Hello,

I'm considering buying a 1050 and wanted to ask for opinions/advice.

I'm on a limited budget (aren't we all). And the 1050 is certainly going to blow the greatest portion of the budget. Given that my purchases will need to be one-component-at-a-time affairs I have a couple of questions.

(1) For the moment, my speaker collection is a pair of bookshelf speakers currently hooked up to my old pro-logic receiver. I have checked the specs and they will have no problem operating with the 1050. However, since the 1050 has digital coax inputs, I fully intend to connect the 1050 to the DVD player using this method. If I inform the 1050 that I only have 2 speakers (via speaker setup) but transfer 5.1 Dolby Digital Sound into the receiver, will the sound be acceptable? improved over stereo? Eventually the system will be fleshed out with additional speakers but initially I will only have the stereo pair, and I'm wondering what this might sound like.

(2) This should probably go in the speaker forum but since I'm already posting...I'm wondering whether for surround sound in general it is better to purchase speakers as a package deal (and spend less money on more speakers) versus purchasing a pair at a time and ending up with higher quality speaker in the end. I've done a lot of reading and many people seem to comment about the importance of timbre-matching. I guess the question boils down to whether less expensive timbre-matched speakers are better than more-expensive non-timbre-matched speakers.

Thanks for any and all opinions.
Todd Garrison
t-garrison@runbox.com

(1) With only two speakers, your best bet would be to not do any surround decoding (leave the receiver on "stereo" all the time) -- that way the receiver should basically mimic what your current pro-logic receiver is doing. Telling the 1050 that you don't have any speakers except mains will probably do this anyway, actually (I've never actually tried it). It will not add much or any "surround" sound to the listening experience, although you will likely notice improvements in sound in general. My experience with the 1050 was interesting and somewhat atypical -- I noticed an immediate improvement in sound over my old pro-logic receiver, but I also started to be able to better recognize the limitations in my existing speakers (which were Bose Acoustimass, so the limitations were significant -- the gap between the bass module's top end at 200Hz and the cubes' low end at 280Hz was easier to recognize, as was the cubes' ~13kHz cutoff). Your bookshelf speakers may not sound a whole lot better than they do now, but they won't sound any worse either.

(2) Because of the 1050's popularity in the budget home theater realm, there seem to be a lot of 1050's hooked up to ~$1000 speaker bundles (Energy Take 5.2, some Boston Acoustics sets, some Klipsch sets, and the others that show up in the speaker forum). If you've already got a pair of bookshelves and plan to upgrade slowly, though, you might want to look at adding speakers a piece at a time and investing more in them if the budget will allow it. I think most of the folks around here prefer to have "matched" speakers all the way around, but that can still be accomplished without buying everything at once. The best bet in this scenario would be to do a bunch of shopping around -- actually listening to some of the options available to you once you get a feel for what you want to spend eventually -- and decide what manufacturer and model you like most. Demo some out in your home, ideally; the good shops should allow that. Then start buying a piece at a time. I'd probably get the main speakers first and move the existing bookshelves to surround; the 1050 can be set up with the center channel info sent to the mains (what was called "phantom" center on pro-logic receivers) until you get a center. The center would probably be second, followed at some point by matching surrounds. Probably tuck a sub in there somewhere, but that doesn't necessarily have to be from the same manufacturer as everything else. That still gets you the matched speakers all the way around and may allow you to invest more in your speakers.

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Gonk

I'm anxiously awaiting my 1050 to show up today... so here's my take.

You didn't mention what brand your speakers are, but from what I've seen, the 1050 gets out of the way and plays the sounds pure and true...meaning, your speakers will never have sounded so good.

I'd just leave the receiver set to stereo.. the only reason to switch on the surround is to divy the sound over more than 2 speakers.

As far as timbre-matching, it's worth it to match your front with the center channel, and to have the surrounds match each other. My surrounds don't match the front's AT ALL, but I'm sure it will sound just fine for movies, and with music, I run 2-channel anyway.

I'd look on the website for the company that makes your speakers, and find out what matches your fronts. I've pieced my speakers together, and wound up with very high quality sound... It's like buying tires for your car.. It's the last link in the chain, and the most important, since they are really what you're listening to.

I'd basically like to ditto the previous responses, borne out by recent experience setting up a HT system with the 1050. Based on store advice I bought mains and a center of the same brand that were supposedly matched and this sounds fine. I've been experimenting with 2 different surround pairs of a different brand to pick one and both sound fine. One pair is the same brand as the fronts and supposedly match them. The other is a different brand that were just recommended as good surrounds without any consideration of matching the fronts. Bottom line...I can't make out any significant difference in the overall sound changing out the rears. It seems this is because there's much less sound from any source going through the rear channel than comes from the mains and center. I'd agree at this point that matching the rears to the fronts probably doesn't matter that much, and using your current mains as the rear pair in a new system makes a lot of sense. Then when you're ready buy rears that fit your budget and space because there's every chance that whatever you put back there will sound fine. But first, if you can use your current mains in the rear, put money toward a sub, as this will make much more of a difference in overall HT experience.

dave

Thanks to all for the very helpful comments. One more question? Can someone point me in a direction which will give some information on the differences between DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1? Obviously both are 5+ channel sound sources. My current DVD player will only extract DD 5.1 and so I will be using that for the moment. But I'm wondering what the improvement is with DTS. Higher bit rate? sample frequency?

Thanks for all of the help
Todd

Hello,
On the dts website:http://www.dtsonline.com they explain the differences between the 2 formats and about the biggest is compression. Dts is not compressed and DD is it said something like DD takes up 1/3 the space because it is compressed. Wether or no you can hear the difference or not I think is if they spent more time to master one or the other like for a special edition. I have the Saving Pvt. Ryan dts version and like it a lot and find myself buying the dts loaded DVDs when available. Though I have never done a proper test to tell the difference.
If you use the digital output to the 1050 you should get dts. The dvd players decoding ability is bypassed at that point. The 1050 is probably better at decoding anyways.
m-mmeyer




[This message has been edited by m-mmeyer (edited December 30, 2001).]