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Have something to say? Need to express an opinion? Want to ask a question? Go ahead! E-mail all correspondence to the editor. There is a good chance that you will see your letter in this spot. Don't be bashful -- we really do want to hear from you.

Yours truly,

The Staff at Home Theater & Sound

Floorstanding surround speaker height

July 21, 2008

Editor,

I have just bought some new front speakers and want to move my old speakers to the rear. They are floorstanding PSBs and I am wondering whether I should raise them off the floor to get the height up to where a normal surround speaker would be and to clear the furniture. They would be sitting on tables about 30” off the floor.

Ron

This is a good question. I have seen folks do it both ways. In part it depends on the speakers you have, and I think a little experimentation would go a long way. Try it and see how it sounds. My reservations center around how the floorstanding speaker was designed to be listened to. Most of them have a listening window based on a certain tweeter height. If you’re listening to them far below the tweeter axis -- as you would be with them raised a couple of feet off the floor -- this would impact sound quality. Come to think of it, perhaps the best compromise would be to raise them up and angle them down so that you maintain the proper tweeter axis. My bet is that this would accomplish both of your goals. Just make sure you anchor them so they don’t tip forward....Jeff Fritz

Speaker sizes and crossovers with PS3

July 3, 2008

To Randall Smith,

I can't seem to get a clear answer on this and so I thought I would ask you and see if maybe you can clear it up for me. I've been doing HD DVD for a year and, a few days ago, Blu-Ray by purchasing the PS3.

I've known about the new Dolby TrueHD and DTS-Master Audio tracks, but I didn't really pay much attention to them. Mostly because I thought that I needed a new receiver with HDMI 1.3 and one able to decode the new audio formats. But once I bought the PS3 last week I did some more research and discovered to my pocketbook's delight that I don't need a new receiver and that my Denon '2807 is fine. This is because the PS3 is decoding and sending LPCM to the receiver over HDMI and the receiver simply displays "Multichannel In" and it all works great.

Ignoring any thoughts about if the decoding is better in the player or the receiver, my question is regarding crossovers and speaker sizes, etc. These are all set in the receiver. When it receives the LPCM signal, the settings in the receiver still apply to the input. Why I am asking and why I am confused is because with my old Sony '999ES DVD/SACD player, when I have it hooked up to the 5.1 external inputs of the receiver, I set the speaker sizes and distances, etc. in the player. And I believe in this case they override any settings in the receiver. Off course there are no such settings in the PS3 for this, and I am assuming doing the decoding in the player and sending the LPCM to the receiver is, in essence, identical to the receiver doing the decoding. So are the speaker sizes and the distances, etc. used as set by the receiver in this case? Finally, would this only be true when using HDMI? Or would it still apply if I had a player with 5.1 or 7.1 outputs and feeding those to my receiver?

Sanjay

You are correct: the new sound formats can be decoded in the HD source player and sent out via HDMI 1.1. Thankfully this is the case or everyone would be forced to buy a new receiver in order to take advantage of these new sound formats. In the case of the PS3, this product will not output a digital bitstream of Dolby TrueHD or DTS-MA. Sony prefers that the PS3 do the decoding and then output the PCM signal that your receiver is receiving. As far as speaker settings in your source player go, my advice is to use the bass management only in your Denon receiver. The Denon will be responsible for crossing over your speakers to your sub as well as the speaker distances. The Denon can do this because you are sending a digital signal to it as opposed to an analog signal, which is what you used to do with your Sony receiver. Hopefully this little bit of information will help ease your mind and also help your system perform to the best of its capabilities. . . . Randall Smith