Anyone else just not bothered by home theatre?

[soundwave76]

I don't care about home theaters. I do want a good sound of my TV and I am perfectly happy with my pair of Genelec 8340. I do need to buy a bigger TV though, but then I need to get smaller Genelecs or a soundbar which both don't appeal...

 

[Sal1950]

Charlie Ergen (sp?) at Dish was big on al a carte service. Offered it for a few years when they started.

I had Dish Net for many years, from the earliest days when I bought my gear at the local HiFi shop and installed it myself. They were by far the best provider for many years. Pricing and customer service were the best. I remember watching the early "Charlie Chats" eagerly awaiting things like HD and DVRs.. Like most other good deals they never last too long.

The whole idea of just sitting there listening to a pair of speakers is utterly mystifying to me.

The whole idea of just sitting there listening to only a pair of speakers when you could have 5 or more mystifies me.

Videos of musicians actually performing are OK for me.

I have quite a few concerts on disc but usually only "watch" them a few times, I rip the multich soundtracks and listen to that file often later on.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I don't care about home theaters. I do want a good sound of my TV and I am perfectly happy with my pair of Genelec 8340. I do need to buy a bigger TV though, but then I need to get smaller Genelecs or a soundbar which both don't appeal...

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Take that picture off the wall, and you have plenty of room for a bigger TV.

BTW, you probably could shoot a projector right onto that wall without using a screen.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I had Dish Net for many years, from the earliest days when I bought my gear at the local HiFi shop and installed it myself. They were by far the best provider for many years. Pricing and customer service were the best. I remember watching the early "Charlie Chats" eagerly awaiting things like HD and DVRs.. Like most other good deals they never last too long.

Yes, I installed my first Dish too. Was working an evening shift, picked it up on the way to work. Actually put it up that night. Aligned it carefully with a compass after leveling the mount super carefully. Turned it on with an upper 80% signal level and didn't touch it again for years. Called to activate it about 3 am. The operator sounded asleep, and said give her a minute to boot up the computer. Ten minutes later I had service.

What was the show that was on? Gilligan's Island on TVLand. Pretty funny.

Still seemed like real magic at the time. The future was really here.

Which reminds me, you could get local channels or network feeds if your local affiliate ok'd it. The only one that didn't was Public TV (PBS). I had donated to them for years. They wouldn't allow it. I called the station manager, no go, I told him you are messing up. I've contributed to you for more than a decade, and this will be the end of it. He wouldn't budge, told me satellite TV would never catch on anyway just use my aerial. I was in a poor reception area. The local PBS station never got another cent from me and never will. That was probably 25 years ago.

 

[SimpleTheater]

I wonder if there's a generational aspect to this. The whole idea of just sitting there listening to a pair of speakers is utterly mystifying to me.

I'm firmly in the camp of enjoying great TV and movies. I'm continually amazed how many sound editors are hard at work putting small ques into surround speakers, like background conversations while at a bar. It gives you the feeling of being at the table next to the main characters listening to their conversation. Having a beer while watching just adds that much more pleasure to the scene.

That said, I'm a child of the 1980's and listening to an amazing piece of music for 45 minute to an hour is something I try to do once a week. When two-channel music is done right (both from the quality of the setup, quality of the music, quality of the recording) it can definitely transport you to a different place.

 

[JEntwistle]

I could never hear dialogue to my satisfaction until 3 way center coupled with Anthem ARC.

I agree with this, and it is a problem. I should have said that I lost interest in all the bells and whistles and just want to hear things, not have the full immersion offered with surround systems.

I have a Yamaha sound bar - the one that is deep enough so you put your TV on top of it - that is incredible for dialogue. Everything is so clear; it is amazing, really, for that purpose. But it is is horrible for music. I don't have the space for this anymore, so it is not set up and I have lost some dialogue clarity capability.

 

[JEntwistle]

"Music videos" are for YouTube clicks now. There's the occasional decent live DVD/Blu-Ray release, but that's like watching a movie - surround sound and everything. I assume you all are reading a book or something while listening to these two channel screen-less systems?

I wonder if there's a generational aspect to this. The whole idea of just sitting there listening to a pair of speakers is utterly mystifying to me.

Sometimes I want background music while I do other things, but sometimes I do enjoy "just sitting there listening"! It is the magic and conundrum of stereo - I can't explain why I care about 2.0 music but don't care about surround sound audio for TV viewing, but that is the case.

 

[MattHooper]

I'm firmly in the camp of enjoying great TV and movies. I'm continually amazed how many sound editors are hard at work putting small ques into surround speakers, like background conversations while at a bar. It gives you the feeling of being at the table next to the main characters listening to their conversation. Having a beer while watching just adds that much more pleasure to the scene.

Glad someone notices (I do sound design for tv and film).

There is a crazy amount of work that goes in to movie making, even just from the point of view of a sound editor. From my perspective this is both a golden age and a stone age in terms of this work being appreciated by the audience. On one hand people have access to theater-like sound if they want, setting up full surround systems to hear all the detail. I have a projection set up with surround at home and it never fails to blow my mind that I can have this at home.

On the other, most people now watch movies on teeny ipads, phones and laptops with crappy sound, and that's mighty depressing when you know how much went in to the product.

 

[blueone]

On the other, most people now watch movies on teeny ipads, phones and laptops with crappy sound, and that's mighty depressing when you know how much went in to the product.

