Video Asylum

Posted by oscar (A) on August 30, 2007 at 18:14:46

In Reply to: RE: What are you using for your cinema sound? posted by 4season on August 30, 2007 at 16:59:28

Be sure you get very efficient speakers and/or very power amps to handle the dynamic range of uncompressed PCM movie sound tracks. Oh yeah, don't forget the multiple subwoofers for the ".1" channel; quantity dependent on room size. I'm a big fan of pure analog multichannel preamps. They are more likely to support volume controls which "damage" the audio sound the least. I needed at least a 2x6 multichannel switcher, wound up with a 4x6 switcher of which 3 full banks are currently in use.

I have 4 of 5 speakers identical; the fifth speaker was a Center channel compromise because of the annoying need to put the center somewhere close to where the display is. The alternative was the acoustically transparent screen to put the center speaker behind. But I've heard about an "acousticallly transparent" screen which turned out to be "not so visually transparent" for movie watching. Full range speakers with Equidistant spacing in the ITU configuration. I've got this part covered. The mistake was relatively inefficient speakers designed to deal more with music audio than movie "kablooie" sound effects. Of course, the speakers I have now were supposed to be of the "Speakers for life" variety.... whoops.

Make sure your system can support subsonic filtering of sound effects. You may not want <10 Hz sound transients being forced fed to your excursion-limited speaker woofers at extreme volumes. Otherwise, bass management won't be needed provided you are using FULL-range speakers at every position. You want to distribute that bass per the author's intent. Time Alignment won't be necessary since of course you've placed the speakers at equal distance from the primary listening position.

And of course you'll want your system to support SACD/DVD-A/DAD/TrueHD/DTS HD MA, 5.1 uncompressed PCM etc.... Add two more channels if your room works best in a 7.1 configuration.

And don't forget the room treatments (e.g. bass traps, curtains to diminize reflections).