Quick question for you guys who have used Atmos speakers. When does the sound come out of them? is it like, part of the surround, or do they play continually?
What HiFi on Atmos: "Atmos is a surround-sound technology that was originally developed in 2012. It expands upon the current 5.1 and 7.1 surround-sound set-ups with surround channels coming from overhead. Speakers have been placed along walls (at all heights) and even behind the screen itself, but the crucial point about Atmos is that you can place speakers in the ceiling, enveloping the audience in a dome of sound. Up to 400 speakers can be used in the top Dolby Atmos cinemas, but in a domestic environment it's unlikely you'll have the room (or the desire) to house such a system." Your living room is going to be a bit cramped (apparently, .2 and .4 setups add a pair and 2 pairs of ceiling speakers respectively)
Sennheiser sell a soundbar that is supposed to do good job of simulsting atmos but, it is very large and, I believe, costs around £2500.
When you’re playing something with an atmos (or dtsx or auro) track, they’re effectively discrete channels. When you’re up-mixing anything else, YMMV, but they’re generally on ambient, atmospheric and environmental sound duty.
Thanks. Just thinking maybe run a pre out of one of the power amps into another amp. I'd like to extend the centre really. Most of what I watch is on youtube and I only get sound from there. I can get a 7.1 decoder board for about £50. I can pass through the optical into the AV32 and then use the extra two channels into my 60i too (from the decoder board). As long as I've got something to plan and think about I'm fine. Now what I'd like to do is get a transmission line cabinet cnc, and put something like one of those 8" focal hemp drivers in it and then use the 100p for that. But yeah, plenty of brain food for me any way.
the psu is hypex smps 1200a180 sound wise i cant compare them to my nc400s which power my lcr ( MK sound S150s) and completely different speakers at my pc which is a very old M&K 5 channel surround sound bar, i tried it via mobo sound to amp and it sounded good via the stx the stx 2 its sounds just so much better much better than i remember it to have been when i used it for movie viewing years ago. it has got me thinking weather i should just go with ucd180 for my surround and atmos speakers i was planning on ucd400s but hypex support say 180s should be more than enough. gotta say the 180s run so cold the modushop case i used is over kill like mister tad says its ambient sound really honestly apart from the odd action movie console some console games tend to make better use of it. bit over kill but could a sound card be run off a egpu case? i just dont like having the stx 2 daughter board duck taped to the back of my case
Atmos is a sound format, not a speaker configuration - an Atmos-capable receiver/processor maps objects from the soundtrack onto whatever speaker configuration you have. I.e. if a sound in a film comes from up-and-a-bit-to-the-left, the processor figures out, based on whatever speaker configuration you've told it you have, which speakers the sound needs to come from to sound like it's coming from up-and-a-bit-to-the-left. So you'll need an Atmos-capable receiver, at least two speakers above head-height, content with an atmos sountrack and a device capable of outputting it (or up-mixing) to enjoy Atmos. Anything else is just putting speakers on your ceiling for the sake of it. Not been tempted to swap things over for experimentation's sake? I've been deeply impressed with the humble UcD102 in a Powernode 2i I have for some ceiling speakers... a 2ohm load!
Yeah I have the gist of how it works. I was thinking aloud... I can add 7.1 (well, the extra 2) to the system with a decoder board. Whether that is worth it? I doubt it. I don't watch many movies, hence the idea about connecting another amp to the output of one. Specifically the centre speaker, because I do watch a crap ton of Youtube and it only comes out of the centre. Maybe when some nasty music is playing will the rest kick in, but I find it a bit disappointing for most of what I watch. So, the idea is to basically "extend" the centre purely for when I watch Youtube. IE, piggy back the amps, connect some more speakers to one amp, then basically turn it off when I am not watching Youtube or listening to music. TBH this system was not built for movies. If it did not have PL Music II I doubt it would even exist as it does now. As soon as I heard that (and some true DTS music CDs a friend sent to me as WAV, that play in PL Movie II) I doubt I would have gone as far. It is primarily for music, with Youtube and maybe one movie a week if that.
IMO 7.1 is no better than 5.1 unless you have the space to spread the speakers out some. I tried 7.1 for a while, but it sounded so much like 5.1 the extra visual mess was just.. not worth it.
Dodgy mains noise resolved... ish. Still have noisy mains coming in. Have a heap of electrical work on the house shortly including whole-house noise & surge suppression and a dedicated circuit for the media room, however given standalone power conditioners/filters did nothing to alleviate the issue we're not expecting that to be any different. These are nice units, effectively an online UPS sans battery and tweaked for quiet running (they're effectively silent), and give a rock solid, noise free 230/50 output with none of the buzz/hum straight from the wall. And the best bit about them is they're priced like a UPS and not like a hi-fi mains regenerator.
Good news with the initial noise suppression. Have you got to the bottom of the wildly varying 'mains' voltage?
Sorta... we've not seen any crazy-high voltage again and the working theory is my cut-price multimeter is just a bit unreliable reading AC voltage. The readings since have been more sensible, though still hot - it varies throughout the day from high 230s to low 250s, but never high enough that it's out of tolerance to get the national grid out. The existing wiring in the house with the exception of the garage lighting circuit is all tickety boo, but the wiring in the consumer unit is a rats nest - around 40 circuits on 18 breakers, so a bunch are doubled and tripled up. It's nothing unsafe or "wrong", but it's certainly not right and that won't help anything and it's getting replaced with a couple of full RCBO boards, so that should address any change in voltage throughout the house. And also address the regular tripping we've had since the vast majority of the sockets are on the right side of a split RCD board, with pretty much only lighting on the left. There is an old electromechanical meter that's still powered and a chance that that's causing the noise, and it will be removed as well - it's an outside chance, but a chance none the less. One of the reasons for having the media room on a dedicated circuit opens up the possibility of putting an 8-10kva UPS in the garage out of the way to feed it in future if needs must, but for now these units seem to do the trick with no (or no noticeable) constraints on headroom or dynamic range with my current gear, and my next amps will definitely be Class-D so should also be largely immune to poor mains quality.
100p came today. Will get it out for an inspection later. Decided to get some very high end speakers for the front. These will be my forever speakers. Revel M105. Got a very good deal on them tbh. The speakers I wanted were out of stock, at their sale price of £1099. I didn't fancy paying two grand, nor could I.
Wicked Found my uncle's old CD player (he died in 1998). I put it in the loft in 07 when my cousin gave it to me. Just gave it a good clean up, cleaned the insides and greased the tray mech. Thing fired right up and started playing the CD that was in it lol. Bonus is it's optical too !
Damn you Focal, how am I supposed to save money for a new iPhone, when you tempt me with these? https://www.whathifi.com/news/focal-looks-to-build-on-its-headphones-success-with-stunning-celestee
They look nice. @Vault-Tec I got my original CD63 out in the summer and repaired it - there's something about old CD players.
