Video Asylum

Posted by cfraser (A) on August 26, 2002 at 13:10:42

In Reply to: I gotta say I do have a perfectly square room.... posted by Duilawyer on August 25, 2002 at 18:04:22:

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.