I work only a few miles from Smart Devices' facility, and I was able to purchase one of their unit when it still had the "EX" logo on it. I had an extra speaker and an unused channel on my amplifier so the only cost was for the device itself. I will say up front that the center surround channel is not worth reworking your entire system at thousands of dollars of expense, but I you are like me and the costs are minimal go for it. With respect to the smart devices unit it has a disadvantage in that there is no way of remotely controling the unit and it will never be able to lock on a an "EX" encoded signal (via a digital flag soon to be encluded on the DVD of such movies). However I think that it is superior to the THX EX units in that it uses the circle surround method of deriving the center surround channel. The DPL method of matrix decoding is essentially center channel oriented. This means that if you present the processor with a Lt/Rt signal, it will collapse the signal to the center channel until a hard right or left signal is detected. Circle Surround works the opposite. It leaves the signal in the left and right channel until a hard center signal is detected. This makes the the Smart Devices unit a better choice for non-EX movies since it does not destroy the stereo seperation in the rear as THX EX decoding would. For this reason THX/Dolby recommends using EX only on movies specifically encoded as such. Smart Devices works well on many 5.1 movies. In fact, the lack of a remote is not an issue to me since I always listen to DD/DTS movies in 6.1. If you get the unit try "The Matrix". This movie really shines in 6.1
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- 3 posts total
- 3 posts total