Front high speakers

Black96Z

I dont have the room to do a 7.1 set-up so i was thinking about adding front high speakers. My set-up consist of;

Pioneer 1020 receiver
Polk Audio CS2
Polk Audio Monitor 70's fronts
Polk Audio Monitor 40's rears
Dual ED A5-350's
PS3
XBOX360
Wii

Would Polk Audio Monitor 30's be a good choise for the front highs?
Also would the front highs work with all blu-rays or just some? I dont know much about the front high set-up.

Thanks!

tonyb

Personally, I wouldn't. Most blu-rays are 5.1 with a few being 7.1 for starts. The receiver does the vodoo processing for the height channels. Keep in mind though, if you want to run 7 speakers instead of 5, your giving all 7 speakers less wattage than you would in 5, running off a receiver such as yours.

BorisBoris

Didn't notice any improvement with front highs either.. adding them to the back has made a nice improvement though

PS3 will do 7.1 for most games/blu-rays, while with the 360 the flag will still be 5.1, you'll need to enable the 7.1 with Prologic IIz, etc

kuntasensei

Monitor 30s will work nicely as height channels. In fact, I ran them that way for a while before I found a matching set of speakers for my system.

The effect of height channels will depend on which method you use to derive them. If you use Dolby Pro-Logic IIz, the height channels are basically the out-of-phase ambient sound in the surrounds compared to the directional audio in the surrounds to create slightly directional ambient audio. In the theater, this is done by the mixer simply placing the audio out of phase in the side surrounds, and because of the large space in the theater, it sounds generally above you. However, the home space doesn't have that advantage, so the addition of height channels can simulate that effect in a smaller area.

Audyssey's DSX processing derives the height information in a slightly different manner, using acoustic models they've developed to calculate ceiling reflections. This method sounds a little more aggressive than DPL-IIz. In short, DPL-IIz is better for room-filling ambience and DSX is better for actual vertical placement of sounds across the front soundstage. Both sound pretty good with ambient noise such as thunder, wind, etc., but which you will prefer will be completely up to you.

Because both methods are designed to work with current mixing standards, there's no "voodoo processing" going on to derive this information, and neither method actually adds sound that wasn't there (the way Yamaha's front presence speakers do). Therefore, it should work with anything you throw at it. I run a 9.2 setup (using DPL-IIx Movie + DSX) and I never turn off the height channels.

Now, as to whether you'll notice a big difference, that depends on your expectations. Don't expect it to be as big of a jump as stereo-to-5.1 was. What you should expect to hear is a larger front soundstage, as if your speakers extend from floor to ceiling. Occasionally, you will hear sounds that very obviously benefit from the height channels, i.e. plane flyovers, thunder, wind, rain, etc. In some movies, you can actually hear precise vertical placement (i.e. when Wall-E goes up the diagonal ramp, you actually hear it move up across the front soundstage). For video games, there's an even larger benefit. For instance, in Halo: Reach, you can fire shots up at the ceiling and tilt your view down quickly and the resulting explosion sounds as if it was above you. It's a very cool effect.

Given the low cost of a pair of Monitor 30s, I say try it and see if you like it. That's what I did... and I ended up keeping speakers up there.

polkfan38

How critical is placement of the heights? Directly above the mains or slighly wider?

Black96Z

kuntasensei wrote: »

Monitor 30s will work nicely as height channels. In fact, I ran them that way for a while before I found a matching set of speakers for my system.

The effect of height channels will depend on which method you use to derive them. If you use Dolby Pro-Logic IIz, the height channels are basically the out-of-phase ambient sound in the surrounds compared to the directional audio in the surrounds to create slightly directional ambient audio. In the theater, this is done by the mixer simply placing the audio out of phase in the side surrounds, and because of the large space in the theater, it sounds generally above you. However, the home space doesn't have that advantage, so the addition of height channels can simulate that effect in a smaller area.

Audyssey's DSX processing derives the height information in a slightly different manner, using acoustic models they've developed to calculate ceiling reflections. This method sounds a little more aggressive than DPL-IIz. In short, DPL-IIz is better for room-filling ambience and DSX is better for actual vertical placement of sounds across the front soundstage. Both sound pretty good with ambient noise such as thunder, wind, etc., but which you will prefer will be completely up to you.

Because both methods are designed to work with current mixing standards, there's no "voodoo processing" going on to derive this information, and neither method actually adds sound that wasn't there (the way Yamaha's front presence speakers do). Therefore, it should work with anything you throw at it. I run a 9.2 setup (using DPL-IIx Movie + DSX) and I never turn off the height channels.

Now, as to whether you'll notice a big difference, that depends on your expectations. Don't expect it to be as big of a jump as stereo-to-5.1 was. What you should expect to hear is a larger front soundstage, as if your speakers extend from floor to ceiling. Occasionally, you will hear sounds that very obviously benefit from the height channels, i.e. plane flyovers, thunder, wind, rain, etc. In some movies, you can actually hear precise vertical placement (i.e. when Wall-E goes up the diagonal ramp, you actually hear it move up across the front soundstage). For video games, there's an even larger benefit. For instance, in Halo: Reach, you can fire shots up at the ceiling and tilt your view down quickly and the resulting explosion sounds as if it was above you. It's a very cool effect.

Given the low cost of a pair of Monitor 30s, I say try it and see if you like it. That's what I did... and I ended up keeping speakers up there.

I have hurd that about Halo Reach but is it like that with a lot of other games like COD, Killzone, Fear, etc?

kuntasensei

polkfan38 wrote: »

How critical is placement of the heights? Directly above the mains or slighly wider?

Dolby says directly above the mains, angled down. Audyssey says slightly further apart than the mains. In my case, my mains are pretty widely spaced already because of my projector screen, so I went with directly above the mains. It seems to work just as well for either DPL-IIz or DSX though, so I wouldn't get too hung up on placement.

kuntasensei

Black96Z wrote: »

I have hurd that about Halo Reach but is it like that with a lot of other games like COD, Killzone, Fear, etc?

CoD: Black Ops has some nice effects in the heights. But generally, it will just make games sound fuller overall. I know that Reach seems to almost have discrete placement in the heights, but I haven't really experimented that much with other games. I just know it sounds AWESOME. :biggrin:

ibewbrother

I think my heights add much to the front soundstage. Mine are about a foot outside the mains and about a foot down from the ceiling on center. Only problem is my avr ..have to figure out how to get a power amp on them.

Long story short.....heights improve my set-up...

polkfan38

kuntasensei wrote: »

Dolby says directly above the mains, angled down. Audyssey says slightly further apart than the mains. In my case, my mains are pretty widely spaced already because of my projector screen, so I went with directly above the mains. It seems to work just as well for either DPL-IIz or DSX though, so I wouldn't get too hung up on placement.

Cool. Thanks!

dudeinaroom

kuntasensei wrote: »

......that depends on your expectations. Don't expect it to be as big of a jump as stereo-to-5.1 was.

If you own SDAs 5.1 is not much of a difference at all.

kuntasensei

dudeinaroom wrote: »

If you own SDAs 5.1 is not much of a difference at all.

:biggrin:

Face

dudeinaroom wrote: »

If you own SDAs 5.1 is not much of a difference at all.

If your 5.1 is set up poorly, maybe.

dudeinaroom

If your SDAs are set up properly you have sound all around, with the exception being directly behind you. And no, I'm not trolling, not looking to start any drama.