[Dante]

Originally Posted by sj_koova

No, I have to find additional budget for acoustics and a 4K projector.

I hope you know a very basic 4k projector will cost 5L. Since you are looking for the best experience, expect price around 9-10 L for starters. You would also need to buy the very best projector screen to suit the 4k output coz the basic projector screen would be of no use & would deteriorate the quality. That would be around 1L.
Even the best 1080P projectors are upwards of 2L.

P.S. I have the sony VW1000ES bought at 14L.
Do research thoroughly & plan your budget.

[sj_koova]

Originally Posted by Dante

I hope you know a very basic 4k projector will cost 5L. Since you are looking for the best experience, expect price around 9-10 L for starters. You would also need to buy the very best projector screen to suit the 4k output coz the basic projector screen would be of no use & would deteriorate the quality. That would be around 1L.
Even the best 1080P projectors are upwards of 2L.

P.S. I have the sony VW1000ES bought at 14L.
Do research thoroughly & plan your budget.

Valid point. 4K projectors are damn expensive now in India and not easily available. Sony VW500ES is 8L at present. I am not rushing for a projector. Plan is to start with a Flat panel ~55-65inch until I can afford a 4K. In matter of 2-3 years there will be abundant 4K contents and projector price will fall gradually.

I am sure you love your sony VW1000ES.

[sandeepmohan]

Originally Posted by sj_koova

Got it. Do you know if ProFx or any of these guys can give me an audition so that I really make out that difference.

Pro Fx have a couple of listening rooms. You can bring in your speakers or whatever other equipment and try it out with what ever they are selling. The good thing about Pro Fx, is that they have 3 brands of Av receivers and several speaker brands under one roof. You can try all of them. Do work on a budget, else, you will end up with no limit. Unless, off course, that is no problem for you. I would not bother with the pre power brand, can't recall which, that they are selling. You are better off importing a brand called Emotiva. I say, give them a call, plan some time during a week day, when they are least busy, give you a couple of hours to audition all they have and see how it goes. Keep a note pad and jot down the combination you are listening to and highlight the positives and negatives, if any. You will have to take an appointment for this. In fact, Pro Fx dropped off a pair of Kef iQ9 speakers at my friends place for a few days, for a home audition. I don't think they asked for a retainer too. This was in 2007 though.

Another point I wish to highlight, your Panasonic sounds like one of those all in one compact home theatre systems. May not be a good idea to use that as reference.

I forgot to add that the Polk Audio Rti A9 is a superb speaker for home theatre. If you have the room for it, you can close your eyes and buy it. Do listen to their Rti A3. It is a low budget speaker and a really good one.

Originally Posted by sj_koova

Had an audition at ProFX with ATMOS enabled. I could not appreciate the ATMOS much, may be because I still have to learn how to differentiate the 3D sound.

Overall Yamaha RX-A2040 with Polk RTi A9 speakers / PRO 660 Sub sounded wonderful. This can shake your house for sure.

Later I had an audition of BOSE Cinemate 130. BOSE sounded much more crispier and had an unbelievable surround sound effect. It is expensive at 1.5L, but still I would say it is a true wonder.

Decided to stick to proper surround sound, preferably ATMOS enabled.

really? ..... in that case the people that demoed the system for you probably have no real clue how to set it up, if you could not differentiate much Atmos effects, and also they were probably playing the incorrect discs for you

i have two Atmos discs
1) Transformers : age of extinction
2) Dolby Atmos demonstration disc Jan 2015

both of these demonstrate some incredible Atmos effects and even though i do not have an Atmos enabled system myself yet i have tried these discs out at a friends place and its easy to hear the Atmos effects

for example right at the beginning of Transformers you are under a waterfall and there are dinosaurs in the cave behind the water and you can clearly hear the water gushing out from above you - then theres a scene about 3 to 4 minutes later where a propeller driven plane appears from the top right of the screen and keeps flying overhead and you hear it at the top right and the sound keeps moving across the ceiling through the middle of the room and disappears at the top left ..... then theres the scene where the bad guy troops try to capture an autobot on a ship and you hear a guy say "release the minidrones" where the small remote controlled helicopter sounds as if its going up and down before it comes around in an arc and passes by right in front of your face

moving on to the Atmos demo disc there are scenes where you hear rainfall as if its actually falling on the ceiling of a house with rumbling thunder and lightning first at a distance and then closer totally overhead ..... it was so realistic i was wondering why i wasnt wet yet and there are other demo tests where i could hear birds chirping and flying around at ceiling level while there were other sounds much closer and lower down. Take note of the audio only tests entitled "rainfall" and "Santeria" - and in the video tests try to get to see the one called "amaze"

amazingly these discs are recorded so well that i get a certain amount of height effect in non Atmos systems ie my setup is only 7.1 but my rear speakers are around one foot (30cms) higher than head height from my seating position yet i can still hear the sound project to above a metre higher than my head because of imaging effects

the last point i wanted to make is that the audio in movies is not all about shaking your house but its more about making these effects sound realistic so even the bass needs to be turned down until it sounds realistic because if all you are hearing is loud rumbling and droning bass sounds with distorting subwoofers and the "house shaking" as you put it then you wont hear all the subtleties behind the effects

