Home Theater Stuff

 So, I've been upgrading my home theater.  Some pictures:

It all started when my 12-year old Panasonic plasma television died.  I hadn't been using the television very often, so I replaced it with a relatively cheap 55" Hisense U7N.  But it turns out that even cheap TVs with HDR look really good compared to an old plasma suffering from burn-in.

So, I decided to get a 4K capable receiver, only to discover reconnecting my speakers that my small subwoofer had died at some point, too.  Well, I had gotten that 14 years ago, so maybe it was time to get a real subwoofer, one that I would definitely notice if it died.  And since the receiver supported Atmos, maybe while I was at it, I'd get some height speakers.

As it turned out, I found I really enjoyed the new subwoofer and Atmos, so over the course of six months or so, I slowly researched what else I could do to improve my home theater experience.  Using a calibrated mic.  Acoustic treatment.  Tactile transducers.  A second subwoofer.  It was a real "if you give a mouse a cookie" situation, as my wife would describe it.  And now here I am writing about my home theater journey, in case it is helpful or interesting to anyone. 

Display

TV or projector?  I prefer TVs due to their ability to be used in more lighting conditions.  The main downsides are that they are much smaller and you can't place speakers behind a TV, unlike an acoustically transparent screen.

A 55" TV from my seating position at 7 feet occupies about 32 degrees horizontally.  It's a little large for normal shows, which I rarely watch; about the right size for games; but a little small for movies, my primary use case, which normally target 45 degrees.  I would go 65" or 77" next time.

OLED has the best picture quality but has burn-in issues and are more expensive than mini-LED.  Most people will say there is a negligible amount of burn-in after 5 years, but I like to keep devices until they completely die and had my last TV for 12 years.  I spent the last few of those years with a burned in image, so I decided to go mini-LED.  A quick visit to the excellent TV review site rtings.com and I ordered the Hisense U7N.

Receiver

After discovering that the new TV looked amazing compared to my 12-year old plasma with burn-in, I decided it was time to get a 4K capable receiver.  I went with a Denon AVR-X3800H.

I'm of the opinion that a receiver's effect on sound quality is pretty minimal so long as the receiver supports good calibration options and sufficient power, so it's mostly a matter of features.  I went with Denon because I had the impression that they were slightly more reliable than Onkyo and Integra.  The X3800H has the better Audyssey XT32 sound calibration and is the cheapest Denon with multiple independent subwoofer outputs.  While I wasn't initially planning on getting multiple subwoofers, I had heard so much about the benefits of multi-sub and figured it would be nice just in case without needing to buy a separate device like a MiniDSP.

The choice ended up being very good for me as I did eventually get another sub, tactile transducers (which uses another one of the 4 sub outputs), and ended up really liking some sound calibration software called A1 Evo, which only works with Denon and Marantz receivers.

First Replacement Subwoofer

When hooking things up to the new receiver, I realized my subwoofer was dead.  It was a small 8" Aperion Bravus I bought when I lived in a condo that only went down to 35hz at -3db.

Given that I didn't even know when it died and now that I live in a house, I decided to get a subwoofer with much more impact.  I wanted it to go to at least 20hz and I wanted it ported because, while the listening area is fairly small, it was part of a much larger basement and ported subwoofers just have more output.  I also needed it to take up less than 20" x 20" horizontally to give me more options for where it could be placed.  The Hsu Research VTF-TN1 met all this criteria, though it turned out that I only need to turn its gain up to roughly 25%, so probably I could've gone with a sealed sub.

Experimenting with various locations, I found I was happiest with it nearfield, directly behind the main listening position.

So, how much difference does a real subwoofer make?  A lot.  I had some bass demos, and one of the clips is the Gas Station attack scene from Terminator Salvation.  I was not very impressed with that scene with the old system--I guess it had nice explosions.  What I hadn't realized was that my old system had actually failed the bass test and that you were supposed to feel the giant terminator walking around.

Speaker upgrades and Atmos

My speakers at the time was a 5.1 setup using the Aperion Intimus line.  4T towers for LR, 4C center, and 4B surrounds.  They were really good for the price, but sounded a little thin at louder volumes in the larger basement.

I considered getting more Aperions, but doing more research, found that they don't usually measure that well.  Objective measurements don't tell the full story as people don't hear the same way a microphone does, but speakers that measure well rarely sound bad and I appreciate the scientific approach.  I wasn't sure about getting more speakers that measured poorly even if they did sound pretty good to my ears, but I also did not want to go through the hassle of selling my existing speakers and definitely didn't want to just throw them away.

So, I decided to take a risk and do a mix and match.  I bought speakers from Ascend Acoustics, who publishes measurements.  Normally, you want speakers all from the same brand so that, as a sound pans around, it doesn't shift in timbre.  I got a pair of Sierra LX for the left and right speakers, a Sierra-2EXv2 for the center, and a pair of HTM-200SE2 for the front heights.  I moved the Aperion 4Ts that were the previous left and right speakers to be surrounds, and the Aperion 4Bs to be the rear heights.

There is a small timbre difference after doing speaker calibration, but it doesn't bother me.  Very similar to the timbre difference between the Sierras and the HTM-200SE2s, actually. 

