Speakers in a movie theater

KrazyMofo24

I am buying the Rti10s, Rti4, Csi5, Fxi5, and PSW505 sub later this year. My goal would have it sound as good as it does when your at the movies. Now I know my room is alot smaller than a movie theater, but their made too sound good for 100s of people and in my case it'll be me and my girlfriend most of the time.

So my question is how good are the speakers at a movie theater and why don't they sell them at stores? Are the speakers I am getting actually better quality than normal movie theater speakers?

Shizelbs

IMO, you are getting much better speakers. Granted, theaters vary from each other, but in general, I am not that impressed with theater quality in the sound department. You will never get back the bigness that a theater can reproduce, but overall quality is going to be much better with your setup.

gregure

There are plenty of companies out there that make speakers very similar to what you can find in true theater, however you can achieve very good results with much less expensive gear. For instance, SNELL ACOUSTICS, and JBL both have very expensive, high-end theater equipment meant for custom installation in dedicated theater rooms. You may have heard of JBL's Synthesis gear. Very nice stuff. SNELL has several different lines, from on wall, in-wall and bookshelf monitors for HT, plus some truly ridiculous subs, like a subwoofer with two 18" drivers stacked on top of one another in one large cabinet.

Honestly though, there is an intimacy and comfort in creating a home theater in one's home, that goes far beyond theater sound. Details are more apparent, as the surround speakers are closer to you, and you can tailor the sound to your own liking. Some theaters the sound is too quiet, others too loud. At home, this is never an issue.

The Polk setup you are looking at is a great one for home theater. A word of advice though: if you really want sound to rival a theater, pick up a better sub than the 505. You need a sub that can handle frequencies down to 20 Hz with authority, and nothing Polk offers can do that. Look at SVS for starters, or if you need something smaller due to the girlfriend factor, perhaps a Grotto from Martin Logan, or a REL Q201. Both of these will give you excellent, deep bass but in a small cabinet which is not as much of an eyesore as the very large, yet excellent, SVS subs. These will really improve your system's overall impact, and put you in the heart of the films.

Also, if you can swing it, look for a receiver in the $1500 range. Especially with tower speakers for fronts, you will need something with some real power. Receivers in the $1500-$2000 range begin to use larger power supplies, such as torroidal transformers, and that's where you begin to get truly quality sound.

A couple of suggestions:
MARANTZ SR8500 $1500
PIONEER ELITE VSX74XVI $1500 (coming out this month)
ROTEL RSX-1067 (around $2000 I think)

Or if you want to go all out, Outlaw Audio (http://www.outlawaudio.com/) has a great preamp and amp combo. The 990/770 combo (200 watts x 7) is only $2500, probably the cheapest quality separates available. The better sub and the better amp will truly make a huge difference in theater sound. My motto: Do it once, do it right. Otherwise, you're constantly wanting to upgrade.

Ricardo

^^+1 on the SVS..... you won't regret it....

Gaara

Doing a room as large as a theater with atleast 150 people in it is a very different situation then doing a small room like your ht room with 2 people in it. One of the reasons you wouldn't see movie theater speakers in the store is because they are huge! They are high up but if I had to guess at the speakers in our local home theater, I would say they were about 4 feet wide, 2 feet deep, and about 6 feet high. These are just the surrounds, and there are tons of them, about 15-20. A speaker made to cover a area as large as a theater is not going to perform well in a small room. For one reason you don't get much detail in a theater, the room is full of sound and everything meshes together. You wouldn't want this in your home, you want to be able to hear details

Speaking of situation, think of your home theater room, it probably has lots of bare walls, perhaps a door and a window, and some furnishings. Overall most rooms are somewhat bright acousticly speaking, now think of the theater. At our local theater they have walls covered in what looks like carpet, they have lots of plush seats with lots of people in them, and they also have very long acoustic treatments. This makes for a more dead sounding room acousticly, to try and absorb some of that reflected sound. Still with all this I think my local system is very bright, think about bringing home those bright speakers to your bright room, bad combo.

