w0000000000000000000000000000000000000t. this is so insane. I watched Cellular and what can I say, when glass breaks I FEEL IT. just had to say w00t because this is so cool.
Wow i have to watch movies on a crappy tv with stereo sound lol at least it has a "sub woofer" mode ... Nothin' beats a home theatre set up, no space for one though ..
no room is ever to small, my room is quite small about 8 feet 6 feet but that didn't stop me from shoving in a 700watt home theatre. My Specs for my "Computer Speakers" Amp: Sony STR-DRE697 7.1 700 Watts Speakers: Yamaha NS-P106 6.1 Speakers 100Watts per Channel (Yes i know they aren't great, but it was all i could afford) Soundcard: HITEC X-Mystique 7.1 PUmping out 5.1 Dolby Digital AC3 Sound 24/7 I love it to peices the sub is pertty powerful seeing as it's also rated at 100watts and is a 10" sub
watt rating means little in reality. you will find the more you spend the greater the volume to a point and the control over the sound at raised level. high end wise large watts means lots of omph and presence not volume. you want to check the sensitivity of the speakers and match these to you amp if volume is what your looking for.
they sound good enough for me and i am not looking at spending 1000's of bucks on a stereo, sorry just not THAT important to me. They work pretty decently. Becuase honestly i am not going to really notice much of a difference. well personally that is. And yes i am aware that your an audio purist and to each there own, i just don't see any benefit for me. Guess i don't listen to music enough eh.
@ patato, you got any ideas how i can go about setting mine up mate? ive got a sound pressure meter but im a bit lost with how to go about doing it all
I love my setup. bigger then a pc set but still small enough to move up to college with.. Although it does take a bit of packing tallent.. Only need a new DVD player now. This one well ok is starting to zap.. the sync is going i thing or something.. well it is 4 years old and was a cheep thing to begin with so o well water under the bridge
dont take it personally, i just saw you referencing watts and volume thought i would explain it for you, wasnt a dig at your system. musics about enjoyement not the price of the system (honest )
don't worry, i don;t take much of anything to personal, i just thought i would point out the wattage rating my amp, thats all. BTW i abslutely love my soundcard i'd have to say given the choice between an audigy or the X-Mystique i would go with the X-Mystique everytime. I just can't get enough of half life 2 in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound through a Fiber Optic Cable, nothing better, then perhaps Half Life 2: Aftermath on the same system.
@ou7blaze I didn't have room for it either, but I packed it into my room. Since my parents sleep to the room beside it they hate it. @chemo What's the problems your having? I have 5 speakers and one subwoofer with the speakers plugged into the spots specified in the amp, then the red/white wires plugged into the subwoofer. Fairly simple setup.
chemo the thing with sound pressure meters is they are for larger rooms. not sure on your room size. but sit where you would usually sit. then play a sound into each speaker seperatley take readings, then adjust speakers till they are the same. or however you want it setup. more front than rear etc. how do you have you speakers laid out? proper 5.1. is center in the center front, two on the side at the front pointing straight into the room or slightyl toed in depending on the speaker. the rears should be level with your head pointing at you from the walls. but most people prefer them setup like the fronts pointing down the room, not at you. Code: []--> YOU <--[] or | | | | [] YOU [] thats just a basic setup, google for more advanced tutorials into setting them up. Also remember though that the room plays a larger role, such as the sound reflection on the wall from the speaker to you. Also depending on how the speakers are ported and so on, their position from the wall etc. you can get pretty indepth with this. but simple things like, if you have a wodden floor have a rug between you and the speakers on the reflection point. also heavy padded sofas are better than less padded ones for absorbing the soundwaves. heavy curtains over blinds etc.
well considering my room is quite small (it used to be a den) all my speakers are infront of me. Once i move out of my parents house htye will be more surroundish setup.
