I'm not a big fan of small speakers or subwoofers.
They tend to sound, well, small, and most of them squash the life out of films and music.
Thing is, people like tiny speakers and subs, so lots of speaker companies make, and sell tons of iffy-sounding 5.1 systems.
The Definitive Technology ProCinema 600 system.
(Credit: Definitive Technology)But they're not all bad, I've cherry-picked three truly exceptional alternatives from Definitive Technology, Energy Speakers, and Mirage. My complete reviews are all on CNET, but I'll run down the highlights here.
The Definitive Technology ProCinema 600 System is a six-piece package with four 7-inch tall satellite speakers, one 10.5-inch wide center speaker, and a minisubwoofer. The injection-molded mineral-filled polymer cabinets have more of a high-end feel than your typical plastic or fiberboard cabinets. Can you say "rock solid?"
The subwoofer is a conventional, matte-finished medium-density-fiberboard box. It measures 13 by 10.3 by 13 inches. Its side-mounted volume control is a convenient design touch.
The satellites are two-way designs with a 1-inch aluminum-ceramic dome tweeter and a 3.25-inch midrange driver. Ah, but the midrange driver is acoustically coupled to a 3.25-inch pressure-driven planar low-frequency radiator on the top panel (so when the midrange driver moves in, the passive radiator moves out, and vice-versa).
The passive radiator effectively doubles the bass radiating area of the tiny midrange driver. The same technique is employed on the center channel speaker; it has a pair of 3.25-inch midrange drivers flanking a 1-inch tweeter--and there's a 3.25-inch radiator on each side of the speaker.
The subwoofer's 8-inch polymer cone woofer is acoustically coupled to a bottom-mounted 8-inch passive radiator. The combined radiating area of the driver and radiator is almost equivalent to a single 12-inch woofer. This little sub kicks butt!
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SACD and DVD-A: A feast for your ears when you hear them over Oppo's stellar BDP-83.
Oppo's new BDP-83 player spins just about every type of "silver" disc under the sun: CD, SACD, DVD-Audio, DVD-Video and Blu-ray. Cool!
I brought a stack of SACDs and DVD-A discs to the CNET listening room to check out the BDP-83 with our Denon AVR-3808CI receiver and Aperion Intimus 4T Hybrid SD 5.1 speaker/subwoofer system. I'll cover the high-resolution audio performance of the Oppo here, read Matthew Moskovciak's full CNET review for the rest of the story.
"The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East," recorded on March 12 and 13, 1971, was a trip. Sure, the original mix was stereo, but I loved the way the SACD's 5.1 mix opened up and clarified the sound, especially the band's two drummers, Jai Johanny Johanson and Butch Trucks. The entire rhythm section's dynamics and pulse came alive on SACD, it's more in the background on CD.
On one hand the 5.1 mix is fairly subtle, but the sound's open quality and spaciousness was remarkable. The sense of being in the 2,000 seat concert hall was a thrill that you can't get with stereo. And no, you can't get there by playing stereo in Dolby Pro Logic II, a discrete 5.1 channel mix, if it's any good, will always sound better.
Led Zeppelin's "How the West Was Won" double DVD-A set was very different. How? The band's dynamic energy was even more present and the front three speakers soundstage depth and dimensionality were better than the Allman Brothers' disc. Too bad the bass was thicker and muddier, which was probably the way it sounded at the 1972 Zep shows. I didn't like the surround mix much, mostly because I couldn't understand why Jimmy Page's guitar was sometimes coming out of the surround speakers. Strange. But it's still the best sounding Zeppelin disc I own.
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Five speakers and sub for music? I don't think so!
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)It's interesting. Tens of millions of homes are equipped with multichannel home theater systems, but multichannel music is a dead issue. Stereo rules the roost, for going on 50 years.
Ten years ago it looked like stereo's days were numbered--the two new multichannel formats, SACD and DVD-Audio, were on track to be the next big things. Funny, it didn't work out that way. I cover the subject in detail in my "Whatever happened to 5.1-channel music?" article that appeared in the July issue of Stereophile magazine.
Obviously, 5.1-channel sound makes sense for movies and home theater, mostly because 5.1 was an outgrowth of theatrical film-sound technologies stretching all the way back to the 1950s.
Every attempt to bring surround music into the home without video has flopped, big time. Are you old enough to remember the rise and fall of quadraphonic in the 1970s? What was needed was a surround format that didn't require music lovers to invest in new playback gear. Surely such a format would prove the viability of music surround...wouldn't it?
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This is the ideal 7.1 setup, but very few home theaters really look like this.
(Credit: Dolby)An industry insider recently admitted to me that only 30 percent of AV receiver buyers ever bother to hook up all seven channels to their receivers. That guesstimate seems a little high to me; the standard 5.1 channel setup: Left, center, right speakers upfront, and a pair of surround speakers to the sides of the main listening position can supply a truly immersive sound experience.
Seven-channel home theater adds two more speakers, placed behind the main listening position. That's tough to accomplish in rooms where the couch or chairs are up against the rear wall. There's no "rear" there, so some folks mount the rear speakers up high, or bounce the sound off the ceiling.
Still, the rear surrounds typically contribute little, so it's pretty hard to justify the added expense and hassle of running the extra wires for a marginal sonic improvement. The one exception might apply to very large rooms where the side and rear surround speakers are further apart from each other. The extra coverage may produce a more complete sense of surround envelopment.
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With Pro Logic IIz some receivers will produce 9.1 channel surround.
(Credit: Dolby)The Dolby Web site is bubbling with excitement about its new processing trick, "With Dolby Pro Logic IIz, rain in a movie now seems to be actually falling on the listener's roof, concert videos bring a more intense sense of being at the performance, and orchestral works deliver more palpable depth, power, and connection." The "z" in Pro Logic IIz signifies the Z axis, otherwise known as height.
Sounds interesting, but when I setup and listened to the first receiver (an Onkyo TX-SR607) with Pro Logic IIz, the height speakers didn't lift my spirits.
Pro Logic IIz can, depending on the receiver's capabilities, either augment a 5.1 or 7.1 channel speaker system with two height channels. In other words, in a 5.1 channel system with Pro Logic IIz you'll have five speakers in the front of the room--left, center, right, left height, and right height--plus a surround speaker to both sides of the main listening position.
The 7.1 system with Pro Logic IIz uses the same speaker array--plus two rear surround speakers.
Once you have a receiver equipped with Pro Logic IIz, and wall mount the height speakers three feet or higher over the main left/right speakers, you're all set. You won't have to buy specially encoded movies or music.
According to Dolby, "Pro Logic IIz identifies and decodes spatial cues that occur naturally in all content--stereo and 5.1 broadcast, music CDs, DVDs, 5.1 and 7.1 Blu-ray discs, and video games. Dolby Pro Logic IIz processes low-level, uncorrelated information--such as ambience and some amorphous effects like rain or wind--and directs it to the front height speakers."
Nice idea, did it actually work?
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