Video Asylum

Posted by mikebake (A) on July 10, 2002 at 16:40:46

Thanks to nOrh. An excerpt from Michaels July news on the norh.com website recommends a product available from Klipschsays (and I have edited it some)( I was/am waiting for an Outlaw 950 but may get the 5.1 Klipsch for now so I can use all the new amps and speakers I have...)

"One of the biggest problems that I hear about is that many people have built home theater systems and they are not satisfied with the way music sounds. They report that while they enjoy movies, that music simply doesn't sound very good.

I get lots of questions about putting together a good home theater system that would also serve as an excellent music system. This month's newsletter will focus on some thing to consider as you build a home theater that is also a great music system.

When DVD was first introduced, I bought the Sony ES 7000. I had read that this was the best DVD player on the market. I also bought the Pioneer top-of-the-line as it played both LDs and DVDs. Each of these units cost more than $1,000.00. Both of these units offered pretty good CD playback. The transports in both systems were excellent. The Sony unit started giving me problems after a year. It turns out that the industry increased the security on their disks. The Sony unit was unable to play many commercial disks. When I bought my player, DTS DVDs were not available. Both the Pioneer and the Sony could not work properly with DTS encoded disks. I had bought two Sony AC3 decoders. Prior to this, I was using an expensive Dolby Prologic decoder from Sony. After only two years, the Sony Prologic unit was a dinosaur. It turns out that my newer processors suffered the same fate. The AC3 units did not decode DTS and I became very frustrated by the pace at which my new A/V technology was becoming outdated. I expected this from computers but not for home entertainment.

I replaced my Sony and Pioneer with very cheap DVD players. These players had AC3 and DTS decoders built in. These players cost well under $200.00. The picture quality was better than the Pioneer and equal to the Sony. In fact, one of the units I had seemed to be almost identical inside to a much more expensive Panasonic player. It had the same DVD drive and the same decoding chip. In fact, it came with a Panasonic disk that showed off the high quality of Panasonic players.

The problem having the DTS and AC3 decoding built into the player is that there isn't any really good way to control and balance the levels of the rear and front speakers. The trick I used was to use the volume control on the remote to set all channels up or down and then adjust the front left and right with my preamp. This is not an ideal solution but it is workable.

One of the things that frustrates me with home theater is the high cost of processors. I would not mind paying $1,000 or so if I could believe that the technology might not change in one or two years. I consider the processor to be vulnerable. I have simply spent too much money on processors in the past and don't really want to do it again. It's a war where the consumers loose everytime. Have a look at the table below, which shows the formats of surround sound and positioning systems available.
Surround Sound Confusion (Conspiracy?)

Dolby Labs
DTS Tech
THX

Dolby Digital
Dolby Pro Logic
Dolby Pro Logic II Music
Dolby Pro Logic II Movie
Dolby 3 Stereo: Full Digital

DTS Digital Surround
DTS 96/24
DTS-ES Matrix 6.1
DTS 96/24 ES (6.1)
DTS-ES Discrete 6.1
DTS Neo : 6 Music
DTS Neo : 6 Cinema
THX Adaptive Decorrelation
THX Bass Peak Level Management
THX Front-Channel Re-Equalization
THX Loudspeaker Position Time Synchronization: 8-Channel
THX Surround EX
THX Timbre-Matching

Other Formats

MPEG 5.1 Surround
Sony's Digital Cinema Sound System
Yamaha Tri-Field CINEMA DSP
Yamaha Quad-Field CINEMA DSP

At the same time, you can buy a receiver that has processing in it for under $300.00. I wonder why we can get a receiver that has a remote control, five amplifiers, processor, tuner and switching for under $300.00 but the cost of only a processor is likely to be over $1,000.00. The fact is, there are not that many solutions on the market to do the decoding with. It is likely that the receiver does an equal job to a dedicated AC3/DTS decoder. No wonder that most people will buy a receiver for their home theater system.

The reason we have advocated a video-passthrough on our preamp is that it gives the user an easy way to combine audio and video systems. The least expensive way to do this is to use a receiver and a preamp. If the receiver has front left and right outputs, these can be plugged into the A/V passthrough. The receiver can power the center and rear speakers. When the listener wants to listen to high quality audio, they can use the preamp but the receiver becomes the heart of the video system.

Most people will agree that while DVD players are excellent values, they are not very good CD players. The sound from most budget DVD players is really very disappointing. When we still had our CD-1s available, many customers were amazed at how much better their music collection sounded using the CD-1. Unfortunately, the CD-1 became a sellout.

The supplier of the transport — Matsushita, discontinued the CD drive and said they would focus their attention on DVD drives. The obvious question we are asked is why don't we just build a DVD player.

The answer is that the DVD consortium is not set up to allow small companies to get in. It costs $20,000 to have the right to display the DVD logo on your product. You also have to license Dolby and DTS (see the table above). Many of the low-cost players that come into the United States simply don't pay their license fees. The factories that supply these machines have huge markets outside the US so if their players are stopped, they still have a massive market.

Low Cost AC3/DTS Processor
I was in Taiwan attending a computer show. While there, I met with a company that makes OEM products. One of the products they make is a AC3/DTS processor. The processor uses a Motorola chip and does are great job. The name of the company that makes the product is Minton. They manufacture a decoder that is one of the best values in the world. Their decoder can be found on here.

If you are located in Asia, you might be able to find the unit sold under the Minton label. In the US, the decoder is now marketed by Klipsch. I tried to find the device on their page and it took me a half hour. I don't know if they are trying to keep the product a secret or not. Klipsch sells the decoder for $169.95. This is a fair price and a very good unit. You can look the unit up here.

At $169.95, this processor is an excellent value. This unit and five Le Amps would create a very cost effective home theater system with astonishing value. This processor will likely improve the CD performance of most inexpensive CD players as well as it uses a very high quality decoder and from what I could hear, the analog sounded pretty good.

Consider this: with the Minton (Klipsch) processor and five Le Amps, you could have a system that exceeds the performance of virtually any receiver for just over $1,400.00.

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