The Ascends are excellent and have no thinness problem.

How good is Atmos?  Height position vs top position?

A common question is whether Atmos speakers are worth it.  It's a pretty subjective question that depends on your priorities.  I find well-done Atmos effects a lot of fun when they happen, but it is also true that this is only present for maybe 20% of content that I listen to and typically for a small portion of it.   When it happens, though, it's really cool and it happens often enough that I consider it worth it.

I did experiment with the speaker position.  The "heights" position have the speakers closer to the walls and less directly above you, whereas the "tops" position is more above you.  I felt there were trade-offs and neither are clearly superior.  There's often action happening on the screen that pans up, and heights just sound more natural when that happens.  However, if there is something panning from front to back above you, or if it's something like rain on a rooftop, the tops are much more convincing.

In the end, I kept the tops position because it was more fun.

Tactile Transducers

So, I mentioned that being able to feel the action was game changing.  However, I experienced two problems:

1. Sometimes I wanted to feel more oomph, but if I turned the sub up, the audible portion of the bass was too much.  I wasn't able to EQ things to get both tactile impact and not overwhelming bass.
2. If I was sitting in one of the sides of the couch instead of the center, there was much less impact.  Remember, the sub is directly behind the main seat.

Tactile transducers are devices that connect to your seating or platform and directly impart movement.  I got a pair of Earthquake MQB-1s with an XJ-300ST amp and it solved both problems.  The Denon X3800H receiver can be configured to set one of the subwoofer outputs to tactile transducer, which both allows you to set a separate high-pass filter and avoid using that output during calibration.

Taking Measurements

About 30% of the apparent sound quality has to do with the room, so I was curious how my system measured and whether there were any issues with the room.  I also strongly suspected that having a wall on the right side but none on the left made for an imbalance.

So, I bought a calibrated microphone (Umik-1) and took measurements with this excellent and free software called Room EQ Wizard.  I found the decay time to be pretty decent, with some room for improvement above the bass level, and a lot of room for improvement at bass frequencies.

Acoustic Treatments 

Standard advice is to prioritize treating first reflection points and corners.  I bought some 244 panels and a 6A Alpha Pro from GIK Acoustics online and found a couple of their tri-traps on Craiglist.

Treating the first reflection point in the side wall and the rear wall made a very noticeable difference in the sound.  At first, it sounded pretty bad.  Turns out, you should re-run speaker calibration or else things will sound weird.  After doing that, things we much improved.  The soundstage was made less wide, but imaging was considerably improved.  Decay times improved some, but the perceptual effect was greater than what the graphs would imply.

Treating the ceiling did not affect the soundstage, but surprised me by also improving the imaging, even for content that did not use heights.  It gave sounds a much more distinct vertical location.  I thought that vertical imaging did not matter for non-Atmos content because there aren't speakers with different vertical positioning to image with, but it was nice to have things like voices sound like they come from a more distinct point than sounding smeared vertically.

Treating the corners made some small improvements to bass decay time, but I discovered later that it's much easier to treat bass issues with multiple subwoofers.  I'm not sure I would recommend treating corners if you haven't tried multiple subs already.

Multiple subwoofers

If I was so happy with the Hsu and only had its gain at 25%, why would I want another subwoofer?  Higher quality bass.  It's hard to get an even bass response with a single subwoofer for a single seating position.  It's impossible to do so across multiple seating positions.  Things sounded bloated at the right side of the couch.

I got a Speedwoofer 10s Mk2 which only goes to about 22hz.  But as my issues with peaks and dips were above 30hz, it did just fine to flatten the bass response across multiple listening positions.

Painting the room and changing bias lights

While I prioritize audio over video, I did find it distracting that the walls were yellow.  So, I painted them the most neutral and non-reflective gray possible, a flat Sherwin Williams Westchester Gray.

I had also transferred some LED bias lights from my old TV to the new one, but found they were a little too bright.  So, I got some MediaLight Mk2 lights, which are dimmable and have high CRI, and found they were an improvement as well.  I find having bias lighting to reduce eye strain in high contrast situations.

A1 Evo

I had bought the Audyssey app but ultimately had trouble getting the bass dialed in so that there was both enough impact and no sign of bloat on some test tracks involving acoustic bass.  I had heard about A1 Evo from forums and decided to try it out.  While it was a little confusing figuring out how to get the right sweep measurements, eventually I figured out that you can just use the odd.wtf script and generate sweeps with the standard Audyssey mic hooked up to the receiver.

The results from A1 Evo sound better than whatever I tried with the Audyssey app and solved my bass bloat problem, so I recommend it. 

Moving from 5.2.4 to 7.2.4 

A little devil on my shoulder kept on whispering that 7 bed layer speakers might be noticeably better than just 5.  So, I got another pair of HTM-200SE2s for use as rear surrounds an and AIYIMA A07 amp to power them.

There's not a lot of movie content where having sound directly behind you is important.  I did find that surround effects seem more enveloping than in my 5.1 setup.  For video games, however, rear surrounds are utilized far more actively where there can be a lot happening behind you and it's useful to get accurate positioning information.

