In Reply to: Circle Surround posted by HR GUY on March 19, 2000 at 11:11:46:
I have it (the Circle Surround 5.2.5 decoder) and consider it an irreplaceable part of my system.No digital conversion, strictly analog in analog out. Vinyl surround,tremendous,cd surround tremendous. It is fed by
the secondary outputs of a Reference Line passive pre-amp,
I now only use the center,surround and sub outputs from it, the Reference Line main outputs feed the main power amps.I did use it as my total pre-amp prior to acquiring the passive pre, and it sounded very good as a preamp,sweet and detailed. In music mode, (no delays) it
extracts stereo full bandwith surround info from regular stereo sources. Circle Surround encoded discs (I have 8 of them) are indescribable. Regular movie(stereo or dolby surround) sound indistinguishable from most DD or DTS movies. Side wall fill in is superior to the best DTS or
DD encoded movies, IMO and from my listening the only advantage DTS and DD have over it (sometimes) is the LFE
channel which can give louder bass (if encoded) than CS
sub output,and the occasional _extra_ foley effects that
are sometimes added to discrete soundtracks and not found
in the regular dolby mix. With CS you get the directional,full stereo rears advantage of DD AND DTS without the data reduction, the ambience of Dolby surround
tracks is always there, the best of both worlds. They (CS)
don't advertise any more, but the 5.2.5 decoder was still
available as late as October when I last checked ( i purchased mine last July. The new SMART Devices higher priced Circle Surround EX ($299) is actually a full fledged CS unit, and a steal at that price. Sorry, this is
probably more than you wanted to know, but I love CS, and
I'm a music first, ht second person.
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Follow Ups
- Re: Circle Surround - Hayden 07:28:03 03/20/00 (8)
- Re: Circle Surround - HR GUY 10:56:35 03/20/00 (7)
- Re: Circle Surround - Hayden 11:39:23 03/20/00 (6)
- Re: Circle Surround - bstan 16:30:53 03/20/00 (1)
- Re: Circle Surround - Hayden 16:41:44 03/20/00 (0)
- Re: Circle Surround - HR GUY 13:43:27 03/20/00 (3)
- Re: Circle Surround - Hayden 15:30:59 03/20/00 (2)
- Re: Circle Surround - HR GUY 15:54:40 03/20/00 (1)
- Re: Circle Surround - Hayden 16:29:41 03/20/00 (0)