Steve Deckert
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So, as I'm scanning the forums this evening I notice the last post to this HT board was in March. It's now November so the thought that flashed through my mind was "boy, home theater is really dead!" A bitter sweet feeling follows as I realize this audience takes sound quality seriously and home theater at the mid fi consumer level is a waste of time.
This is of course a good thing, as holographic two channel audiophile playback often beats 5.1 channel solid state home theater on 5 little cubes and a nasty subwoofer, right!
But then wait, this is a bad thing because it means that almost no one has figured out how to do both! Doing both is a lot easier than you think. The same gear can be used, and the same room. The results can be equal with both, believe it or not.
Part of the problem is that people don't realize how good a two channel tube amp hooked up to a DVD or BLURAY player can sound with only two speakers on a movie. The first thing that happens when you experience it, is that you wonder why they invented center channels. Of course if you are sitting on the side wall the reason becomes more obvious.
In any case, you are amazed at how good it sounds and then as the movie progresses you begin to forget that there are only two speakers. In fact you begin to forget there are speakers at all. The imaging (at least of good amps like Decware) is so good that you hear things off your right and left shoulder's as though there were rear channels.
In simple two channel mode without a sub, the movie will sound so good you'll wonder why some of your CD's don't sound as good... but that's another topic for later.
Point is, it will sound good enough to fake out your guests who will just assume there are 5.1 speakers playing.
IF any of the results of this inspire you to go further, you can add a tube center channel and then eventual tube rear channels and a good sub.
Now that you can purchase a 100 inch pull down screen for $50 and a projector for less than a good TV set, there is no reason why you couldn't project a movie directly between your hifi-speakers and then sit in the sweet spot and watch it without violating any room acoustic treatments you may have cared enough to install.
Back before projectors when people had 250 pound big screen rear projection TV sets, placing one of those between your loudspeakers would be certain sound stage suicide that was too large and too heavy to remove when listening to two channel music. The giant heavy projection TV sets WERE the very reason for the polarization between hi-fi and Home Theater that started in the 1980's. This is why people came accept that you had to have two rooms, and two systems.
So in summary, when I see this part of the forum with less activity, I know opportunity is being missed.
Some of the best sound I've heard in any of my systems have been experienced from DVD and BluRay leaving one to ponder why CD's don't sound as good and why the format wasn't revisited. Perhaps the reason is because it's all in my imagination and perception, but more likely it's the difference in the audio production budget of a hit movie vs. a CD.
This winter, try watching a movie with a TV or projector screen situated between your speakers and whatever you use now as your DVD/BLURAY player hooked to your Decware or similar quality amp and watch a whole movie and report back to us.
I'll look forward to the results :)
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