5.1 Surround Will Suffice

Moderator: News Team

Post Reply
Derek
Site Admin
Posts: 2489
Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2002 3:55 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

5.1 Surround Will Suffice

Post by Derek »

Mark Fleischmann wrote:In film exhibition, 6.1- and 7.1-channel systems make sense. At home, however, 5.1 channels are quite enough. It’s easy to generate a solid soundfield in a small space with three speakers in front and two on the rear of the side walls. To me it’s self-evidently nonsensical to have four surround speakers outnumbering the three in front.
:arrow: http://news.designtechnica.com/talkback103.html
-Derek
davd_bob
Confused
Posts: 1043
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2004 2:30 am
Location: Houston, TX

Post by davd_bob »

Gosh,
Im still stuck in the era when a person used his imiagination more then his sences. I can read a book and hear better sound then any sound system will ever put out.
purrkur
Linux Guru
Posts: 687
Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2003 5:57 pm
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Post by purrkur »

Good article. I remember when 2.1 systems hit the market. Removing the subwoofer from the main speakers was all the rage, and it made sense. Take the subwoofer and move it out of the way, use small satellite speakers but have big sound. Then came 4.1, the first "real" surround with a speaker in each corner. This made sense too. The next big step was 5.1. You just had to have that center speaker as well. This too, made sense and to me this is the best type of surround setup for the home.

6.1 and 7.1 are marketing hypes, and as Fleischmann mentions, not really supported on most DVD's. I hate going over to peoples houses and seeing those systems set up in an environment where no thought has been given to speaker placement or sound reproduction. People automatically think that 6.1 or 7.1 is better because it is *more*. My advice to people has been that they should buy a 5.1 system, deal with less wires and set their living room up to suit a surround system (think about speaker placement, make sure that some carpets and curtains are in the living room to get rid of harsh echoing sounds etc). A correctly set up 5.1 system will sound *much* better than a poorly set up 6.1 or 7.1 system. So I am with Flesichmann on this one (even though his reasoning is a bit different from mine).
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
640MB PC100 memory
Realtek RTL-8139 NIC
Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB hdd
Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
jaybird
Posts: 301
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2002 9:21 pm

Post by jaybird »

The only reason I went to a Chaintek 7.1 card was because of the issues I was having with drivers from Creative and the fact that they will not support win2k and 5.1. (plus it was only $29.95 USD!)

OBTW, sound QUALITY is MUCH better than my SBLive Platinum 5.1, I hear things that I never heard on the SBLive with the same recordings!

Regards,

jaybird
Post Reply