I am a big fan of music, and it’s what I spend the majority of the time using my system for. But I also enjoy watching movies and TV, and the results I get from better performance audio gear in enveloping me in the experience of film and TV entertainment. The general consensus among the majority of people is that you need to have surround sound with either 5 or 7 or even more channels and a subwoofer in order to properly enjoy watching a movie. I’d like to challenge that approach for those of us who would like our movies to sound stellar, but don’t want to sacrifice the musical experience we enjoy from our performance stereo systems.
Sometimes 2 is All You Need
I don’t wish to diminish the idea that home theater is best experienced with 5 channels and a subwoofer (the .1 in 5.1). At Definitive, we pride ourselves in selecting only the best applicable components and products to create a truly better-than-the-movie-theater experience, and we’ve got the track record to prove it. If you are the type of person who uses their system to primarily watch TV and Film, most often 5.1 or 7.1 (or .2 or .4, you get the idea) is the right solution for you. However, many of our clients listen to music on their system just as much, if not more, as they watch movies. And many times, especially in smaller spaces or a living space like a condo or apartment, it’s often a design challenge or simply not possible to have all 5 speakers. My alternative approach to a 5.1 system in these types of situations is a 2-channel system (and maybe a subwoofer to go along with it). In fact, many clients are amazed at the performance a 2-channel Home Theater provides, even in comparison to systems with all 5 channels at similar prices. I’ll detail a few products and concepts that can help you get the most out of a stereo Home Theater.
Speaker Placement
When choosing speakers for a Home Theater or Music System, there are many things to consider such as the end location of the loudspeakers, the size and type, and for the aesthetics-conscious, the appearance of the loudspeaker and how it blends with the décor of the room. With a 2-channel Home Theater, often the design goal is to have less clutter in the room by eliminating the center and surround speakers. Also, if there are no plans to have a subwoofer, this will mean that you will typically wish to purchase as full-range a speaker as possible. If the speakers are not mounted in or on the wall, and you have some ability to move the speaker around, you will especially want to pay close attention to how you have the speakers placed, since surround and center channel information will be down-mixed to the 2 front speakers and thus be sensitive to positioning. I recommend this anyway no matter the system, but you will typically notice more phase-induced issues if the speakers aren’t properly dialed in because of the delay times and such going on in the 2-channel down-mix.
All Analog
There are a few ways to approach the electronics in a 2-channel Home Theater. The simplest and best sounding for music (assuming you have a good music source) is to use an integrated amp, or a separate pre-amp and amplifier. The downside to this is that most pre-amps and integrated amplifiers only have left and right analog inputs, which leaves the digital-to-analog conversion up to the DAC circuits in your source equipment, which are often not very good (especially if you are using a Cable or Satellite box for TV), unless you have a truly high-performance source like Ayre’s up-and-coming Blu-ray Universal player. It’s also not quite as convenient to use since a 2-ch preamp will not have video switching built in. If you only watch a little TV and movies, this is ok, or you can always purchase a separate DAC, like the Audio Research DAC7, to get better sound from your DVD, Blu-ray, and TV components. A very popular piece for us is also the Peachtree Audio Nova, which is an integrated amplifier with a built-in DAC and multiple inputs for your equipment. There are also a couple of very nice products from Linn, like the Classik Music or Akurate Kontrol, which have digital inputs as well. The Akurate Kontrol in particular is a very high-performance primarily 2-ch preamp that also has surround processing built in, so that a full 5-channel signal from a source is properly processed and down-mixed.
The Digital Approach
The more common approach to 2-ch Home Theater is to use a surround pre/amp processor and a 2-ch amplifier, or a simple surround receiver. The pre-amp processor is really the heart and soul of a typical surround sound system, since it handles all of the digital information and determines delay times, channel levels, etc. before turning the digital signal into analog for an amplifier. When used in a 2-ch system, you simply inform the surround processor that you are not using a center, surrounds, or subwoofer; the processor then takes the full 5.1 channel information and mixes it for use with only 2 speakers. Most surround processors also have video switching and trans-coding built in, so that you are only using one input on your display device for your video sources. The Classe SSP-800, Rotel RSP-1570, or Meridian HD-621 with a Meridian Surround Processor all have the latest HDMI 1.3 audio and video inputs for proper Hi-Resolution audio decoding (Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, etc.) and full 1080p video processing or pass-through from Blu-ray sources, which gives them a convenience advantage over a typical 2-ch analog preamp or 2-ch DAC. This is also a great approach since you have the option for future expansion to a full surround system at a later date; you can have great sound for a long time with only 2 speakers while waiting to budget for the rest of the surround system over time which will yield much better performance in the long term.
