My next door neighbor got a Sony Surround Sound as a Christmas gift. My son bought himself a Panasonic a month ago.
I sat in my neighbor’s den as he flipped through a crazy Steve Martin CD. I got the feeling it was made for surround sound. Even so, it was impressive.
The fullness of the sound draws you into the film, much moreso than standard stereo. In fact, my own TV sounded pitifully flat afterwards.
But from what i’ve been told, you get the full SS experience only with CD movies with the requisite sound track. Are the TV networks thinking about beefing up the audio to surround sound levels for regular programming?
If you have an SS system, would you recommend it? If you were gonna buy one, what would it be - say, in the $300-$400 range?
I do watch a lot of movies on DVD frequently. It really helps to have a center chanel. This make dialogue clearer. Before Surround Sound (BSS) some films I would have to hold the remote in my hand and turn up the sound on dialouge parts and then turn it down when the music kicked in at an ear shattering level.
I dont’ really notice much broadcast tv having great SS but as I said, I watch movies on DVD so a good SS system is really nice to have for that.
It is scary. My SO is into that stuff, I’m really not, so no techno talk from me about speakers and channels and stuff, but I can tell you how it sounds. The sounds seem to be real. Sometimes I think there is someone outside the house, when it is only background sounds in movies. Car doors slamming are really bad, I am always think someone is pulling up outside. Crowd noises/children in the background freak me out too - more than once I have been convinced the house is surrounded. During the Harry Potter movie, in the scene in Snape’s classroom, there is water dripping. I ran around looking for water leaks in my kitchen. Then I got smart, paused the movie, and figured out what was happening. I know my SO likes the DTS movies the best, but I really can’t tell that much difference between DTS and 5.1.
More and more network programming is in Dolby Surround (as the North American broadcast standard) and has been increasingly so over the past ten years or so. No “beefing up” is needed as surround is very easy to add to the stereo audio mix. (speaking from a standpoint of transmitting it. Actually producing it, locating sounds, etc, is a different story.)
On DVD, you often get the choice of Dolby Surround or DTS. Either is roughly the same.
As for pricing, I can’t even conceive of a system costing $300-400. My center channel speaker (the most important one as almost all on-screen voices come through it) cost $300 on its own. You don’t want to know what the subwoofer cost. :eek:
How good? Fucking good…that’s how good. I miss mine, but we changed receivers and can no longer accommodate the speakers. That, and my darned cat pulled a speaker off the ceiling and dropped it on my husband.
I bought us surround sound for Christmas. PucksRaven and I sat with a friend in our livingroom watching LOTR and were blown away. I have no idea how we ever watched movies without it. It makes the moving come alive, and you have a similar ‘absorption’ experience as at the theatre. It’s also divine if you happen to be a fan of opera or symphony. Sitting in the middle of the floor with Pink Floyd or The Doors in the system is an exceptionally trippy experience.
I also like that it ‘levels’ the movie, so you’re not overwhelmed by any one sound.
My system cost about $650 all tolled, but it was well worth it. If you’re a movie person, and it’s within your budget, get it. You won’t be sorry. Also, my reciever/DVD player has a setting that will take anything and split it out to all 5 speakers, even if it wasn’t made that way, including broadcast tv and burned MP3s, so you never have to listen to stereo again.
Yeah, it’s great. I sank about $1800 into mine. Do yourself a favor: go to Best Buy or some other store that will let you listen to the system. Pay particular attention to the sub-woofer. With most of the cheap systems, the bass will start to “fuzz” at a relatively low volume. It’s annoying and puts a real damper on action flicks.
I don’t think you can find a decent system for much under $1200, but could be wrong. On the high end, of course, the sky’s the limit.
I bought a Yamaha amp with DTS, five B&W matched speakers and sub-woofer and I can blow out light bulbs in the next room. Literally.
If you like the surround sound experience, I’d recommend also checking out CDs that are binaurally recorded. Surround-sound reproduction is an attempt to do spatialized audio on the cheap, and binaural reproduction is IMO a better way to get at it. Binaural CDs are few and far between, but some of them are pretty impressive. Another benefit is that for the money, you’ll get better sound reproduction from headphones than from speakers.
I throw the gauntlet down and say NAY to surround sound.
In concept they are a nice idea but most (all that I’ve tested) fail in 1 or more areas.
I don’t know if this is due to the encoding or the decoding but I find it annoying for sound to pop on and off behind me. It should be a consistent amount of noise that builds and subsides in a normal manner.
Next problem I find with these systems is the use of powered subwoofers. Most people adjust these incorrectly. The object is NOT to add bass to the sound mix. The object is to reproduce bass when it is called for. You shouldn’t hear it during a conversation unless it is God speaking. I also don’t like 15" speakers that point down. Bass will radiate naturally, it doesn’t need to be focused on the floor. It also doesn’t need to be powered. A good bass speaker will do it’s job without a separate amp unless you’re trying to fill a 3,000 person hall.
Lack of good center channels. Unless the system comes with really good stereo speakers (most don’t), it is up to the center channel to reproduce the human voice and keep it centered over the viewing area.
With that said,
If you already have a good sound system then you will gain many of the benefits from surround sound recordings. Most of the modern movies I’ve watched are encoded to fool the human ear into believing the sound is outside of the left and right speaker’s placement. This is what gives surround sound depth. The first time I played a DVD using my stereo I replayed a scene a number of times because I kept hearing something directly to the right of me. That’s when I realized the sound was staggered between the speakers to give it depth. It is an old audio trick found on boom boxes to make the speakers sound farther apart.
My suggestion to audiophiles is to use your stereo in conjunction with your TV set. I adjust the balance between my stereo and TV until the TV speakers produce a center channel effect. Most TV’s have speakers that reproduce the human voice well (particularly stereo TV’s). Once I’ve matched the volume of the stereo to the TV, it will stay consistent as the TV volume is changed (assuming you drive your stereo off the TV). If you drive your stereo off your DVD then you need to use the DVD volume control. The goal is to hear a perfect blend of TV and Stereo speakers.
To date, I prefer my stereo to surround sound. I’ve been looking at surround sound systems for years and haven’t found anything I really like. But in defense of surround sound, I don’t look at anything over $2000.
I like surround sound for movies a lot. A good system lets you appreciate how much (or little) attention to sound mixing the film studio production folks paid. I especially like more subtle effects and side comments that would have been ignored otherwise.
But, the full experience requires one to have a large viewing/listening room and then to play the DVD real loud. Now if I still lived alone in a free-standing house it would be a wonderful indulgence. Alas I have both two small kids and a wife who doesn’t like music played loudly, so I am leashed until they go on all-day shopping trips. Ah family life.
I have a few classical music CDs on the Delos label that are surround sound encoded and they sound incredible.