Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Moving from 5.1 to 4.1

I agree with you to a point ...
Many people are happy just to have something to tap their foot to ...
It's actually kind of funny if they recognize the tune then they don't seem to hear the distortion.

That said, most can recognize when something magical happens:
--- be it a crystal clear triangle hit or
--- a singer or instrument which sounds like it's really there or perhaps
--- a coin which rolls across the floor

I was not using a center in my living room for several years. Never really worried about it, as the TV is above a fireplace mantel, and I didn't want to try mounting a center speaker. A few months ago I did mount a center speaker (VP150). I prefer this system with the center. Dialog is just better, and I do not find myself trying to hear people speaking.

As you don't give a F about what anyone thinks or wants, why'd you start this thread? Just do whatever the F you want.

Ooops!

Savage! Spoken like a Sir.

I remember that was the case back when we made the jump from VHS to DVD. Dolby Digital was great in it has such a limited bandwidth that the amount of data that they tried to run in the mixing stages really made the studios have to think. The center channel got filled mostly with voice data and it allowed for a point of separation between the ambiant sound effects ad dialog. You could even do great things like turn up +2~3db for the center channel if you were a bit more hard of hearing to get the voices to come through over badly mixed movies where they put too much levels onto the ambiant sound effects that would drown out the dialog.

But then came Bluray and the 7.1 TrueHD MA bla bla bla... where the amount of bandwith was pretty much a none issue so they studios could ram about everything into the mix and not even have to think about it. This turned the whole home theater into a big mess. They now would put just about everything into every channel with the thought that more is always better. So your sound effects started to be put into the center channel at levels that drown out the dialog because the same effects are also sent to the front Left & Right speakers too. Now the sound effects are more of a wall of sound and the Dialog is just coming from 1/3rd of the front speakers. You can't do the +2~3db on the center as that just makes the problem worse.

There was hope with the DTS-X in that was supposed to give us object oriented output for each effect.. one of which is dialog so you in theory could boost just that to give you something that you'd understand and could seperate it from the other movie noise. But that sandard seems to be dead.

Then we get into the problem of streaming. Here we are into sound that takes the back seat to bandwidth as it falls off the cliff into the abyis of compression to get the best picture in the smallest network packet. Again sadly most shows you get were not optimised for sttreaming so sound gets lost to where it is supposed to be coming out of. I found that 4.1 solves more of that problem as it at lest balances out the dialog with the rest so you can get a movie and show that is easier to watch.

But this is just my observations. And I have LFR speakers that help out with getting good sound from just two speakers.


have you ever heard of sarcasm??

Dolby Surround and DTS Neural:X both do what you are looking for with legacy content. Both Blurays and Netflix are handled very very well. BTW, Netflix now streams in ATMOS on some titles.

I hope no one else reads your experience and thinks you are right. You couldnt be more wrong on many of your points.

Sounds like there are serious issues with either your setup or room. You didnt listen to us when you were building it either....

Dolby Digital and DTS were each thoroughly crushed by their successors. Atmos and DTS:X are frankly incredible in a proper setup....

No point in helping you. Like talking to a tree. A tree that is always whining.

Oh, ouch! This is audio gentlemen!

Trevor,
5.1 and 7.1 sound great and will continue to fill a need for quite some time.
I've have both Atmos and 7.1 setups. I can assure you that Atmos has a long road before it kills its predecessors. This will take more movies exploiting the object based parts of Atmos rather than just remixing to use the Atmos bed surround.

Read his post.....

He has had issues with all the formats once the mixes became more dense. Something else is going on.

If I had to guess the decay times in his room are bananas long and more speakers sound worse no matter the format. But 2ch sounds fine...

Acoustics problem. Not a center channel problem. Never is.

Uhmmmmmm...my VP150v2 was an ear-sore that no room acoustics or processor could fix. Bless Ian and Andrew for the 160v4 and now the actives.

My friend is enjoying that 150 now. And every time he came over and listened to my 160, he'd realize what he was missing. Now the 160 is de-commissioned and he leaves my place depressed every time he hears the actives.