If you plan on improving the value of your investment in your music and movies by integrating audio and video, don’t automatically assume that you should buy a 5.1 system. Granted, more often than not we will recommend a full surround system for the best film performance, but in some cases (especially for the music lover) your budget and resources might be better served allocated to maximizing the performance from just 2 speakers. Stop in or call one of our showrooms sometime to discuss your options!
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
The New Era of Digital Audio
If you’ve attended either of our recent Tips 'n Techniques seminars, you’d have heard our Director of Performance Systems, Craig Finer, speak on digital audio and it’s various delivery methods, especially pertaining to Hard-drive based storage and the associated equipment used to retrieve those 1’s and 0’s and turn them into “squiggly waveforms”, or an analog music signal. I’m going to briefly touch on the categories we’ve covered and mention a few of our favorite examples in each category, as well as sum up some of the basic file formats and which ones we recommend using.
Music Servers
A dedicated music server is something that we would categorize as having it’s own method of storing information, with it’s own interface software and GUI (Graphical User Interface). Often the storage is internal, as in the instance of a PC/Mac or Apple iPod, which you can purchase with either a HDD (Hard Disk Drive) or SSD (Solid-State Drive). Sometimes, as in the case of our Sooloos and Kaleidescape products, the storage is externally located but in a proprietary fashion using a custom file system native to the particular product. The Sooloos in particular, we feel, is our best example of a Music Server since it comes with it’s own display, storage, and also offers great sound quality (courtesy of the parent company, Meridian) to boot. Most of the time, these products are the easiest to use and set up, and often don’t require much expertise in terms of computer know-how. The downside in the case of the PC/Mac or iPod type solutions is that you’re leaving the digital-to-analog conversion up to either inexpensive or simply poorly implemented DAC circuits that are more susceptible to issues like noise, interference, etc. since they are in a computer environment, which is not an environment which seeks to delicately nurture the analog music waveform.
USB DAC’s
A USB DAC takes the music off a PC or Mac through the USB output to turn it to analog. The theoretical advantage is that the USB interface is less prone to “jitter” or word clock timing errors than the typical SP/DIF Digital Coax or Toslink Optical connections on a computer sound card, thus able to retain the digital bitstream much more accurately before reaching the DAC. Another inherent advantage is that you will be able to use the interface you prefer (iTunes, Windows Media Player, WinAmp, JRiver, etc.) to manage your music library. A few examples of USB DAC’s would be our Audio Research DAC7, Ayre QB-9, and PS Audio Digital Link III. The Ayre QB-9 is unique since it is one of only a few USB DAC’s that uses a technology called asynchronus USB, which essentially uses a buffer to store the digital information before it gets sent to a fixed-frequency master clock, thereby virtually eliminating jitter. This is a bit different from the variable-frequency clocks that are found in the adaptive USB DAC circuits commonly in use. Many of the DAC’s on the market also offer multiple inputs so that you can hook up Cable or Satellite boxes, DVD players, Blu-ray players, or an older CD transport. Make sure if you are using a USB connection to ask us to demonstrate a Transparent Performance USB cable, you’ll be surprised!
Network Music Players
A Network Music Player retrieves the digital music information over your home network. Most Network Music Players will have their own interface and controller, such as a Sonos or Logitech Squeezebox. They typically utilize a protocol dubbed UPnP, or Universal Plug and Play, to communicate with software that scans your music library and serves it to the player over the network. The most common way to store music using a Network Music Player would be to use a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. The Linn DS is our best performing example of a Network Music Player, though it does not come with any way to remotely navigate your music library. The digital music information is streamed over the network to an internal buffer (similar to the Ayre QB-9) in the DS, which then sends the info to an extremely low-jitter word clock to be sent to the DAC circuit, which is designed by Linn’s team of engineers experienced in the art of designing world-renowned source equipment.
File Formats
There are many different ways to convert the information on your 5.25” CD’s to digital files on a computer. The most popular way to store music on your computer hard drive is the MP3 format, which is also probably the worst way to do so, since it is typically an extremely “lossy” form of compression. Similar compression schemes are WMA and AAC, as well as other various formats. We strongly recommend avoiding these “lossy” compression algorithms since they throw away much of the original information on the disc. The alternatives are to use no compression, or “lossless” compression. WAV and AIFF files are the exact data from the disc with no compression, but do not have very good “tagging”, which gives you artist, track, title, album art, etc., and also take up more space on your storage drive. A “lossless” compression, such as FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) or ALAC (Apple Lossless) take up about 40-50% less space on average than a typical uncompressed WAV file, have great tagging capabilities, and are virtually indistinguishable from the original file since they use complex coding schemes to retain all of the original data. We typically recommend using a lossless compression since it’s all of the original data with the convenience of less space and great tagging. If you’re a PC user, FLAC is the best way to go and has the most flexibility. If you are an iTunes or Mac user, ALAC is the alternative since FLAC is currently not supported by iTunes.