[NPV]

Need suggestions/recommendations to shortlist a pair of bookshelf speakers for use as surrounds to complete the 5 speaker setup (sub will come later due to budget constraints now).
Current setup is:
Receiver: Onkyo TX-NR709
Front Floor Standers (L & R): Focal Chorus 726
Center: Focal Electra CC30 (Older series, model)

*It is going to be impossible to take this setup to the showrooms for auditions so any tips will be appreciated (have been warned of Timbre matching problems by some folks but was wondering if that's a big deal for surrounds which are used when watching movies).

[navin]

Originally Posted by NPV

Need suggestions/recommendations to shortlist a pair of bookshelf speakers for use as surrounds to complete the 5 speaker setup (sub will come later due to budget constraints now).
Current setup is:
Receiver: Onkyo TX-NR709
Front Floor Standers (L & R): Focal Chorus 726
Center: Focal Electra CC30 (Older series, model)

*It is going to be impossible to take this setup to the showrooms for auditions so any tips will be appreciated (have been warned of Timbre matching problems by some folks but was wondering if that's a big deal for surrounds which are used when watching movies).

Usually timbre matching is essential only for the front 3 speakers. It's nice to have it for all 5 but not a must have. If you are happy with Focal why not get Focals for the rear as well at least for the aesthetics.

[NPV]

Originally Posted by navin

Usually timbre matching is essential only for the front 3 speakers. It's nice to have it for all 5 but not a must have. If you are happy with Focal why not get Focals for the rear as well at least for the aesthetics.

The Focal SR 700 Surrounds cost a whopping Rs.80K in Bangalore, on amazon US site it retails for about $800 hence looking for a lower priced alternative.

How about regular bookshelf speakers instead of these specialized surround speakers ?

[kevintomin]

Try Definitive Technology ProCinema 800 from Amazon US. Very good speakers for the price. I've them as surround back.

[navin]

Originally Posted by NPV

The Focal SR 700 Surrounds cost a whopping Rs.80K in Bangalore..How about regular bookshelf speakers instead of these specialized surround speakers ?

There are 2 chains of thought on surround sound.

• Dipole/Bipole speakers
• Monopole (aka 'regular' speakers)

I found I prefer monopole (also called direct radiating) and so do some legendary speaker designers like Dr. Floyd Toole (NRC and Harman), Jim Fosgate (Fosgate Laboratories and creator of Dolby Pro Logic ), Richard Vandersteen (bassoon player and founder of Vandersteen loudspeakers) John Dunlavy (yes the man whose company makes those big WMTMW towers), Dave Wilson (Wilson Audio) and a few others.

Then again everyone who is involved in film be it Lucasfilms, Sony Motion Pictures, Tom Holman (designer of THX) and the guys at Dolby Labs (designers of ATMOS etc..), and most everyone with a film background.

The way I see it (and to simply choice for most others) if your room is large enough (say 14' or more wide and 20' or more long) monopoles should work better. Smaller rooms would prefer dipoles as the reflections can give the sense of a larger room.

Hope this helps.

BTW I found 2 links.
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/92-com...-speakers.html
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=66471

[NPV]

Originally Posted by navin

Then again everyone who is involved in film be it Lucasfilms, Sony Motion Pictures, Tom Holman (designer of THX) and the guys at Dolby Labs (designers of ATMOS etc..), and most everyone with a film background.

The way I see it (and to simply choice for most others) if your room is large enough (say 14' or more wide and 20' or more long) monopoles should work better. Smaller rooms would prefer dipoles as the reflections can give the sense of a larger room.

Hope this helps.

BTW I found 2 links.
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/92-com...-speakers.html
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=66471

Thanks for the explanation and those links, this was the first time I'd read so much about Surround speakers
Our room is quite large - 14' x 22' so I'll first get some monopole bookshelf speakers home and audition them before looking at the dipoles and bipoles.