Dom: SPL meters are for *any* sized room, be it small or large you need one to get the right balance for output from your speakers. No home theater should be without a SPL meter for balencing. A SPL meter is a device which measures sound (vibrations) and gives you a reading in decibels. All cinema setups from cheapy HTIB's to fully fledged multimillion pound theaters should always calibrated to balence the sound for movies. Home Theater Calibration. Why do we calibrate our home theaters? We do this so we can get a balance between the level of speech and all the effects out of the individual speakers AV Receivers/processors have a DB counter. Having a db counter on an AV receiver/processer is for calibration and balencing to Dolby reference level, this is acheived buy using a SPL meter and special test noise/tones. This is mainly done for balancing movie sound. You can calibrate with a DVD such as AVIA or use the internal test noise from a AV receiver/Processor. The test tones/noise are recorded at a lower level than full reference, the reason the tones are recorded at a lower level is so you can balance you Home theater without going deaf in the process. The tones/noise are recorded at -20db below reference for a AVIA DVD and -30 db below ref for internal tones from an AV Receiver. Both DVD and internal receiver/processor test tones methods usually give the same calibration results (although not always). The basic method is to the the Receiver/Processor set to 00 and the tone/noise is played through each channel, you then balance all speaker channels levels to 75db or 85db on the SPL meter depending on which source the tone/noise is from. 1)The point of putting the amp on 0 and calibrating is then you can play movies at -10 and be 10 below dolby reference level or play at -40 and be 40 below dolby reference. 2)Full dolby reference is usualy peaks of 105db per channel and 115db for LFE (bass). IF you use bass management and run speakers set to small then the LFE and sound below 80hz is passed to the subwoofer and the peak bass level is bumped up from 115 to 121 db. This shows most subwoofers are not up to full dolby reference level. Full dolby refenence is very loud and can be damaging to you AV kit. Once calibrated there is no real correct volume level you should listen to, just enjoy the movie at your confortable level. Movies do seem to be recorded at different volumes so you may have to turn up some moves more than others. Personally I watch most movies @ -20db below reference at night time and -15db below reference in the day, full reference is way too loud for me, I want to keep some hearing for the next 50 years. Some people dislike a perfectly balanced system. Personally I tweek the settings a bit after balancing to my persoanly liking. When listeing at muich lower listening some people run there subwoofer 3db hot (78 db on the meter) this can better balance for movies as our hearing is less sensitive to bass frequencies. Personally I prefere my rear speakers to be attenuated a bit so I drop them down a few db.
i still stand by it being rather pointless in a small room. if the speakers are all sitting in front of him on his desk or around him only .5m away or something there is no point in using it.
Of course there is! Have you setup many systems with a SPL meter? If you have you would know systems often require a fair bit of lot of tweeking because of the room and equipment. Path lengths are going to be different, efficency of speakers, room boundarys/room shape are all going to effect frequnecy response and SPL output of each speaker so you often need to ajust the individual levels by a few db to get a good even response.
yes but this is totally pointless when the speakers are too close to you. almost all home cinema speakers are NOT designed to be listened too from very small distances. as well as killing the true effect of setting the speakers up properly (although we arnt talking a soundstage here as this is killed by rear speakers, we have a similar effect which will not happen when all the speakers are too close to the listener) and lets face it we arnt talking a system with which you will be room tweaking, as in sound absorbing foam, bass traps etc. we are talking pc speakers or at best low end hifi (dont take this personally). infact im fairly sure most 5.1+ systems people have on these forums you cant independently adjust each channel, other than by moving them. which most people wont as it would involve changing the whole room to evolve around a set of speakers. so i fail to see the use of an spl meter in an environment where you can not achieve the 5.1 effect properly, it probably would make little effect on the end result, or the neccesary changes could not be made (speaker position, room acoustics, independant channel control), also other parts could be changed with much greater results. such as speakers sitting on a tv or resting on some side cabinet or the like, rather than proper stands with good isolation, better cables, etc etc however if you want to proove me otherwise please do, as this is what i have always felt. p.s. (by small i mean SMALL, roomwise)
