According to our poll “Do You Have a Surround Sound Setup,” 76% of the total respondents had either a HTIB or a system they compiled from separate components. That beats virtual surround respondents nearly 11 to 1.
Surround sound is awesome, but how many people actually use it? Is it true surround sound or virtual surround sound? Is the system hooked up correctly? Let’s find out.
Onkyo’s new TX-SR607 receiver goes where no sound component has ever gone before by providing Dolby Pro Logic IIz, which gives you vertically-oriented sound in addition to the normal surround sound.
You had it all— house, kids, and some decent home theatre equipment. Then your 401k went to shit and your home’s value halved. And to top it off, your TV stand has gone obsolete.
This upcoming bookshelf or nightstand CD player from Kenwood looks simple enough, but inside the company is promising surround sound quality output from just two speakers.
This isn’t the first Home Theatre in a Box solution we’ve seen that comes with a bundled Blu-ray player, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an extremely exciting piece of kit. It’s got speakers and a Blu-ray player and everything, plus it all comes in a box. Isn’t that awesome? To be fair, the 5.1 system looks the goods, and for the $1099 price tag (plus $100 cash back), it’s a pretty good way of upgrading to Blu-ray and a surround sound setup. The HT-BD2ET’s small bookshelf speakers reportedly offer 800 Watts RMS, which is pretty impressive for such a small set of speakers. And the Blu-ray player supports 24 frame playback and the HD audio codecs, although there’s no ethernet connectivity for BD-Live action. But if you’re going to buy a HTiB setup, that probably won’t be a dealbreaker anyway…
[Samsung]
The garage, also known as “car hole” in some circles, has traditionally been a somewhat wasted space. Aside from holding vehicles for a few hours of the day, it’s often a crap collector, the place for rusty saws and tangled Christmas lights. Electronic House has assembled a list of five garages that have transcended to status quo to home theatre status. This particular theatre was converted from a 3-car garage and features a premium 1080p projector along with 7,000W of surround sound. So while the setup can’t haul arse, worry not, it still annoys the hell out of the neighbours. [Electronic House via CrunchGear]
The Tritton AX Pro is not a bad looking wired surround sound headset that happens to be compatible with PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 audio and chatting. It features full Dolby Digital 5.1 hardware decoding, along with inline adjustments to independent front, centre, rear and subwoofer channels—comprised of eight speakers in all.
Last month, Blam gave us a lightning review of the DHT-FS3 soundbar from Denon, and this month, we’re seeing the DHT-FS5 land in Australia. The difference between the two units, aside from the number at the end of the product code, is that the FS5 doesn’t feature an external subwoofer for those lower frequencies.
Considering that Brian’s opinion of the FS3 was that the bass gets a little cloudy at higher volumes, I’m not entirely convinced that ditching the sub would correct this. At the same time though, the people interested in buying a soundbar generally aren’t the hardcore audiophiles who rely on pristine sound with a full range.
The FS5 comes in both black and silver to match your setup and costs $999.
[Denon]