I must be really out of touch. I don't know anyone who watches videos like that, except on an airplane. On the other hand, most young people I know listen to music only on headphones and ear buds/pods.

 

[MattHooper]

I must be really out of touch. I don't know anyone who watches videos like that, except on an airplane.

You are out of touch ;-)

Even the rest of my family - wife, and sons 18 and 21 - watch much of their movie content, often from netflix - on their laptops and sometimes ipad.
And we have a big home theater room! Most of my kid's friends seem to watch that way too. My brother in law is a computer techy and he and his wife are always watching movies on his laptop. He sees a movie like Interstellar or Gravity and tells me "meh, it was alright I guess." And of course, he's watched it on a bloody little laptop! No wonder!

 

[Thomas savage]

Me , i used to always have a 5.1 system and a hifi but somehow found the sound overwhelmed the screen and it all became a pita with separate amps and all those wires .

For me a good 2.1 for TV is fine , much better than the TV speaker or a sound bar . I don't get anything more from films with surround .

For me it was a bit like 3D TVs , iv got one .. used it for a bit but probably haven't for 4 years or more.

 

[NgtFlyer]

So, I DO have a 5.1 system in my living room based on a Denon AVR-1317 receiver. It serves well for watching movies. That system sees very occasional use but mostly it sits. I also have a two channel Onkyo amplifier that drives a separate pair of Infinity RS4b speakers for music listening. Because it just sounds better.

The system that gets the most use for music is my office system. Based on a brand new NAD C368 integrated amp, my source is my desktop PC. Audio is served up via TOSLINK from the desktop to the amp (I prefer TOSLINK since it isolates the computer from the audio). I have a pair of ELAC Debut 2.0 B6 speakers and it all just sounds fantastic. This system is on most of the time, especially lately given current times.

So for movies and well mixed concerts, I like my 5.1 setup. For music, 2.0 all day long.

 

[MattHooper]

Me , i used to always have a 5.1 system and a hifi but somehow found the sound overwhelmed the screen and it all became a pita with separate amps and all those wires .

Yes, I believe you made a comment before about wanting the scale of the sound to match the scale of the image.

I've always felt the same way. I remember when surround/home theater sound started getting popular even before flat screens became popular. So I'd see demos in stores (or at a friend' place) of Gladiator using a modest sized CRT tube set, but being surrounded by these huge floor standing speakers. The sound was amazing, like I was IN an almost life-sized battle, but meanwhile I'm watching these tiny toy-sized figures running around on a small screen. It just felt like such a mismatch it dissociated the sound from the image in my mind. I still find this when I see home theater set ups with the average flat screen, but the audio enthusiast has floor standing speakers, double subwoofers flanking the screen, and big surround speakers. It's just doesn't gel for me.

So I've always chosen my speaker system to match the scale of the image. When I bought a 42" plasma long ago I chose little Spendor s3/5s to flank the TV and the scale of the sound seemed to mesh beautifully.

When I designed a projection based home theater room I was able to increase the size/frequency response of the speakers to scale to that image, but even then I tried to scale right to image size. And to my mind the scale of my home theater sound matches perfectly with the image size.

One's MMV of course with these things...

 

[Wes]

"Music videos" are for YouTube clicks now. There's the occasional decent live DVD/Blu-Ray release, but that's like watching a movie - surround sound and everything. I assume you all are reading a book or something while listening to these two channel screen-less systems?

I wonder if there's a generational aspect to this. The whole idea of just sitting there listening to a pair of speakers is utterly mystifying to me.

Youtube versions don't seem to have the SQ of the few music videos I have on disc - e.g. Stop Making Sense

 

[Promit]

Youtube versions don't seem to have the SQ of the few music videos I have on disc - e.g. Stop Making Sense

No normal person calls that a music video. That is a movie, or "film" if you prefer.

 

[Cbdb2]

Do you listen to stereo in mono? Then why would you listen to something mixed in 5.1 in stereo. Whats doing the downmix? Not as easy as stereo to mono. If your not in the middle the dialogue comes from the side. The dialogue gets the middle speaker almost to itself Not mixed in with the music, fx, so its clearer. There are some beautiful film scores mixed in 5.1, thats how I want to hear them.

 

[tuga]

Take that picture off the wall, and you have plenty of room for a bigger TV.

BTW, you probably could shoot a projector right onto that wall without using a screen.

Shouldn't the TV be at or below eye-level?

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Shouldn't the TV be at or below eye-level?

Not eye-level but at line-of-sight.

 

[MattHooper]

I've always felt that viewing a movie display is optimized by the eyes being in line with the middle of the screen - in other words viewing the screen in the center rather than off angle. This creates the most potential for immersion. Then you are seeing all the geometry/depth cues from the angle captured by the camera lens, making them "most correct" looking, whereas viewing from off-angle introduces distortion that cues you more to "viewing a flat image from an angle."

When I set up my projection screen I made sure to maintain this viewing angle. Images with strong depth cues can almost feel like you can walk in to the image!

 

[DDF]

Upmixing gets thumbs down from most quarters and Neo and Dolby upmixers do usually sound goofy.

However, the hall effects processing (not the same as upmixing) on the Yami 5.1 is glorious while watching the many free classical stereo youtube videos that symphonies are pumping out these days.

Not "high end" by accepted standards (lossy coder and all) but sooo enjoyable and engaging in a realistic way that highly refined (great detail safari hunt!) stereo approaches could never be. Hard to appreciate if you haven't tried it properly set up.