Overall, it's nicer but not a big deal compared to properly set up 5.1.

Content Playback 

Originally, I bought a Panasonic 420 because I figure since I did not have an OLED, probably I wouldn't care a lot about Dolby Vision.  The internet suggests that actually it's the opposite, where the worse the TV is, but more Dolby Vision is beneficial.  At any rate, I almost never actually play physical discs because I saw how many people complained about minor scratches messing up their 4K so I pursued a way to transfer them to disk.  And I discovered later that I don't really care about Dolby Vision over normal HDR.

I ended up getting an Ugoos AM6b+ and installed CoreElec.  It's one of the few players that supports all versions of Dolby Vision and lossless audio.  I stream from my Synology 923+ using Eero Pro 6E with wireless backhaul.  I had initially tried very hard to get it working with my FireTV Stick and thought I did not have enough network bandwidth and got an ethernet adapter and a long cable, but it turns out the FireTV Stick just isn't powerful enough to handle really high bitrates.

I rip discs using MakeMKV and a Verbatim 43888 that I bought from Amazon.co.uk.   

What's next?

At this point, the home theater is pretty much complete.  I might get some diffusion panels for the ceiling and back, but they're more expensive than absorption panels.  Whenever my current TV dies again, I will go for a 65" or 77" instead.

Appendix

Equipment list

Visuals

• 55" Hisense U7N
• MediaLight Mk2 bias lighting

Audio equipment 

• L/R: Ascend Acoustics Sierra LX
• C: Ascend Acoustics Sierra-2EXv2
• Ls/Rs: Aperion Intimus 4T
• Lsr/Rsr:  Ascend Acoustic HTM-200SE2
• Amp powering sr: Ascend Acoustic HTM-200SE2
• Tfl/Tfr: Ascend Acoustic HTM-200SE2
• Tbl/Tbr: Aperion Intimus 4B
• Receiver: Denon  AVR-X3800H
• Sub 1: Hsu Research VTF-TN1
• Sub 2: RSL Speedwoofer 10S MKII
• Tactile transducers: 2x Earthquake MQB-1
• Amp powering transducers: Earthquake XJ-300ST

Room treatment 

• Sherwin Williams Westchester Gray flat paint
• 5x GIK Acoustics 244 absorption panels
• GIK Acoustics 6A Alpha Pro combo absorption/diffusor panel
• 2x GIK Acoustics Tri-Trap

Sources

• Ugoos AM6b+ with CoreElec, streaming from a Synology 923+
• Panasonic DP-UB420
• FireTV Stick 4k
• Nintendo Switch
• Asus ROG Flow x16 laptop 

Key trade-offs

Movies benefit from pretty much as large a screen as you can get, but too large a screen will cause strain for shows or video games.

 

Acoustic treatment to get a low decay time and to make the room more "dead" is great for surround material, but stereo music benefits from the reflections in a more "live" room.

 

Rear surrounds are probably not worth it over a 5.1 setup unless you are either very picky about surround or if you play video games that support surround.

Spectrograms

Here's what the spectrogram of the right speaker from the main listening position looked like before acoustic treatments:

Here's the after:

 

 You can see things are more even above 80hz, which is where the crossover is set.  But overall, I found it difficult to correlate the graphs with the actual effect.

How much is good enough? 

This is a personal question.  Not just due to personal taste and budget, but also simply physical limitations.  There's no point in getting more if you can't hear the difference unless you are trying to impress others for some reason.  I used to be able to distinguish in a double-blind test the difference between a well-encoded 192kbps MP3 and a lossless track in college, but I can't do so any more.  Even if you can hear the difference, you may not care about some types of differences.

But it's a hassle to audition equipment.  How will you discover your limits without spending too much time and money?  How can you figure out what you care about?

One trick is that headphones are much more convenient to try out and cost about 10x less for roughly the same quality of sound.  You won't get really get body-shaking bass impact, though.

As for figuring out what you care about, ready some testing tracks and clips that are a combination of your favorites that you are intimately familiar with and reference material that others agree are high quality and can stress some particular aspect of video or sound.

Testing Material

Standard advice is to use what you are familiar with, but what if what you are familiar with isn't particularly good for evaluating things?  It can be helpful to learn about what others use and what specifically they look for.  I used a lot more than just these, but some that I thought were particularly helpful:

1. "Amaze" Dolby Atmos trailer.  Does the sound of the bird flying seem connected and consistent as it pans across the room?  Does the thunderstorm have impact without getting muddy?
2. "Train" by Holly Cole.  Does the bass sound full without getting bloated?
3. First ship battle from Master and Commander.  Do you feel the cannon fire? 

Video Playback

While I purchase a lot of discs, I rarely use the actual Blu-Ray player.  I got a bit paranoid about disc scratches and instead use MakeMKV and a Verbatim 43888 to rip the discs to my NAS (a Synology 923+).  For a while, I was trying to get my FireTV Stick 4k to play back the files, but it was choppy.  I thought it was due to poor network bandwidth, so I upgraded my wireless to Eero 6E routers, which improved but did not solve the playback problems.  Eventually, I eliminated the network as the bottleneck via an ethernet adapter and a long cable and purchased an Ugoos AM6b+.  It's the most common device that can playback all Dolby Vision formats and lossless audio, though it turns out that I don't really care about Dolby Vision over standard HDR.

