11.2 Surround Sound?!

[heartless1298]

This might be the coolest thing I've seen in a while. It's practically any audiophiles dream! An 11.2 channel A/V hub. That's right, .2! Stereo subs!! This could not be cooler. One hell of a powerhouse. Just take a look at the back panel in order to truly appreciate this.

Yamaha RX-Z11

Sells for $5,499. I'm in love!

[Carf]

Nice toy to create some kick-ass psy trance that goes aaaaallllll the way,
panning back to front left right or twirl it all the way ect.... ;)

[heartless1298]

Haha. It's probably more intended for movie fanatics like myself, I'm sure.

[Sialys]

Holy mother fucker!

That thing is fucking beast!

Too bad I'll never need something like that, I almost wanted it.

[Khuskan]

But there is little point in having more than one sub. Even if you have two playing stereo, you're not going to get much directional sensation from them - the wavelengths of the low frequencies subs produce are incredibly hard for the human ear to judge where they are.

[mariomusicmaker1]

brb running to bank.

[Mystery-Moon-Pie-Aud]

I wish I knew what 11.2 A/V meant, but I can say that that is some sick shit for taking full advantage of sound effects. As the guy said up there, psytrance or trance or techno just reverbing through your house and going from front to back. I'd be in love with it too.

[heartless1298]

At 6/27/09 04:40 PM, mariomusicmaker1 wrote: brb running to bank.

Lol!

I wish I knew what 11.2 A/V meant, but I can say that that is some sick shit for taking full advantage of sound effects. As the guy said up there, psytrance or trance or techno just reverbing through your house and going from front to back. I'd be in love with it too.

The 11 means how many speakers/channels there are. The .2 tells how many subwoofers there are. Like in a 5.1 system, there are 5 speakers/channels (Left, Right, Center, Left Surround, Right Surround) and one subwoofer.

But there is little point in having more than one sub. Even if you have two playing stereo, you're not going to get much directional sensation from them - the wavelengths of the low frequencies subs produce are incredibly hard for the human ear to judge where they are.

Now that you point that out, you're probably right. But you'd probably have to actually listen to the system in order to make that statement.

[jarrydn]

Audiophiles dream?

It's not expensive enough for starters ;D

Secondly, I am of the opinion that tuning that system would be an absolute nightmare.

I think an audiophiles dream more than likely just consists of two really, really awesome speakers, and a ludicrously expensive amp.

[pr0ded]

except theyre misguided, especially ones who buy those cables

[architecture]

I rather buy an Arp 2600 or a macbeth M5N. That would create some SICK FRIGGIN psy trance.

Who needs all that, Mono and Stereo is all i need.

[heartless1298]

See now I'm more of a movie fanatic, and 11 speakers and stereo bass would be absolutely awesome for me. Even though tuning it would be an absolute pain in the ass, it'd still be worth it IMO. I mean come on now, you can't get much better surround sound that 11.2, other than real life.

[architecture]

At 6/28/09 11:18 PM, heartless1298 wrote: See now I'm more of a movie fanatic, and 11 speakers and stereo bass would be absolutely awesome for me. Even though tuning it would be an absolute pain in the ass, it'd still be worth it IMO. I mean come on now, you can't get much better surround sound that 11.2, other than real life.

most of the movies I like were originally mono and stereo, so thats all i care about.

surround sound is lost on me. I have a 7.1 Harmon Kardon system, and i only got it on stereo. I could do quadraphonic sound with my 4 channel R2R deck, that would be cool.

[Rig]

12.1 channel sound is a regular feature at a lot of electroacoustic concerts. Nice that they now have a home version, too :)

[dicennian]

Playing music there... that's like living in a musical environment, I mean... imagine that. I don't really know if the music-experience will get much higher when it comes to enjoyment but it must be fun/cool to hear. But one of you said, yeah it must be epic for movies.

[heartless1298]

Yea I mean, you probably feel like you're directly inside the music. That would probably be the coolest thing ever. If I had that system, I'd buy two Elemental Designs 18" subwoofers for the stereo bass :D. I think they're 1300 watts each. That's what I call house shattering bass :D

[nathanallenpinard]

This is great, but it looks like it could only go so far.