Another reason you don't see these speakers in stores is because they are powered differently. If you look at pro speakers then generally will have different connections then regular home speakers. Even if they have conventional binding posts these things take alot of juice, so they use pro amps. Good for lots of power, but for the most part they have higher distortion levels and lots of fan noise. Not really a big issue in theaters, but it is a big issue in the home.

So these are a few reasons that I can think of of why you wouldn't want theater speakers in your home. In most homes smaller good quality speakers with good quality electronics backing them up will sound just as good, if not better then conventional theaters. If you want to still look for Theater speakers our theater uses EV speakers, they do lots of pro stuff. I have noticed many DJs using EV speakers in their setups.

Jared

Ricardo

Jared,

Took a peek at your system...pretty nice stuff you got there....are those BRICKS????

jfb4548

http://www.alteclansing.com/legacy/

This is the real thing! Read about the history of theater speakers it's a good read. Oh and if you ever get the chance to hear these with some good equipment behind um you might be suprised at what you hear.

organ

I've been very impressed with the sound in the movie theater I frequent. It used to be too harsh a few years back but now everything is just right. I don't know if they upgraded the speakers or amplifiers.

Anyways, if you want your HT to sound just like a movie theater, check out the Reference line from Klipsch. Klipsch makes speakers for both movie theaters and homes. I have the RF-35 and it sounds more like a movie theater than any other speakers I've listened to. And for music, it sounds more like a good PA system. I love it. Look for a dealer nearby and audition them. I'm sure you'll be impressed if that's the kind of sound you're after.

Maurice

fireshoes

I've been wanting to hear this Klipsch system for a while now.

http://www.klipsch.com/product/product.aspx?cid=774

The movie theater across the street from where I work uses Klipsch. It sounds very good.

gregure

The M&K S150 THX Ultra 2 system is far superior to the Klipsch THX system. For starters, you don't have to buy a separate amp for the dual woofer sub, as it has its own amp, and the S150's are the most common speaker used in DVD sound mixing. M&K is also what George Lucas has on the Ranch, in his peronal theater, and they have a long standing relationship with THX. Plus, the surround speakers are awesome. Not just bipoar, but tripolar. I've seen a few great reviews of the Klipsch system, but I've also heard a lot of people complain that they're still quite bright.

As an aside: Jared-Awesome setup. Makes me wish I could go back in time and have that bedroom as a kid. I wonder, do you ever manage to leave that room? I wouldn't.

Gaara

HTrookie,

Thanks! Most people that come over have no idea what I have or what any of it does, they just know it sounds good. Yep those would be bricks, and pavers, and tennis ball halves. My 2-channel system looks very sophisitcated, but the home theater section is a little more rugged. I also use bags of sand for dampning, my ps2 and gamecube are both covered in Dynamatt, and I use granite blocks ontop of my sub (their covered in black silk).

gregure,

Thanks! Sadly I am not in my room much, as a result of my part time job and taking a course overload this semester. Over the summer I used to spend alot more time in there, I would watch a movie a day, play games for a couple of hours, and sit and listen to music for a couple of hours. I started sitting down and listening to music everyday since I got my JD-100 and my SWL-9.0SE. Well time to go listen to some new Cold...

Jared

TheatreBoothGuy

I've worked for a movie theatre chain for quite a while now and I've never been that impressed with the quality of the sound. Personally, it seems to me that a properly set up mid-priced home theatre sounds much better than what is "at the movies".

The reason is that the goals of each system are different. At the theatre, the goal is to fill a huge room with loud enough sound that 500 people can hear it. Thus, large and very efficient speakers are the rule driven by powerful (and high quality) amplifiers. If you then realize that a typical new theatre has 16 to 30 screens with each requiring many channels, any savings per channel adds up very quickly.

That being said, home is not the same as a huge screen and laughing along with a few hundred other people. Additionally, the Imax auditoriums tend to have higher quality standards (as do the THX certified theatres) and provide a higher quality experience.