Poltergeist Rag by William Bolcom

I discovered this piece while looking for music to play in the background of my wife's D&D campaign. We had heard rumors of a haunted piano bar, so I looked for ghost-themed music and came across Bolcom's 3 Ghost Rags. I had played the Graceful Ghost when I was much younger, but hadn't realized it was part of a series of 3.

The piano bar ended up not being haunted, but instead was in a time loop. When the three rags played all the way through, the loop would end with a catastrophic meteor strike killing everyone in the bar and we'd start again and had to figure out how to escape the loop. It ended up being because the pianist had made a deal with a demon to become the "greatest pianist of all time" and we had to destroy the piano and then defeat a crazy aberration hidden in the basement.

Anyway, I really liked "Poltergeist", so I decided to learn it. The ending could be... a little more polished, but I decided this take was good enough. It's got a cat, after all.

2024 Glacier National Park Trip Report

We had some flight vouchers from a cancelled trip that we had to use and my wife and I happened to both have time off in the summer, and of course our 7-year old son was out of school.  Summers in western Washington are great, so where could be fly to that was at least as good but wouldn't exceed the cost of our vouchers?  We decided on Glacier National Park, as it's only fully open during the summer.  This is a trip report.  Most of the pictures are of animals since after I switched to telephoto lens, I usually did not switch back to something that could take landscapes.

Prep

Since none of our family are avid hikers, we did a series of training hikes near where we lived that I thought were very important to prepare us, especially for Grinnell Glacier.

1. Rattlesnake Ledge
2. Mashel Falls
3. Mt. Pilchuck
4. Little Bandera

I would say that I thought that Mt. Pilchuck and Little Bandera would normally be more technically challenging than Grinnell, though shorter, but as you'll see later in Day 4, nature decided to up the challenge.

Downloading offline maps for Google Maps and the official NPS app proved very handy for navigating.

Day 1 - Sunday, August 25 - Travel Day

We found out that SeaTac airport was under some sort of cyberattack.  When we checked in at home online, we were advised that checked bags may not make it to the destination.  We had planned to check a bag because hiking poles are not officially allowed on flights.  However, we had read online that often TSA lets them through if they are fully disassembled, so we decided to risk bringing them in carry-on.

Security did let us through with hiking poles.

A second hiccup was that the rental car agency, Alamo, did not have any compact SUVs available, which was the option we had booked.  We had to decide between a full size car, a pickup, or a minivan.  There was some concern about the conditions of the roads which had made us prefer a compact SUV, but after doing some research on the phone, we found that the roads were either fully paved or pretty well-kept gravel that anything other than a sports car would be able to handle and that the bigger risk was that large vehicles would find parking and going through the narrow parts of Going-to-the-Sun Road more challenging.  So we went with the car for the best fuel efficiency.

We messaged our AirBnB hostess whether or not they had bear spray we could borrow at the place in Whitefish, and she let us know that some previous guests had left some.  They had also left bug spray.  We bought food for breakfasts and lunches and sunscreen that we were originally planning to bring in the checked bag.

Day 2 - Monday, August 26 - Hidden Lake

We had heard that parking was dicey at Logan Pass unless you got there before 6:30 AM and we didn't really want to get up early enough to try that.  So, instead we aimed for getting the express shuttles at Apgar visitor center.  We got in line at 7:35 AM and got on the fourth shuttle at 8:25 AM.  It was technically not "express", because it made stops along the way, but still one of the smaller shuttles that went all the way to Logan Pass without a need for a transfer.

Hidden Lake was my wife's favorite hike.  Beautiful peaks, meadows, trees, and of course, the lake.  We saw a good amount of wildlife.  The descent to the lake and the climb back up was pretty steep, but nothing like Bandera in Washington state that our family had done before.

Bighorn sheep

Golden-mantled squirrel

Blue Copper butterfly?

Mormon "Cricket"

Hoary Marmot

Columbian Ground Squirrel.  Video of one chirping.

American Pipit

Townsend's Warbler

Rocky Mountain Parnassian

Mountain Chickadee

Pine Siskin

Western White butterfly

Mountain Goat

Day 3 - Tuesday, August 27 - Lake Bullhead

My wife was not enthusiastic about the plan to drive from Whitefish to Many Glacier early in the morning to do Grinnell Glacier on Wednesday, so she checked for cancellations at Many Glacier hotel or Swiftcurrent Motor Inn and found one!  So, on this day we drove the Going-to-the-Sun Road over to the east side of the park and entered Many Glacier to hike to Lake Bullhead.

We saw much less wildlife this day.  While some people reported seeing a bull moose near Lake Bullhead, we ended up not seeing any.  We stopped by Fishercap Lake and ate lunch at Red Rock Falls on the way.  Our son enjoyed tossing rocks into each of the lakes.  We did see a few things, though.