First of all, it probably wont' improve that much with L/R stereo sources like music.

However, I could see it being useful for film. The presence monitors are probably EQ'd versions of the surround speakers with extra reverb and delay on them. The subs on the side probably take the low end short stabs like explosions and pan accordingly. However, with these I don't see a big point of having ANOTHER two subs up front, unless they run at different frequencies.At any rate, wouldn't the subs be just killing all the other frequencies? Maybe if they are turned down significantly.

Kind of makes you wonder. If they were going to add all those speakers. Why didn't they develop a center speaker on the CEILING right about the listening area?

The upfront presence ones probably do the same as the back, but grabbing from different channels.

This seems like overkill right now. However, if a movie company ACTUALLY mixed everything in 11.2 surround, it would sound amazing. Right now, not so much.

[loansindi]

At 6/29/09 03:31 PM, nathanallenpinard wrote: This seems like overkill right now. However, if a movie company ACTUALLY mixed everything in 11.2 surround, it would sound amazing. Right now, not so much.

Overkill forever. Honestly how much more imaging can you get by adding more speakers? Has anyone read a study about this?

[nathanallenpinard]

Well the human ear can detect many more directions than what surround provides today.

[loansindi]

At 6/29/09 05:04 PM, nathanallenpinard wrote: Well the human ear can detect many more directions than what surround provides today.

My point is this. Even a five speaker system provides pretty good imaging, a 7 that much better. At what point do we see diminishing returns? Where should the line be drawn to maximize the investment of money into mixing all those channels? When can we say adding another few speakers just doesn't provide a significant enough gain to be worth it?

[loansindi]

And double post, but it's worth noting... How many home stereo receivers have even caught up to 7.1?

Do movie studios release movies in 7.1? I honestly don't know because I don't keep up.

You'd have to invest in a whole new set of hardware before this became feasible even if it was shown to be nine million percent better.

[nathanallenpinard]

Yeah...I don't know.

The problem I see in this system is this:

Having two rear surrounds, and two "presence" surrounds very close to each other seems like it would be a minute difference.

The front actually might be more plausible with the right phasing and EQ techniques to give that 3d sound with just the front L and R. Or, the presence speakers could literally be boosted tweeters, but that really isn't a seperate channel.

The subs COULD be useful. Stereo subs are useful, but....4? The first two subs could be programmed to play ONLY stereo sub signals, and the side ones could be programmed to ONLY play a L only, or R only signal. So in a war film, the distant bombs like in Saving Private Ryan, would occur only in the L and R subs, while upfront explosions occur (and music) in the first two. That would maybe make more sense. However, unless the room is perfect calibrated, the front two subs wouldn't sound much different directional wise than the sides. It would actually make more sense if the front subs were just one mono sub, and the sides were the stereo pair.

Everything else after that seems to be standard really.

[loansindi]

Frankly, considering a lot of mid-range home theater units barely support 7.1 sound, why get worked up on 11.2?

[Rig]

Wavefield Synthesis is the most awesome surround sound system ever, but you need a ton of computing power and a ton of speakers.

[TMM43]

At 6/29/09 06:49 PM, Rig wrote: Wavefield Synthesis is the most awesome surround sound system ever, but you need a ton of computing power and a ton of speakers.

That's not surround sound, that's overkill!

As for the topic itself: I feel like 11.2 is just crazy. I mean I have been in people's homes who've had like a shit ton of speakers, and the sound was amazing. But really? What's next?
I feel like speakers are just going crazy.
Don't get me wrong, I love when everything sounds full, but I don't want to feel so into it that I shit my pants when watching a movie.

[architecture]

if people are going to get seroius about surround sound, SACD and DVD-A should have taken off years ago, but they are dead formats! I was a huge supporter of the SACD format, only to see it die.

People dont want surround sound music. these formats should have succeed otherwise.

[Back-From-Purgatory]

I think I'm in love.