2. home-theater
  3. 190110-176497

What is the Current Guidance on Stereo and AV Configurations

Hi,

I would really appreciate anyone's guidance and council on as to how you have your stereo and AV setups configured. I am particularly looking at the options from Primare as they seem to have a solution that can fit both use cases in a single system (SP25 Prisma + a35.8).

I have two primary questions:

  1. Knowing that perfection is never going to be achieved, can a single configuration be damned good enough for both use cases?
  2. How much of a difference does a center channel make for video?

 

My needs are best summed up as follows:

  • 80/20 use split (80 video (mostly streamed) and 20 music).
  • Currently running a NAIM integrated amp, paired with Vienna Acoustic speakers (simple, minimal and I like the sound, and the look, a lot).
  • My room space is open-plan, concrete floors and two walls of glass (yup -not exactly idea) and room treatment is going to be minimal. The two of us like the minimalist aesthetic.
  • IF the center channel makes enough difference I would like to flip between 2.0 (audio) and 3.0 (video) configurations.

 

Thank you.

kaizen28

Showing 1 response by erik_squires

erik_squires
16,554 posts
 

Hi OP,

 

Sorry for just now jumping in here. I think there’s at least a small part here I can help you with:

  1. How much of a difference does a center channel make for video?

My first real jobs were centered around motion picture sound systems, and I recently built my second center channel speaker.

If all you are asking is whether you should go from 2.0 to 3.0 I’d say no, with some caveats. Originally center speakers in theaters were needed because of the wide variety of listening positions. Customers could be very close to the screen but at extreme left or right angles. Among the goals of Dolby Surround (later called ProLogic and then again Dolby Surround for homes) was making sure the dialogue and center effects stayed in the center, in addition to adding surround effects tracks.

Along the same lines of thinking, I recommend a center as important when you have a variety of seating positions (which I do) and your screen is particularly large / speakers are very far apart relative to the screen.

I watch a lot of Netflix as well as Amazon prime and DVD/BD movies. One weird artifact of switching among these services is I discovered that my Anthem MRX 540 absolutely will NOT use the center channel for 2.0 Dolby Digital signals, and there are a lot of Netflix foreign series encoded like this. It DOES use the center for 2.0 PCM / non DD however, which most other streaming services have. Anyway, point is, despite my best efforts as I switch around from Netflix and Amazon sometimes the center is working and sometimes it is not and I can’t really hear a difference unless I’m off axis.

In your case, without an integrated capable of HT bypass I’d say absolutely not worth it.

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