. Recording Settings and Preserving a Recovery Point
Missing or Unstable Pictures
6. No Picture
7. Intermittent Blanking and Dropouts
8. HDMI Handshake Failures
9. Sparkles, Corruption and Flashing
10. Incorrect Resolution or Refresh Rate
11. Problems After Switching Inputs or Waking Equipment
12. Long HDMI Routes, Switches, Receivers and Splitters
Brightness, Black and Contrast
13. The Picture Is Too Dark
14. Blacks Look Grey
15. Shadow Detail Is Missing
16. Highlights Are Clipped
17. HDR Looks Dim or Unimpressive
18. Brightness Changes Unexpectedly
19. Blooming, Halos and Local-Dimming Errors
20. Projected Images Look Washed Out
Colour and Tonal Problems
21. Incorrect or Unnatural Colour
22. Colour Casts and Faulty White Balance
23. Banding and Posterisation
24. Crushed Blacks and Clipped Whites
25. HDR and SDR Mismatch
26. Full-Range and Limited-Range Errors
27. Dolby Vision, HDR10 and Tone-Mapping Inconsistencies
Detail, Scaling and Processing
28. The Picture Looks Soft
29. Excessive Sharpness and Ringing
30. Noise, Grain and Compression Artefacts
31. Poor Upscaling
32. Overscan and Cropped Images
33. Incorrect Aspect Ratio
34. Subtitles Positioned Incorrectly
35. Different Sources Producing Inconsistent Pictures
Motion and Gaming
36. Judder, Stutter and Motion Blur
37. The “Soap-Opera Effect”
38. Motion-Interpolation Artefacts
39. Gaming Latency
40. VRR Flicker and Instability
41. 4K/120 and High-Frame-Rate Failures
42. Game Mode Damaging Picture Quality
Display-Specific Diagnosis
43. LCD Uniformity, Dirty-Screen Effect and Viewing Angles
44. Mini-LED Blooming and Zone Behaviour
45. OLED Retention, Near-Black Behaviour and Uniformity
46. Dead, Stuck and Defective Pixels
47. Reflections and Screen-Surface Problems
48. Image Retention Versus Permanent Ageing
Projection Diagnosis
49. Focus and Edge Sharpness
50. Convergence and Panel Alignment
51. Keystone and Geometric Distortion
52. Insufficient Light Output
53. Screen Hot Spotting, Texture and Unevenness
54. Dust Blobs and Optical Contamination
55. Fan Noise, Overheating and Shutdown
56. Lamp, LED and Laser Ageing
Streaming and Source Problems
57. One Service Looks Worse Than Another
58. Adaptive-Bitrate and Network Faults
59. Incorrect Frame-Rate or Dynamic-Range Switching
60. Disc Playback Faults
61. Local-File Compatibility and Transcoding
62. Application-Specific Picture Differences
Repair, Replacement or Acceptance
63. When Calibration Will Help
64. When Professional Service Is Required
65. When a Fault Is Inherent in the Material
66. When Equipment Replacement Is Justified
67. Building a Permanent Diagnostic Record
68. The Final Picture-System Troubleshooting Checklist
VOLUME XIIIThe Reference Companion
24 chapters
Core Concepts and Calculations
1. How to Use the Reference Companion
2. Decibels, Ratios and Reference Levels
3. Frequency, Wavelength and Time
4. Sound Level, Distance, Power and Sensitivity
5. Polarity, Phase, Delay and Group Delay
6. Sampling, Bandwidth and Digital Data Rates
Rooms, Loudspeakers and Bass
7. Room Dimensions and Modal Frequencies
8. Reflections, Absorption and Scattering
9. Decay Time and Reverberation
10. Crossovers, Filters and Acoustic Summation
11. Directivity, Coverage and Listening Geometry
12. Subwoofer Placement, Delay and Multiple Sources
Picture and Home-Cinema Geometry
13. Screen Size, Distance and Viewing Angle
14. Projection Throw, Light and Contrast
15. Aspect Ratios, Cropping and Constant Image Height
16. Resolution, Chroma, Bit Depth and HDR
17. Surround and Immersive-Loudspeaker Geometry
18. Lip-Sync, Frame Time and Gaming Latency
Reference Library
19. Connectors, Interfaces and Signal Directions
20. Audio, Video and Immersive Formats
21. Reading Measurements and Specifications
22. Diagnostic Decision Trees
23. Worked Design Worksheets
24. A–Z Encyclopaedia and Series Cross-Index
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