| Sound Off March 2002
Upgrading a Home Theater
Question: When upgrading your
home theater, what do you look for? What should someone with a basic system expect to gain
from investing more money into his or her home theater? Where is the point of diminishing
returns?
Doug Blackburn:
What to look for in an upgrade almost always depends on
what you started out with. If you began with a "balanced" system -- spending
equal amounts of money on the video display, the electronics, and the speakers -- picking
one thing to upgrade will probably be an obsolescence issue more than anything else.
Home theater is in a state of rapid expansion and
improvement. New features appear all the time, and sooner or later, something you really
want is going to appear and that will probably dictate what should be upgraded. On the
other hand, if you have an "unbalanced" home theater, like you have a huge RPTV
but spent $800 on speakers, things would be different. In that case, the speakers are
going to be a pretty obvious upgrade candidate. So with this situation, what to upgrade
next is usually more obvious.
My most recent system upgrades involved getting a
high-definition display device. It really was time, and that lead to picking up a
reference-quality progressive-scan DVD player so I would have something to compare other
progressive-scan DVD players to. These were fairly obvious and needed upgrades. Next, for
me, will be a more up-to-date surround processor with 192kHz DACs, Dolby Pro Logic II,
DTS:Neo 6, more comprehensive adjustments, universal video switching with format
conversion to component, etc.
If you are enjoying a basic home-theater system, the things
that would make the most difference are better (or more) subwoofers, speakers that are
part of a matched set or a system of speakers intended to be used together, and a
high-definition video display.
Looking at the system as a whole, you will get a lot of
improvement for each $1000 increment you spend up to about $6000. Beyond $6000, the
improvements continue but the returns start to diminish. There will be some improvements
in video and sound quality going from $6000 to $12,000, though it may be subtler. Even
beyond $12,000 there is a lot of room for sonic improvement in the form of multiple
subwoofers and improving the room, and you'll be at the point where you are just beginning
to experience some of the better video displays. Sad to say, not even $50,000 buys a full
state-of-the-art home theater. In fact, it gets you only the projector!
Anthony Di Marco:
Amplifier power is one of the more important areas to look
at when upgrading. For the majority of popular mid-priced surround-sound multichannel
receivers, amplification is usually their weakest characteristic.
Robust power supplies require space and money to deliver
enough current and voltage to control loudspeakers optimally, but unfortunately budgeting
such facilities in many mass-market receivers isn't usually an option, especially when
you’re talking about driving five to seven individual channels. Fortunately, many
surround receivers offer preamplifier outputs for each channel, which allow for adding
external amplifiers.
Adding an external amplifier will offer extended dynamic
range and power reserves to allow the largest explosions and crescendos to be reproduced
with authority and accuracy on good loudspeakers. Having more power doesn't mean you need
to crank it, it just means that power will be available when the soundtrack demands it.
I'd say that the point of diminishing returns occurs when you start paying for good looks
over a simple solid black box with discrete amplifier modules sporting their own heat
sinks and transformers.
Jeff Fritz:
One of the most cost-effective upgrades in today’s
home-theater market is an average-sized high-definition display device. In a moderately
sized room, a good direct-view HD monitor is a huge improvement over an older setup. By
taking this step, you can then add a progressive-scan DVD player, which have become
amazingly inexpensive over the last year.
Once you’ve made the above upgrades to the video
portion of your home theater, you then can take a look at the audio side. Speakers,
assuming you have adequate power, are the biggest determinant of your system’s sound
quality (when combined with the room’s acoustics). A subwoofer(s) that can pressurize
the whole room without overloading and detail that lets you hear every last ounce of a
soundtrack’s sound design can improve the home-theater experience dramatically.
The point of diminishing returns comes in once you have the
above two areas tackled. Additional features such as the latest processing modes can cost
a lot and not add anything to the quality of your system. An example would be paying for
7.1 capability while having a 5.1-capable room.
Vince Hanada:
When I'm looking to upgrade my home-theater system, it is
either for a feature upgrade or a sound-quality improvement (or ideally both). The
difficulty lies in judging a sound-quality improvement. Often, changes to your system may
make it sound different, but the question you have to ask yourself is this: "Is this
change a real improvement?"
This is where good friends or your local audio/video dealer
can help. The best way to judge an improvement is to borrow equipment and try the new
piece in your system in your home. Also, don't underestimate the zero-dollar
improvements -- better speaker positioning or system calibration can often make a world of
difference without costing you a penny.
For someone with a basic home-theater system, I think the
most dramatic sound-quality improvements can be had in the following order: speakers,
subwoofers, processors, and amps. With speakers, I know by spending money, I can get huge
improvements in sound quality. With amplifiers, however, if my speakers are efficient to
begin with, better amps will result in subtle improvements. |
