Paul S wrote:

It is stupid, of course, but still we persist in comparing "live" and "reproduced" sound.  But NO ONE EVER confuses video with life…

I would like to pass some observations on my about sound quality in my video room.  The sound in my video room is what I would call very very good, I am not kidding – really good.  It is delivered by Altec 21S speaker driven by Yamaha B2 amp and Yamaha C2 preamp. All cables are the RadioShack crap (they are very bad, do not listen the fools who try to convince in opposite) and the speaker cables are 14ga wire from the same RadioShack.  Am I kidding or boolshitting you? No kidding and no boolshitting going on here.

I do not want to lie to you and would like to note that if I use my borrowed DVD player and play audio CD with more or less serious symphonic repertoire then my audio system in my Video Room instantly demonstrates own ugliness. It is not that some specific aspects are wrong but rather the whole sound is so much in unsophisticated scale that it below me even to criticize it.  Still, with video material all those problems do not manifest itself and sound is very much not annoying, in fact it is very much enjoyable.

What I am observing is very much confirms what I was saying back in 90s when I had quite sophisticated 5.2 channels audio system for video. At that time I was pitching that audio installation for video room must not be more sophisticated than $500. Yes, I did it while I had over $75K audio system for video. It does not call paradox, it called idiocy.  Then I sold all my audio setup for HT and did not touch HT for 14 years. Now I have my Altec 21S that looks like wonderful furniture but that with all honesty in the scale of my audio reference do not deliver better sound then $500 audio system. It is all that I, you, we need for video rooms and trust me they do absolutely wonderful in video rooms.

Video material is intrinsically are horribly recorded and even at my $500  audio playback I feel that it able to deliver much better sound then the souse can offer.  I do not blame my DVD player, in fact I think that this borrowed Oppo is MUCH better then I expected and I am planning to try to experiment it in my main audio system as transport and as player. It is not the DVD player’s fault but the extreme primitivism of the played material, would it be DVD or BlueRay.

I do not see any need to more than 2 channels. I know some folks feel that it need to be 5, or more channels but it is not what I feel. I have enough speakers in my house and enough amps to add more channels but I have absolutely no interest or temptations to do it.

I also admit that I am not video room expert. I do have experience and some sophistication with audio installation but I do not have acquired taste with multimedia rooms. What I get is fine to me but I do not mind to learn something. So, what I am willing to do is to invite some local folks that I know who are practicing video room for years and to ask them to point out for me the specific problems with my video sound that they might with their developed experience to recognize. It might be educational and I will post what they criticized.

Bill wrote:

Sorry for this long rant but I feel a rebuttal is necessary. 1. Back in the 90's you had 480 I video and 16/44 or dolby 2.1 analog audio. Then the sound was crap as was the video so you could get away with a crappy setup. Now we have 1080P video and 24/96 5.1 audio to reproduce. Thus, one can  obtain significantly better sound and picture if one has the proper system. 2. I don't know about others, but when I go to a concert I do not wear blinders or have Sonex behind my ears to block out the visual and hall reflections which make up anywhere from 20 to possibly 80% of the sound you are perceiving in a great concert venue. I try to sit as centered as possible in the front third of the hall where the sonics are the best and I can view the way the artists are performing, not just hear them. 3. Thus I try to reproduce that concert hall experience as closely as possible. Using a small television set with large 2 channel speakers would be the equivalent of seeing the orchestra from the back of the second balcony with the sound equivalent of being in an open area with the natural hall reverberance mixed into the front soundstage.  4. With the 5.1 channel 24/96 1080P well engineered concert discs now on BluRay coming out of Europe, at least one gets a sense aurally of whast it is like to be in the concert hall. While I* agree that most of the visuals annoyingly flit from player to player rather than keeping the visual feel that one is sitting in one seat, at least the audio on the best gives me the sound that the conductor is hearing, possiblyb the best seat in the house. 5. We all hear and perceive sound differently depending on our audio upbringing and genetics. I have a friend who finds stereo annoying as he has difficulty integrating a solid image from stereo. Thus he prefers listening to his stereo system from another room. I can just remember the arguments back in the 50's over mono vs. stereo and how stereo would forever muck up the sound.     Most of us came up in the mono to stereo era and became accustomed to the inherent imaging distortion of having the hall sound mixed in with the two front channels. I prefer to have it placed where it belongs; around me through the use of surround channels. Others will prefer to keep it in front changing the sound emanating directly from ther musicians. 6. When I  go to see a movie at a theater, I want the best image and sound possible without overloading my senses. Thus I sit as close to the center of the hall as possible with the screen filling my visual field. Unhappily, 90% of the time  either some yahoo is talking on his cellphone or the projector bulb is at its life expectancy and the image is darker than night. With my home theater 10 foot diagonal 16x9 screen with an analog 3 tube projector with 7 horn loudspeakers sitting 10 feet away, I can be immersed in either the movie or concert experience as well or popssibly better than being at the original venue. You can't do that with a 30 inch television and 2 speakers. 7. I have been to Romy's and find his audio system to produce the best two channel sound I've ever heard. I just wish he would now go forward and use his expertise to produce a video-surround audio experience to equal it rather than settling for a 1990's setup.