Two Channel HT

CCNJ

Ok, so my wife and daughter prefer watching movies thru the tv speakers rather than my two cannel rig... Go figure. Music sounds great thru my system but i have to admit that the sound can be a little fatiguing when watching movies or tv. The sound is a little too detailed / bright at times and my wife is always grabbing the remote to lower the volume when the sound spikes during certain soundtracks. Before I make any impulse buys / changes, i thought i would get some opinions.

My speakers are totem hawks and sound really good for music and have good, tight bass. Not the best or HT as they don't throw the widest soundstage from my experience.

I am thinking that my first move should be to replace the benchmark HDR and start playing with a tube pre again and a warmer dac. Maybe a rega dac and rogue perseus tube pre. Thoughts?

skrol

I used to use my 2ch system for HT and experienced similar. It may be the distance of the speakers from the TV. It sounded a little better if I used the TV speaker to fill in the center a little.

organ

I've never heard a Totem speaker that I would consider "bright".
This worked for me and you may want to give it a shot. I used to experience something similar to you when doing 2ch HT. Movies with good sound usually have very high dynamic swings and the loud parts were quite painful. All I did was lower the volume quite a bit. I use talking parts from the film and adjusted the volume so that conversations in movies are at a very comfortable level. Not loud and not low enough that you'd have to focus to hear every word. I noticed that at this volume setting, when the loud parts come, it won't be uncomfortably loud.
As for regular TV programming, I find the sound to be great to quite poor. It varies with the program.

intangible

It does sound to be an issue of movies having more dynamic range than your family desires. I have a similar issue in that my fiance does not like even moderately high volumes. Setting the volume to keep the peaks low leaves dialogue too quiet to hear without a center channel to raise the volume on.

I think by far the simplest solution would be to buy a cheap AVR with Audyssey Dynamic Volume/Dynamic EQ to run parallel to your two channel gear. Dynamic Volume is far more impressive than the generally crappy sounding compression techniques I've used in the past (Dolby Volume, night mode, etc.). It's basically eliminated remote juggling during movies in my house and done so without turning my speakers into tin cans.

organ

+1 on the cheap AVR with a dynamic compression feature.
Just thought of something else. Sometimes televisions already have this feature and if you use the L&R outputs from the tele to your preamp, you should still be able to access this feature. I know it worked on my previous display. Worth a try.

steveinaz

Dynamic compression can be done at the DVD/BR player; I can't imagine TV broadcasting with much dynamic range. I don't really understand the brightness issue---I've been running a 2 channel HT from day one.

CCNJ

Bright was the wrong term term...It is really the spike in volume that my wife and daughter complain about. It is much more evident when playing movies through my two channel system during certain movies types (e.g., action / adventure).

Thanks for the tips especially controlling the dynamic compression at least at the DVD/BR player.

steveinaz

I know what you mean--but I don't think it's particularly limited to 2-channel HT. "Dispicable Me" is like this; one moment you can barely hear the movie, the next moment you're getting blown out of you chair. It IS annoying.

Having said that, it's a software "issue"---not an equipment problem.

organ

steveinaz wrote: »

Having said that, it's a software "issue"---not an equipment problem.

+1 I agree with Steve on this. Using the dynamic compression feature should help.

warren

It just a women thing.... They just want the sound down, down down... I haven't a clue why, unless its just a controll thing..

CCNJ wrote: »

Ok, so my wife and daughter prefer watching movies thru the tv speakers rather than my two cannel rig... Go figure. Music sounds great thru my system but i have to admit that the sound can be a little fatiguing when watching movies or tv. The sound is a little too detailed / bright at times and my wife is always grabbing the remote to lower the volume when the sound spikes during certain soundtracks. Before I make any impulse buys / changes, i thought i would get some opinions.

My speakers are totem hawks and sound really good for music and have good, tight bass. Not the best or HT as they don't throw the widest soundstage from my experience.

I am thinking that my first move should be to replace the benchmark HDR and start playing with a tube pre again and a warmer dac. Maybe a rega dac and rogue perseus tube pre. Thoughts?

skrol

intangible wrote: »

It does sound to be an issue of movies having more dynamic range than your family desires. I have a similar issue in that my fiance does not like even moderately high volumes. Setting the volume to keep the peaks low leaves dialogue too quiet to hear without a center channel to raise the volume on. ...

Perhaps this is why when I tried using my 2ch system for HT, the voices were easier to hear when I filled in using the TV speakers as a center. The TV sound has far less dynamic range.