Green Comma butterfly

Paddle-tailed Darner

White-spotted Sawyer

Canada Jay

Day 4 - Wednesday, August 28 - Grinnell Glacier

So, while the previous days had highs of 60s and 70s, today had a high of 40F with rain and snow!  We bought gloves and my wife bought a beanie from the gift shops in previous days in anticipation of this, and they definitely came in handy.  We double-socked and brought a bunch of layers.  The normal Grinnell Glacier trailhead was closed for repairs, so we parked at Many Glacier hotel around 6:25 AM (because we were worried about parking) and enjoyed breakfast inside the hotel before heading out.

I was looking forward to trying to spot some elk or moose at Swiftcurrent Lake or Lake Josephine, but sadly did not see any.  Our back-up plan was to just hike to Lake Grinnell if things seemed too miserable, but we ended up deciding to stick with the glacier by the time the trail forked. 

The cold rain turned to snow as we headed further up.  We sort of had views, but obscured by fog and snow. The hike itself had nice varied terrain and interesting water features.  My wife spotted a bighorn sheep sleeping in a field below:

About 1.2 miles from the top, my wife and son decided to turn back due to the snow sticking to the ground.  My son didn't have any hiking poles and it was getting pretty slick at spots.  I pressed on.  But here's what it looked like at the top:

There were some pine siskin foraging in the snow.

At some point, I realized that my hands had gone from warm to wet and painfully cold.  I also then noticed that water had made it past my waterproof boots and that my socks were soaked.  I had two layers of wool socks on, so my feet never got too cold, but I had to keep on flexing my fingers to keep them from going numb.

I'm normally a pretty slow hiker, slower than my wife and son, but I half jogged on the way back down just to generate heat.  I did spot the bighorn sheep still in the field, now awake and eating.  But it was extremely difficult for me to get any shots through the snow with my cold hands and this ended up being the best of the lot:

After making it back down to Lake Josephine, I headed to the boat dock hoping to skip the last 2 miles back to Many Glacier Hotel.  I had originally bought a boat tour to gain entry into Many Glacier before my wife managed to snag reservations at Swiftcurrent Motor Inn.  But the next boat wasn't for another 20 minutes and there were already so many people waiting that the operator said I was likely to have to wait for the one after that, another 45 minutes after the first boat.  So, I decided to walk the last 2 miles back.

When I got back to Swiftcurrent Lake, the paved part of the trail, the people a couple dozen of feet in front of me started backing up and talking loudly about bears!  There were two cubs and a parent sort of strolling on the path towards us and we had to back up quite a bit before they decided to cut across the plants and then cross the bridge across Swiftcurrent.  As there were people in front of me with bear spray in hand, I took the opportunity to take some photos.

The way back after that was uneventful and I re-united with my family at the lobby of Many Glacier Hotel and drove back to Whitefish.

While the weather and lack of views were unfortunate, I felt like the hike through the snow was quite the adventure and the bear encounter was exciting.

Day 5 - Thursday, August 29 - Avalanche Lake

We decided to end with Avalanche Lake and to take the shuttles again.  Logan Pass was closed in the morning due to snow, so we figured everyone who wanted to go there would probably end up parking at Avalanche instead.  Plus, we didn't want to get up super-early after the grueling experience yesterday and figured with the larger shuttles running to Avalanche compared to the small ones that go to Logan Pass that we wouldn't have to wait as long as we did last time.

We got to shuttle line around 9:20 AM and discovered that so many people were parking at Avalanche that many of them had improperly parked in the over-sized vehicle turn around loop and thus, they couldn't actually run the larger shuttles.  Apparently, there's no tow trucks and it didn't sound like they even fine people who are improperly parked.  Plus the reservation check line for Going-to-the-Sun was 20 minutes since they had to explain to everyone that Logan Pass was closed due to snow.  We didn't get to Avalanche until 12:20 PM or so.  But that still left plenty of time to do Trail of Cedars and Avalanche Lake to cap off our trip.

I didn't find the Trail of Cedars to be as wondrous as any of the previous hikes, but I appreciate there being a very accessible hike.

The Avalanche Lake hike was very nice.  A lot of cool water features, woods, some views, and Avalanche Lake itself was very pretty.

Creek

On the way to the lake, we noticed a lot of people stopped looking into the woods, so we stopped to ask what was going on.  Bears.

After waiting 10 minutes or so, the bears decided they wanted to cross the trail.  The crowd of people parted ways like the Red Sea and backed up.  It was a cub and a parent.

At the lake itself, we mostly saw birds.  Our son played with rocks at the lake and we relaxed for a while before we headed back.

Stellar Jay

American Dipper

? were flying low and fast across the lake

 

Day 6 - Friday, August 30 - Whitefish and return home

Since we had a flight in the afternoon, we took the time to relax in the indoor pool and hot tub of the community building the AirBnB belonged to and then walk around the Whitefish shops and eat lunch at Buffalo Cafe before taking our flight home.  We accidentally navigated to the Kalispell airport before going to the correct one, but we had plenty of time to fix that.  Our hiking poles also made it through as carry-on and our trip home was pleasantly uneventful.

