I've been thinking about this for a while. In order to have 5.1.2, I have to arrange my room in a specific way and it's a tight fit. If I enjoyed movies and multichannel music more I wouldn't mind this setup. Initially that's how I thought but now I'm getting sick of having this 5.1.2 setup. I watch a movie on my setup like every 3-4 months, I'm not much of a movie person like I used to.
My plan is to do a 3.1 setup. I'm debating if I'm gonna keep a sub in this setup, as I don't like using one. It's great for movies but for music, its terrible, no matter the XO setting. It does sound good with music when you send it a full range signal, it blends in much better but the program is with my receiver. if the sub gets a full signal, the front speakers get the signal too, which a waste of bass power. My towers, the polk S55's, are pretty great at doing bass. Most of the time I set them to -10db bass and they still bass well. When it comes to sub, my room is super terrible. The spot it's currently is terrible but the best. When I sit in my chair, I can only hear about 50% of its volume output, which means If I turn it up, the neighbor's are not gonna be happy.
I got a bit of the "audiophile overthinking" bug. I like playing uncompressed music on it. I always think of the "Direct" vs "Sub with DSP". I prefer the direct route than to play with a subwoofer with DSP. I know that, let's say you have a subwoofer and use tone controls. I know for a fact that any signal gets thrown in the "44.1khz digital chamber" unless you enable the pure direct. I know my receiver (Sony STR-DN1080) is heavily based off the Sony STR-ZA1100ES, which Amirm did a review of it a while back. Everybody knows if a speaker itself does bass it'll sound worse but I believe its the opposite with my receiver. It's either (for my receiver), add a sub, deal with the 44.1khz chamber, deal with more distortion-noise & supposedly since the towers don't do any bass work they'll sound better or do "pure direct", no sub, no 44.1khz digital chamber, less distortion-noise, but since the speakers do bass, they'll technically sound worse. If I had to pick, I would do the "pure direct" path then the DSP path. I truly never understood the "Get a sub BRO, It'll sound better BRO" (When it came to AVRs & music) unless your rocking a SVS PB16 or something like that.
Why keep a center when I'm mainly gonna do a stereo setup? Because I use the "Dolby Surround" DSP when watching YouTube and listening to some compressed music. I'm still gonna watch multi-channel movies/tv shows because a good chunk of them don't offer a 2 channel track. So might as well, keep the center, it doesn't take that much space for me.
Mainly I used the heights (Bookshelfs pointing down) because it worked well with the "Center Lift" feature. It really did make the center sound like it's coming from my TV's middle. I do like Dolby Atmos movies but a chunk of them don't offer a good DA experience unless it's the john wick movies. Will I miss the heights? Not that much, I don't mind the center sounding like it's coming from the bottom of the TV and I don't watch that much DA content.
I would like to know what you guys think.
My plan is to do a 3.1 setup. I'm debating if I'm gonna keep a sub in this setup, as I don't like using one. It's great for movies but for music, its terrible, no matter the XO setting. It does sound good with music when you send it a full range signal, it blends in much better but the program is with my receiver. if the sub gets a full signal, the front speakers get the signal too, which a waste of bass power. My towers, the polk S55's, are pretty great at doing bass. Most of the time I set them to -10db bass and they still bass well. When it comes to sub, my room is super terrible. The spot it's currently is terrible but the best. When I sit in my chair, I can only hear about 50% of its volume output, which means If I turn it up, the neighbor's are not gonna be happy.
I got a bit of the "audiophile overthinking" bug. I like playing uncompressed music on it. I always think of the "Direct" vs "Sub with DSP". I prefer the direct route than to play with a subwoofer with DSP. I know that, let's say you have a subwoofer and use tone controls. I know for a fact that any signal gets thrown in the "44.1khz digital chamber" unless you enable the pure direct. I know my receiver (Sony STR-DN1080) is heavily based off the Sony STR-ZA1100ES, which Amirm did a review of it a while back. Everybody knows if a speaker itself does bass it'll sound worse but I believe its the opposite with my receiver. It's either (for my receiver), add a sub, deal with the 44.1khz chamber, deal with more distortion-noise & supposedly since the towers don't do any bass work they'll sound better or do "pure direct", no sub, no 44.1khz digital chamber, less distortion-noise, but since the speakers do bass, they'll technically sound worse. If I had to pick, I would do the "pure direct" path then the DSP path. I truly never understood the "Get a sub BRO, It'll sound better BRO" (When it came to AVRs & music) unless your rocking a SVS PB16 or something like that.
Why keep a center when I'm mainly gonna do a stereo setup? Because I use the "Dolby Surround" DSP when watching YouTube and listening to some compressed music. I'm still gonna watch multi-channel movies/tv shows because a good chunk of them don't offer a 2 channel track. So might as well, keep the center, it doesn't take that much space for me.
Mainly I used the heights (Bookshelfs pointing down) because it worked well with the "Center Lift" feature. It really did make the center sound like it's coming from my TV's middle. I do like Dolby Atmos movies but a chunk of them don't offer a good DA experience unless it's the john wick movies. Will I miss the heights? Not that much, I don't mind the center sounding like it's coming from the bottom of the TV and I don't watch that much DA content.
I would like to know what you guys think.