Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Sub woofer & possible L/R surround placement

Hmmm... well I saw it here on this website. Remember that article on Dolby Labratories not too long ago? It was in there somewhere. I think it was when they were talking about Pro Logic II. At any rate they were talking about placing speakers above the front mains and sending the rear surround information to them and it having the same effect of having them behind you, with the Pro Logic II running things anyway. I would have to reread it to remember exactly how they discribed it. Can anyone find that link again?

Found it...

http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/07/08/engadget-goes-behind-the-dolby-logo/


Click the link, and scroll down to the 'Dolby Pro Logic IIz' section and read through it.

Actually after rereading through that I guess it seems Pro Logic IIz takes 'front height' cues and sends them to those front speakers, not the rear information... wonder how the computer knows what is coming from the 'top of the front' channels? Weird, wild stuff!

Down at the bottom of that article is where the room with 24 speakers write-up is. It's called 'the sandbox'. And after rereading that I guess there was only 1 speaker on the ceiling, not 4 or 6. There are 6 speakers placed above ear level, I got those mixed up.

My memory isn't that great as it seems!

Micah, that article doesn't appear to say anything close to what you described. It simply discusses the view that front height channels may provide a better overall listening experience than back surrounds.

Edit: now seeing your follow-up post after you re-read, yes, the front height channels aren't carrying back surround information.

Hey Micah, you seem to be willing to go to extraordinary measures to get your surround sound dialed in so I have a suggestion based on my experience in my apartment. If you can, set up total blackout in your room. I’m not talking about dark I’m talking black (i. e. no light sources other than the screen and no (minimize) reflective surfaces.

My apartment had all light sources blocked out and black curtains 360 degrees around the room. Not only did this make the screen appear to hang in open space it also had an unexpected effect on the sound. It deadened the room a little, but not much. The interesting thing is that it took the echo out of the room effectively removing the walls from giving distance queues.

For example with the curtains open (walls exposed) the scene in were the bucket falls down the well in Balin’s Tomb it sound great but somehow confined. With the curtains closed the sound is more cavernous.

At the beginning of “Appleseed” were shattered glass and concrete are flying all around it sounded nice and enveloping with the curtains open. However, with the curtains closed I got not only the envelopment but more depth. I could here discrete pieces of glass/concrete/shell casings hitting from right next to me all the way out into the distance. Much better effect than Audyssey.

It’s actually quite disorienting. Even with the room blacked out but curtains open I could “hear” my position in the room relative to the walls just by the noised made by moving. With the curtains closed the audio queues that would normally indicate my distance to a wall weren’t there. If nothing was making noise it was like being in an endless void.

One drawback I found with total blackout was that the darker I got the room the more annoying even the smallest amount of light became. Got to the point during some movies/games I pulled a black sheet over my legs because they were just to distracting. I’m looking to buy something along the lines of a black ninja suit for the house.

The other thing I found was that having the curtains closed took the airiness out of some music but that was easily remedied by opening some or all of the curtains.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I found total blackout enhanced both the video and surprisingly to me the audio more than anything since upgrading from TV + boom box (first surround system) to Axioms, allowing near total suspension of disbelief. It was way better than moving from 5.1 to 7.1.

Cheers,
Dean

Wow, that sounds pretty wild alright. Also a bit psychedelic I must say! Lol, but an interesting find. I suppose movie theaters are dark with sound treatments for precisely the same reason. Here in our town we had a Kerasotes 'Cinema 6' for years and years. Then a competitor built a Danbury 'Cinema 10' right down the street from it. Soon after Kerasotes expanded and added 5 additional theaters to round up to a 'Cinema 11'. Three of the 5 new cinema's were your average theaters. But they built 2 supreme theaters that they open the big movies in every week. Then the next week comes along and those movies get shuffled to the ordinary screens and the biggest two new movies get put on their main two screens. They really did a bang up job on the two main screens. They are a bit bigger, but besides that they have a top of the line surround system in there, the sound proofing is top notch, and the sound treatments are of the highest calliber. Watching a movie in one of those two theaters is enough to make you want to go see a movie on opening weekend so that you don't get shuffled back to one of the regular screens.

And yes it's like you discribed, as soon as the movie starts in one of their main rooms it's a completely different feeling from the rest. The sound field is infinitely deeper than the room itself. In other words it doesn't seem to have walls, or a ceiling or anything of that nature. You don't feel confined in a cement bunker, you feel as if you're right in the middle of the action. If it's the desert scene from 'The English Patient', you feel like you're right there in the airplane flying over the desert with Ralph Fines. If it's 'Titanic', you feel like you're in the middle of the ocean with Leanardo DiCaprio. Sure I know a theater has 20 times as much space as my HT, and probably close to that many speakers as well. But these two theaters are still a different breed from regular theaters. Not quite on par with say an IMAX theater, but still leaps and bounds better than your average cinema.

We have blinds over our windows now, and curtains covering our french doors. But the curtains are not heavy, they are transparent. Perhaps some heavy draperies are in order. I can't get too crazy unfortunately, as this room doubles as our sales room, so it has to be a bit more on the 'inviting' side and not give the feeling we're vampires! Lol, but I do love my sound effects, so perhaps some experimentation is in order eh?