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Re: Speaker advice (USA)

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In Reply to: Speaker advice (USA) posted by Duilawyer on August 25, 2002 at 10:06:29:

I'm assuming your Maggies are the fronts now??
Though I have Maggies, I did NOT find the MGCC centers to be a good match. A center speaker will ideally match the fronts, and these ones sure don't match the 1.6's. Sorry, no equalizers etc. for me to MAKE something defficient try to work acceptably, this isn't a Bose shop here. I found better matches that weren't planar. Unsurprising something the size of the MGCC's planar doesn't match well enough. So choosing the MGCCx isn't a given, unless you're running a strictly Maggie shop.
I found places out here very flexible about loaning center speakers for home trial. Even ones that don't typically loan gear. You gotta try them at home. And do listen carefully to the center all by itself too, to make sure you understand its inherent capability, outside of the context of being a center. And also hook it up as a left with a Maggie as a right, etc. Course it won't be a perfect match, but listen for a flow, some sort of cohesion between the two. It's a pain in the ass really, almost as bad as integrating a sub nicely with Maggies.

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Maggies are separate rig, my HT are JBL speakers - Duilawyer 17:09:53 08/25/02 (5)
I have tried to figure a way to meld the two systems, and started tearing my hair out.
- Re: Maggies are separate rig, my HT are JBL speakers - cfraser 17:47:15 08/25/02 (4)
  I have done it, one way, with some effort, and it's working acceptably well, music being the main thing. It is now uncompromised for music, the issue for HT with Maggies for fronts is you need more power to keep it clean than an HT receiver can deliver. I just deliver the HT front pre outs to the music system, so no problem for movies. It wasn't a problem of $$, it was the systems taking up too much room individually, with Maggies liking to be several feet away from walls, as you know. Quite frankly, the sound on DVD soundtracks is not nearly as high quality as you might think, considering the bit rate. The space is mostly used for video (duh!) and sound seems to get definite short shrift. But it's good enough for a movie, though better is always nice.
  - I gotta say I do have a perfectly square room.... - Duilawyer 18:04:22 08/25/02 (3)
    and the big old TV would mean the Maggies about 3 feet from the rear wall.... Could work.
    But, won't the sound going through My Sony 444, even if it goes to a separate preamp, then amp, won't the Sony degrade\kill the sound quality? Doesn't your receiver seriously degrade the signal? Again,, fi this has been asked a million times, I am sorry.
    - There is something about Maggies as fronts I forgot to say - cfraser 13:10:42 08/26/02 (0)
      You know how you can get an almost holographic sound field with stereo when you have the Maggies and your listening position adjusted right? Well, I think using Maggies as fronts you need a center speaker. Otherwise the phantom center seems too dispersed, and dialog gets lost (at least for me), and you have to turn the sound up louder than otherwise. Depending on your source DVD... Sometimes almost ALL the sound is coming from the center. When a DVD says Dolby 5.1, this means there are *up to* 5.1 channels of info, but many have little more than the center, there's virtually no LFE or surround sound. So with these movies, there's a lot of them, a phantom center is not so bad and dialog levels were mixed appropriately.
      What I'm saying here is, if you decide to try Maggies for the fronts, because of their nature, you will probably have to have a center speaker, one you can independently adjust the level of. I suspect the "dialog enhancer" some gear has boosts the center mix level, but controlling the center level some way independent of the fronts is definitely beneficial for many movies.
    - No, good questions - cfraser 18:21:41 08/25/02 (1)
      And my experience is that taking the preamp outputs from your HT receiver (if it has them) does not noticeably degrade the DVD movie sound for the fronts. I mean, it's been degraded by the HT receiver already, and further degradation would be the only result by letting the HT receiver amplify too... :)
      So you're ahead, taking the degraded signals to better quality gear ASAP in the chain.
      But there's something else. If you have a DVDP with 5.1 analog outputs, you can take the DVDP front R/L (of the 5.1 output set, not the stereo set) directly over to your "good" system pre/amp. HT receiver degradation is eliminated. Now it's strictly DVDP degradation, but have eliminated the receiver from the chain...some receivers aren't that bad, really, to be fair, especially in the digital domain, it's the analog domain where they are so easily bashable.
      - thanks. nt - Duilawyer 20:18:43 08/25/02 (0)
        
        In Reply to: No, good questions posted by cfraser on August 25, 2002 at 18:21:41:
        
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