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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Balaam Xumucane: [QB] Congratulations on your friend's generosity. I'm no expert (But when has that ever stopped me from a long-winded rant?) I do know a thing or two: The first is that it's usually pretty expensive for not a whole lot more that you'd notice. The other thing is that quality totally counts. The other, other thing is that for $200 you are NOT going to get quality. If that's OK with you then we'll move on. I don't know if you have a Fry's or a Best Buy near you, but a lot of places (Circuit City, Good Guys, etc) will have these package deals where you get the amp/receiver and the speakers for dirt cheap. These usually suck. But you will have surround. Five Point WTF?: Ok so in order there is Mono, Stereo, Dolby Surround, 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1. You will not be getting the latter two. I'm sure there is more, but I don't have the time or money to sort that all out and with my ears I'm not sure I'd be able to appreciate the difference. I will assume you understand Mono and Stereo. Dolby Surround is tricky because it encodes for Left, Right, and then also a single rear channel. Right. So the 5, 6, 7 point one thing. That first number is the number of channels into which the signal is separated and the way the speakers are arrayed--more on that in a sec. The [i]point one[/i] is your subwoofer. The subwooofer is the basso profundo of your system and controls what nearly everyone defines as loud. Bass sound is more-or-less unidirectional and once you stick your sub in a nice reflective corner that's all you'll have to do. It's fun, but it's really easy to overdo it. Several years back, I paid $129 for an Energy 6" sub that fills the 40X50X25foot warehouse with bass-aplenty even during raucous (albeit nerdy) premiere parties. Most amps are clever enough to sort out a center channel from the stereo spread. This makes that center channel speaker optional. Of course, 90% of what you are listening to in the movie and nearly all dialogue will be coming through the center channel occasionally leaning to Left or Right. If your television/stereo is clever enough, sometimes you can use the speakers of the TV itself as a center channel. Ok, so with a subwoofer we're up to 3.1. No one says that in real life, though, so don't say that or people will laugh at you. Your left and right speakers are your primary investment as far as speakers go. Most of what you hear will be affected by these and this is where really shit quality will make its presence known. Your surround speakers aren't actually adding that much more information and the fidelity of that sound is surprisingly not that important to the psycho-accoustic effect it will have on your viewing experience. The surrounds are really for atmosphere, so it's OK if they are small and not super-awesome. The usual arrangement is a left rear and right rear (5.1). 6.1 adds a center rear (not worth it) and 7.1 puts two speakers directly to the side of the audience for "broader" stereo. These last two are nice, but you're not going to notice much difference for the price and most movies only take advantage of 5.1 sound anyway. Good inexpensive speakers? [b]Polk Audio[/b]; [b]Energy[/b]; I think [b]Cambridge Soundworks[/b] used to be cheap and good, but now that they are Creative, I hear they're either one or the other. Also sometimes you can get decent speakers at garage sales. Only recently I replaced an incredible set of garage sale beauties with some Polk towers, and I have to admit it hasn't made a big difference. So encoding and cables are something to worry about. The cables you get with your amp+speakers package deal? Those are trash. Go spend eight bucks on a spool of some half-decent stuff at Radioshack. DON'T get [URL=http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2559]Monster Cable[/URL] . Really. The other thing is digital audio. Most DVD players have an optical or a coax digital out. This is good. You want your stereo to have at least one in for whichever one that is. This gets into DTS (Digital Theater Sound) decoding, which is super complicated, but basically it boils down to ultra-super-awesome sound quality. Rather than doing tricky inaudible things to a Stereo Channel to trick it into being 5.1 channels, each speaker's channel is encoded separately at ridiculously high quality. The end result is readily apparent in systems capable of playing back DTS with DVDs encoded for that format (not so many). But, for instance, when I set up my parents' Harmon Kardon DTS head with the Bose rear channels and the ginormous sub and the terrific vintage Fischer mains, watching the Superbit Fifth Element (on their 65" HDTV) was nothing short of amazing. If you shopped around, you could get decent speakers for $200. You could probably get a half-way decent head for $200. I don't know that you're going to find both for that price. I don't know that it's worth it for you. But if I had $200 and needed surround, I'd probably try to get the best head I could either as a package (like [URL=http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7136002&type=product&productCategoryId=pcmcat40200050004&id=1110263641433]this Sony[/URL] or [URL=http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7034675&type=product&productCategoryId=pcmcat40200050004&id=1099395730557]this Yamaha[/URL]) and then save up another hundred (to get some decent Polk bookshelf speakers for L&R) or separately (like [URL=http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Pioneer-Surround-Sound-Receiver-VSXD515K-/sem/rpsm/oid/115330/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do]this Pioneer[/URL] or, for over-budget-but-pretty-great-quality, [URL=http://www.goodguys.com/adtemplate.asp?invky=836308&catky=643993]this HK[/URL]) and then get cheap garage sale speakers until I saved up another 200. About 15 years ago, I decided to spend a little more money ($400) and bought myself a half-decent Yamaha Dolby ProLogic II stereo head. I guess technically it's 4.1. I added an Energy sub ($129) not long after. I was still using some utterly wretched flea market trash for speakers at the time. My speakers now are much nicer, but I'm still using that head. It's an investment. The technology for receiver/amplifiers isn't changing that fast. Until I bought him that HK, my dad was still using a thirty year old Fischer (nice one, btw). Figure you're going to have it for a while it might be worth a little extra. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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