I will be covering some of the products mentioned in further detail in the future. Hopefully this serves to help guide you as to what type of product may be suitable for your application, but in the meantime, if you have questions, stop by a showroom and we’ll be happy to help find the right solution for you!
Music Servers
A dedicated music server is something that we would categorize as having it’s own method of storing information, with it’s own interface software and GUI (Graphical User Interface). Often the storage is internal, as in the instance of a PC/Mac or Apple iPod, which you can purchase with either a HDD (Hard Disk Drive) or SSD (Solid-State Drive). Sometimes, as in the case of our Sooloos and Kaleidescape products, the storage is externally located but in a proprietary fashion using a custom file system native to the particular product. The Sooloos in particular, we feel, is our best example of a Music Server since it comes with it’s own display, storage, and also offers great sound quality (courtesy of the parent company, Meridian) to boot. Most of the time, these products are the easiest to use and set up, and often don’t require much expertise in terms of computer know-how. The downside in the case of the PC/Mac or iPod type solutions is that you’re leaving the digital-to-analog conversion up to either inexpensive or simply poorly implemented DAC circuits that are more susceptible to issues like noise, interference, etc. since they are in a computer environment, which is not an environment which seeks to delicately nurture the analog music waveform.
USB DAC’s
A USB DAC takes the music off a PC or Mac through the USB output to turn it to analog. The theoretical advantage is that the USB interface is less prone to “jitter” or word clock timing errors than the typical SP/DIF Digital Coax or Toslink Optical connections on a computer sound card, thus able to retain the digital bitstream much more accurately before reaching the DAC. Another inherent advantage is that you will be able to use the interface you prefer (iTunes, Windows Media Player, WinAmp, JRiver, etc.) to manage your music library. A few examples of USB DAC’s would be our Audio Research DAC7, Ayre QB-9, and PS Audio Digital Link III. The Ayre QB-9 is unique since it is one of only a few USB DAC’s that uses a technology called asynchronus USB, which essentially uses a buffer to store the digital information before it gets sent to a fixed-frequency master clock, thereby virtually eliminating jitter. This is a bit different from the variable-frequency clocks that are found in the adaptive USB DAC circuits commonly in use. Many of the DAC’s on the market also offer multiple inputs so that you can hook up Cable or Satellite boxes, DVD players, Blu-ray players, or an older CD transport. Make sure if you are using a USB connection to ask us to demonstrate a Transparent Performance USB cable, you’ll be surprised!
Network Music Players
A Network Music Player retrieves the digital music information over your home network. Most Network Music Players will have their own interface and controller, such as a Sonos or Logitech Squeezebox. They typically utilize a protocol dubbed UPnP, or Universal Plug and Play, to communicate with software that scans your music library and serves it to the player over the network. The most common way to store music using a Network Music Player would be to use a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. The Linn DS is our best performing example of a Network Music Player, though it does not come with any way to remotely navigate your music library. The digital music information is streamed over the network to an internal buffer (similar to the Ayre QB-9) in the DS, which then sends the info to an extremely low-jitter word clock to be sent to the DAC circuit, which is designed by Linn’s team of engineers experienced in the art of designing world-renowned source equipment.
File Formats
There are many different ways to convert the information on your 5.25” CD’s to digital files on a computer. The most popular way to store music on your computer hard drive is the MP3 format, which is also probably the worst way to do so, since it is typically an extremely “lossy” form of compression. Similar compression schemes are WMA and AAC, as well as other various formats. We strongly recommend avoiding these “lossy” compression algorithms since they throw away much of the original information on the disc. The alternatives are to use no compression, or “lossless” compression. WAV and AIFF files are the exact data from the disc with no compression, but do not have very good “tagging”, which gives you artist, track, title, album art, etc., and also take up more space on your storage drive. A “lossless” compression, such as FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) or ALAC (Apple Lossless) take up about 40-50% less space on average than a typical uncompressed WAV file, have great tagging capabilities, and are virtually indistinguishable from the original file since they use complex coding schemes to retain all of the original data. We typically recommend using a lossless compression since it’s all of the original data with the convenience of less space and great tagging. If you’re a PC user, FLAC is the best way to go and has the most flexibility. If you are an iTunes or Mac user, ALAC is the alternative since FLAC is currently not supported by iTunes.
I will be covering some of the products mentioned in further detail in the future. Hopefully this serves to help guide you as to what type of product may be suitable for your application, but in the meantime, if you have questions, stop by a showroom and we’ll be happy to help find the right solution for you!
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