Any specific brand/model you'd recommend to begin with ?

i have Cambridge audio bipoles and they can be made into dipoles by having a second set of cables run to them and connected out of phase

as i have mentioned above i do not have Atmos yet so im not sure how these bipoles will work with Atmos but as Navin suggested in smaller rooms they definitely make the room sound as if its a bigger place .... BUT a huge advantage is that they also fill up more spaces of the room with sound ie you cannot localise a sound as coming directly from the speaker but it seems as if originated elsewhere (lots of times inbetween the speakers) which for me is an advantage ie monopoles need to work harder at this imaging ..... so if you do use monopoles they need to be of extraordinary quality (generally the more expensive ones

anybody who has heard my system and my previous ones as well now comment that the room seems much larger than it is ..... and my contention is that the average domestic (home) room is small and hence a prime candidate for multi-pole speakers as opposed to monopole speakers whcih make far ore sense in a large auditorium or large hall type rooms

i have posted pictures of my older setups but my most successful setup to date is the one im running now and believe it or not it was actually a downgrade from what i had previously

heres some pictures of my current room

the front speakers



and then the rear speakers - these are 4 bipole speakers and the rears are mounted on stands that i made myself



the stands that i made



the result of the positioning is after having used many different speakers in my setups and i had previously used Dali Ikons which cost three times as much as these speakers yet these are much more effective as movie playback speakers since the soundstage they throw encompasses the entire room and really makes it seem as if its a much larger space

you absolutely hear sounds as if they come from all over with no localization ie nothing sounds is its directly from the speaker at all and the sound is extremely diffuse and really correlates with whats happening on the screen

when i play the Atmos discs i still get some measure of height effects as i mentioned somewhere above and i have listened to some complete 7.1.4 Atmos setups so i definitely know what to listen for

just to clarify my buddy has a complete 7.1.4 Atmos system and thats a really high end setup ...... here are some pictures of that

his front stage - B&W 802N with HTM1 center



his Manley Snapper monoblocks for his front speakers



his ceiling speakers B&W665



Marantz 7009 Atmos capable AVR



my friends next step is to get a 3D capable projector to tide him over till 4k projectors are mainstream and 4k content becomes available and IMHO we are still a year or two away from it becoming mainstream and its mostly going to be for early adopters right now

[dre@ms]

Originally Posted by naughty001

i have two Atmos discs
1) Transformers : age of extinction
2) Dolby Atmos demonstration disc Jan 2015

From where did you source this? I am looking for Dolby demo discs to check my Yamaha 5.1. And, where do you play these discs? The Amplifier or Blue ray player connected to Amplifier?

I tried downloading some over Dolby site and the format was not playable by my Amplifier through USB Later, tried connecting it to my TV, but hardly differentiated the effects.

[navin]

Originally Posted by NPV

I'll first get some monopole bookshelf speakers home and audition them before looking at the dipoles and bipoles.

Monopoles seem to be preferred by those who come from the 2 channel world.

Originally Posted by naughty001

and then the rear speakers - these are 4 bipole speakers and the rears are mounted on stands that i made myself

Wow I could never do this to my living room, my wife would have thrown me out. Even the front towers were objected to.

What is 7.1.4 anyway? I thought 7 was the number of fullrange/surround channels and .x was the number of subwoofers so if one had 2 fronts, 4 rears, a center and 4 subwoofers it would be 7.4

[Behemoth]

Originally Posted by navin

Wow I could never do this to my living room, my wife would have thrown me out. Even the front towers were objected to.
What is 7.1.4 anyway? I thought 7 was the number of fullrange/surround channels and .x was the number of subwoofers so if one had 2 fronts, 4 rears, a center and 4 subwoofers it would be 7.4

Yup, it is really difficult to convince our better halves to give up so much prime real estate to our gadgets! But it is definitely worth it in terms of sound experience

7.1.4 is the new terminology which Dolby started with Atmos - 7 being main speakers, 1 is the sub, and 4 being the ceiling reflecting or ceiling mounted speakers. For home cinema they now recommend 7.1.2 or 9.1.4 even.
Below is a diagram (courtesy Dolby) which shows the speaker placement.


With this speaker arrangement, it creates overhead sound effects better such as a helicopter going overhead and a waterfall.

In my setup I don't have an Atmos system, but since I had got Energy CR10 dipole surrounds (which have ceiling reflective speakers anyway in switchable bipole/ Dipole mode) the effect is quite good and from a 5.2 setup I am able to get good overhead sound too.


However, ever since Klipsch took over energy, these speakers are not available so easily now. ProFX used to be the distributor in India, and I am not sure whether they still carry them.

[sandeepmohan]

Pro Fx, Barton Centre had this banner at their store.