Photography notes

Pictures were taken with a Sony a6400.  All of the animal shots were taken with the Sony 70-350mm G, with shutter priority set to either 1/1000 or 1/1250.  I also used a Cascade Mountain Tech trekking pole as a monopod, fitted with a Ulanzi U-80l mount.  I carried the camera on a Peak Design clip attached to my backpack.

Both the Sony A6400 and Sony 80-350mm G are weather sealed and I took advantage of that in the Grinnell Glacier hike with all the snow and rain.  So, it went through hours of rain and snow and did not seem any worse for the wear.  I would not have managed to get pictures of the bears on the bridge if the camera were not readily accessible.  However, when the hotshoe contacts got wet, I'd get annoying messages about incompatible accessories and would have to remove the hotshoe cover and dry it off a bit with my gloves.  Luckily, this didn't happen when I chanced across the bears.  I hear a piece of electric tape does pretty well to prevent this.

Physical Minis on a Digital Tabletop

I'm happy to say that we've recently realized a long standing dream of mine: to be able to play D&D using physical minis and dice on a digital tabletop.  This is a write-up describing the set up, in case it helps others considering something similar.

Here's a picture of the set up in gaming mode:

...and here it is in normal dining table form:

The key components:

1. A television laying flat to display the maps on.
   
2. A table with built-in storage to hide the TV when not playing.
   
3. Software that makes it easy to display the maps and manage encounters.
   

The Television - 43" Hisense A6H

With a TV, you need some way to level it and some plexiglass to protect the screen.  I went with a case from digitaltabletops.com for around $525, as they seem to make it their business and are clear about which TVs they're sure their case works with.  I would give them a 4/5:

1. Definitely accomplishes the primary goal of leveling the TV and protecting it, and it looks pretty good.
   
2. There's some minor cosmetic gouges in the wood that are hard to notice unless you are looking.
3. There was not enough protection during shipping and two of the corner legs were broken off.  I was able to super-glue the pieces back together.
4. There's a minor gap of a few millimeters between the screen and the plexiglass due to the lower bezel of the TV.  I can understand how that's impractical to eliminate this gap in a case meant to accommodate a variety of TVs.  You can still easily tell which square a mini is in.
   

The TV is a 43" Hisense A6H.  It's relatively cheap at $240.  It's the largest size that fits horizontally inside a wide Wyrmwood Modular Gaming Table with player desks on each side.  It has wider than average viewing angles, which is more important for our use case than typical TV usage.  It doesn't have a raised bezel on the top or sides, only the bottom, so there's not much of a gap between the plexiglass and the screen.  It's 4K, which seems good considering how close people will be viewing it.  It has Chromecast built-in, which can be handy for casting the maps from Chrome without needing to use an HDMI cable, but I've found that our network connectivity is not robust enough to avoid video compression artifacts.

Its main downsides of not being bright enough for usage in the sun or not having dark enough blacks for usage in the dark aren't relevant for our use case of playing in the evening with the lights on.

Alternatives considered

1. The Frame TV from Samsung is more expensive ($700 for an old version) and has worse viewing angles.  But it lays flat, so you don't need a case to level it, though you might want to raise the TV up a bit.  Since the plexiglass doesn't have to integrate with a case, you can make sure that it's completely flush with the screen to minimize the gap.  Not having seen this set up in person, I don't know if I would have preferred this over what I have now.
   
2. A projector is smaller and completely eliminates the gap between minis and the picture.  But it's difficult to get a bright picture in a lit room, casts shadows, and the light fixture in our dining room prevents us from ceiling mounting it.  It'd also be a pain to bust it out and put it away again. 
   

The Table - Wide Wyrmwood Modular Gaming Table

The table is a medium wide Wyrmwood Modular Gaming Table in rustic elm.  It's one of those gaming tables with removable leaves and a vault to store ongoing board games, puzzles, and other similar things.  For example, a television.  My family is very happy with the table. It's beautiful, very solid, and perfect for this use case.  There's plenty of reviews and videos about this table, so I'm going to avoid going over well-covered features and instead focus on some of the points that are specifically relevant for why we chose it, more subtle considerations, or things that surprised me.

1. The table is 31" high, which is higher than the standard dining table height of 28-30".  Since it's listed on their site, it shouldn't be a surprise.  What surprised me is how much the additional inch bothers me.  You generally want the surface to be at elbow height or lower.  It's probably the thing I like the least about the table, but lowering it would risk the table getting in the way of bigger people's legs.  It's just the cost of having a 4.5" gaming vault, which is needed to fit the TV case with a height of 4".  We just plan on getting used to it.
   
2. I specifically got this over some similar tables due to its leaves system being water resistant to spills with its magnet, groove, and gasket system.  I didn't want a liquid spill to immediately soak the TV.  Some tables deal with this by having a single piece of wood instead, but that's pretty hefty.  And it's actually pretty convenient to lift just the end topper up like a lid to access the insides.
3. Some people have reported warping of the topper leaves over time, especially on wide tables.  If it warps within the first few weeks, Wyrmwood would definitely cover replacement, but I was concerned about it in the long term.  So, we got the finger-jointed topper leaves which should be more resistant to warping as it is glued together from multiple pieces of wood.  While I don't prefer the look, my wife does, and it was cheaper.
   
