Optimized Center Channel


Many years ago, I bought a seven channel AV receiver and speakers and voila!  home theatre.  No matter that my room layout is far from optimal or the equipment was more mainstream than high end.  Pop in a Blu-Ray and the system came to life.  My system is now 7.2.4 with very good electronics, and despite technology improvements and investment in better equipment, my home theatre experience leaves me wanting just a bit.  Don’t get me wrong, my system is very, very good, and I can hear Atmos at work much of the time, albeit limited by the audio track and ability of my processor to enhance it.  However, it’s not like sitting in an IMAX theatre and having your visual and auditory senses titillated.  But hey—my space isn’t the best and can’t change, my screen does not go from wall to wall, and I don’t have megawatts going into mega speakers and subwoofers placed all around the listening space to bombard me.

 

As DVDs have effectively disappeared, my HT entertainment is brought into my home via streaming.  I attempted to maximize the process with ethernet to fiber converters, a high-end network switch, a highly modified Apple TV-X streaming box, and quality electronics and cables.  Not the best money can buy (that’s not me or my budget) but pretty darned good.

 

HT constitutes 85% of my entertainment time, the remainder is audio.  The audio side of my house has dramatically improved since I first dipped my toe into those waters.  My latest and hopefully one of the last improvements on the audio side is a new amplifier, a Coda 16, which replaced a McIntosh MC152.  I really enjoyed the Mac, but the Coda is another level altogether (at triple the price, it better be).  The clarity, soundstage and power of the Coda puts a smile on my face every time I sit down for a listen.  It has also added considerable weight, punch and presence to my HT experience driving the front L/R speakers.  The dramatic improvement on the audio side made me wonder…

 

My hearing is nowhere near what it used to be, actors don’t enunciate, I watch too many shows from the UK (I suspect the problem is reversed when they watch American shows) and the dialog is not optimally recorded.  As a result, I have subtitles on all the time.  Surely there is a better way.  Thus, and finally, my question to you in the Audigon HT community: how to overcome the dialog dilemma.  Is a dedicated high-end/ audio quality amplifier to drive the all-important center channel the answer?  My Marantz AV10 processor is by no means shabby, but do the Storms, Trinnovs or Lyngdorfs of the world smooth dialog’s rough edges?  My center speaker is a Focal Kanta 2 connected to one of the three 300-watt outputs on an Emotiva XPA-11 Gen 3 amplifier.

 

I appreciate learning how others live with, or have overcome, the dialog issue.  Thanks for your time and input,

Robert

traubr

Showing 3 responses by sunshdw

@traubr  I’d like to point out two things that others have mentioned and my feedback.

First off, you’re using a modded appletv to stream. The file you’re hearing is compressed heavily in the audio department and you lose a lot of the info. It doesn’t matter what’s been done to the AppleTV and all it’s doing is polishing a turd. I have demoed that very claim hundreds of times to clients by playing a movie clip on an AppleTV then that same clip using a bluray disk and a cheap bluray player. 

Second - I would strongly suggest utilizing the Dirac feature. You mentioned the price of the mic, the MiniDSP UMIK1 is around $80. Considering you bought a highly modded AppleTV, $80 is pretty cheap. With that said, Dirac has a ton of really great tools and if you’re not comfortable in diving into them all I would suggest hiring someone that can help you. There are a ton of options of dirac wiz kids that can even work on your system remotely which works out too. 

If you are wanting to get the very best audio and video out of your system and still stream, there’s only one option and that’s from a company called Kaleidescape. Their files are a true 1 to 1 bit rate to the original. Below is a link to their player, scroll about half way down and you’ll see a graph comparing an appletv to their file. I’d suggest finding a dealer close and look into it further if you’re interested.

https://www.kaleidescape.com/strato-movie-players/

 

@traubr  Yeah, a few years ago it was a ton to get into them but they've realized that very issue and have changed a lot over the last 5yrs or so. It's still more than an AppleTV or Roku Ultra but it's come way down.

I'm looking at the UMIK on their site and it says $79USD 

https://www.minidsp.com/products/acoustic-measurement/umik-1?srsltid=AfmBOopAVVXgBp45fXOVZa-V8440l3TbZk55GhKebtJaSJ1xUyd99vnB

@mm1tt77 Yes I am versed in KScape, it's a fantastic product. You would correct that in the cases of a stream only movie or TV show so, no, the KScape wouldn't work. 

KScape isn't an app based product like an AppleTV. Meaning you don't loads apps onto it in order to access content, they are direct to the content. Here's a link to their store if you want to look around at what movies and tv stuff they have.

https://www.kaleidescape.com/movie-store/

You can rent or buy whatever they have so functionally it works like Apple+ or Prime or whatever else. 

There's a lot to it and I could go on and on but I'll spare the boredom :-)