4. Our wood choice has knots that were unfilled for us.  We would have preferred them being filled with clear epoxy.  Some people have been complaining that theirs were filled with non-matching wood filler, so I don't know what is standard practice for them.
5. The magnets on the topper leaves trigger the sleep behavior of my wife's laptop.  So, she has to be careful of her laptop placement.

Table Layout

This part is likely not relevant to most people, but it's the part I spent the most time planning around.  It's figuring out the table layout.

Since our primary use case for using the gaming vault is D&D, we had the issue of needing to provide a surface for people's character sheets, laptops, and so on.  Some of the options we discarded:

1. Doing this in the vault did not seem very comfortable.
2. The table edge is not wide enough by itself.
3. Wyrmwood sells player desks for this purpose, but we didn't want the table to be any longer to fit in the room.  So while we could use player desks along the width of the table, we couldn't along the length.
   
4. Wyrmwood also sells hobby vaults that could help, and having two hobby vaults on each end of the table would do the trick, but they reduce the overall capacity of the table--making us unable to store the player desks in the table when not in use.

What I really wanted was to be able to keep some of the topper leaves on at the end.  But the way they stay in place is with rubber studs intended to be at the corners of the table, so they only stay in place when all the topper leaves are installed and are quite loose otherwise.

So, what I ended up doing was putting some cabinet bumpers on the sides of the player desks and using the player desks to stop the toppers from moving.  It's still not extremely secure this way--with enough force, the player desks can be moved sideways--but in practice it works just fine with our group.  Others have suggested just using cabinet liners.

 

I did get one hobby vault for the DM.  But so far, we haven't really needed to access the inside of it in the middle of a game. And it turns out if you leave two toppers on both sides of the table, the player desks with furniture bumpers fit in the middle pretty much perfectly resulting in all of the toppers being very secure:

 

This also gives more storage space overall.  The downside would be inability to access this storage while stuff is on the toppers, as you'd have to lift it up vs sliding the hobby vault lid forward, and the increased height compared to just using the hobby vault.  We'll be evaluating which set up we prefer.

Software - Foundry VTT

Foundry VTT is pay $50 once software, which I prefer over subscriptions.  Since my use case is playing locally, I don't need a hosting service.  Foundry seems very popular and has a great variety of third-party content and modules, some of which make hybrid play with physical minis on a TV very easy.  The key ones for me were:

1. Lock View -- Easily size the grid to physical 1" squares on the TV and lock the view so that token movement doesn't trigger panning near the edges.
2. Monk's Active Display -- Hide unnecessary UI elements.

One of the things that I like to do when I run games is to play music and sound effects, but it gets hectic to manage.  Foundry supports automatically playing music when switching to a scene, and a module called Automated Animations supports automatically playing a matching sound when you roll an attack or cast a spell.  JB2A is a module that can supply the animations and on their Discord is a link to a bunch of sounds.

Alternatives considered

I play Level Up Advanced 5th Edition (A5E) rather than D&D straight, and it turns out Foundry has gaming system support for it that seems already pretty complete and has active development.  I hadn't realized that when I bought Foundry, but for that reason alone it's going to be hard to beat.  But here were my thoughts on other options prior to buying Foundry:

1. Arkenforge.  I actually bought it when it went on sale since it's explicitly made for in-person play.  However, having the option for remote play is nice and Foundry just has a lot more support in pre-made content and modules.  I also preferred the Foundry UI over Arkenforge.
2. Roll20.  During the pandemic and after the DM of one of my groups moved, Roll20 was what he ran and I deeply appreciated being able to continue playing.  But it was always a little flaky and its advanced features require a subscription.
   
3. Fantasy Grounds.  I haven't actually tried this one, but did look into it since I've been hearing about it over the years.  But it seems general impression I get is that it doesn't seem to be improving as quickly as Foundry.
4. Maptool.  This was my first VTT that I used over 20 years ago, but as it never comes up as a recommendation I figured it had been superseded.
   

Summary of Differences between Level Up 5E and Original 5E

These are just some notes I took when trying to figure out the differences between Level Up Advanced 5E (A5E) and original D&D 5E (O5E).  They aren't necessarily complete or particularly organized, and I'll probably update this later.

1. Race has been divided into Heritage (biological) and Culture (where you were raised). 
2. Ability attribute bonuses are based upon your Background instead of either Heritage or Culture.  In O5E they were in race. This mostly means A5E characters should use A5E backgrounds and O5E characters should stick with O5E backgrounds.
   
3. Destiny  define your character's primary motivation and gives more structure to how to gain Inspiration and spend Inspiration.  There is also a Fulfillment Feature where you gain a special ability upon reaching your destiny.  Inspiration is also in O5E officially for good roleplay, particularly if it's not in a way advantageous to the party, but in practice DMs rarely grant it and all it often allows for is advantage.
4. Expertise is not just double your proficiency bonus.  Instead, it is a bonus die that starts at 1d4 and if you have stacking sources of expertise, they increase the die size.  There are more sources of expertise than in O5E.
   
1. Flanking is an optional rule in 5E.  In A5E, it's a default rule that grants expertise to the attack roll.
2. Characters get skill specialties that grant expertise (e.g. specializing in flattery grants expertise to Persuasion checks when appropriate)
   
5. Culture and Engineering are two new skills.
   
6. Classes are different.  Some of them have changed names, but even the ones that have the same name are different.
   
1. Monk -> Adept
2. Barbarian -> Berserker
3. Paladin -> Herald
   
4. Marshal is a 4E warlord
5. Rangers don't get spellcasting by default and have more exploration features than most classes.
   
7. In general, they wanted to make martial characters have more interesting options than just move and attack, so they all have maneuvers that require Exertion to use and a pool of Exertion that refreshes typically on short rests.  Think of them like martial spells.
8. It's also noted that martial classes are supposed to have more out of combat utility than they used to.
9. Exploration is a more emphasized pillar in A5E compared to O5E.
1. There are more rules about journeying and activities characters can take while doing so.
   
2. Food and water are abstracted away into Supplies.
3. Fatigue replaces Exhaustion.
4. If you gain more than 1 level of Fatigue, normal rest becomes insufficient to restore it and you need to find a Haven (known safe place) to get good rest to reduce Fatigue by 1 each long rest.
   
5. Strife is the mental equivalent to Fatigue.
   
10. Criticals
1. There are criticals with saves now
2. There are also criticals with ability checks
   
11. Combat
1. There are critical failures and successes with saves now.
2. When healed from 0 or fewer hit points, you gain a level of Fatigue.
3. Attacking from above gives you an expertise die.  (I have the higher ground!)
4. You can use a bonus action to fight "back-to-back" with an adjacent ally.  Your passive perception increases by 2 until start of your next turn or either of you move.  You cannot be flanked.
5. Dragging an ally uses your reaction and movement costs are tripled.  It still provokes attacks of opportunity.
6. Pulling from below -- if you are 5 feet below your target and not smaller than the target and you aren't grappled or restrained, gain an expertise die on strength checks and saving throws made against it.
7. Press the attack -- before you take the attack action, you can use a bonus action to designate one creature within your reach not already the target of a press the attack action.  Until the beginning of your next turn, melee attacks against that creature gain an expertise die, unless you have disadvantage.  Target can use its reaction to Fall Back.
8. There's Sprint in addition to Dash.  If you are unencumbered and not wearing heavy armor, speed quadruples.  If  encumbered, then triples.  Must be a straight line.  Can only sprint for number of turns equal to Con mod for free.  Otherwise, constitution (athletics) check with DC 10+ 1 per previous check.  Failure gains level of Fatigue.  This fatigue goes away after one minute of not sprinting.  You can't sprint if you have Fatigue.
9. Basic Maneuvers instead of making an attack: disarm, grapple, knockdown, overrun, or shove.
10. If you have the Extra Attack feature, the bonus action for an extra attack with the off-hand weapon allows for two attacks instead of just one.
11. Massive damage rules -- if you get knocked to 0 or below and the hit dealt 20 + 3xLvl or more damage, make a DC 15 con save or die instantly.  If you succeed, you get one level of Fatigue and Strife.
12. Taking damage when at 0 hit points can be an extra failed death save, level fatigue, or level of strife, attacker's choice (or just DM's choice if there is no attacker)
13. You can convert a critical hit against you into a normal hit at the cost of using your reaction and suffering one fatigue level.  Or sacrificing your shield.  Fatigue gained during the combat only takes effect after combat is over.
14. There's a Doomed condition where minor healing isn't sufficient to heal from imminent death.  7 or more levels of fatigue is one way to get Doomed.
    
12. There are rules for Strongholds as another way to spend your gold.  They always count as Havens.
    
13. There are rules for Followers.  They They feel more like contractors to me.  Another way to spend gold, 1-time fee.
14. Feats
1. There are new feats.  Some old feats have changed.  Some have been renamed.
2. There are multiclass feats.
   
3. There are feats that have prerequisites.
   
15. Spells
1. Just because a spell has the same name doesn't mean it's the same spell.  E.g. fireball has been nerfed to actually follow the spell power guidelines.  In O5E, it's actually overpowered due to its iconic status.
16. There's some rules for actions characters can take between adventures during their downtime, including training or modifying their spells.
17. There's an official Prestige system.

You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, piano solo, arr. David Dinh

So, there's the music sheets site that I'm subscribed to called MuseScore.  I got an email from them on Dec. 8 with holiday music suggestions and this arrangement of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" by David Dinh caught my attention.  I've been obsessing over it to get it presentable by Christmas, and while it's a bit on the sloppy side, I'm pretty happy to get this far after two weeks!

Little Red Riding Hood by Rachmaninoff

I've been working on this piece since the Kapustin Toccatina.  While I could improve upon this take, I'm thinking of moving on to other pieces.  I might try for a better recording later, in which case I'll replace the one here.  This piece has a lot of fast jumping chords that just take a lot of repetition to get the muscle memory right.

Rachmaninoff originally didn't give this piece a title as evocative as "Little Red Riding Hood", but decided to reveal his inspiration later after others wanted to arrange it for instruments other than piano.  Listening to it, I feel like Little Red Riding Hood just gets caught and eaten by the Wolf.