So today, I made a long overdue and very important audio upgrade to what can now certainly be called a home theatre system. After getting all the speakers and the subwoofer home, I connected what I could to my new Onkyo TX-SR875 receiver (which arrived today), and then realised I'd run out of speaker cable, so had to get a taxi back into Glasgow's West End before all the shops shut.
I still need more cable so I can bi-amp the Left and Right speakers, but even now in these early uncalibrated days, I am a very, very happy boy. Clearly, a £2000 setup is going to perform a hell of a lot better than a £200 one, but nothing can really prepare you for when you finally pass the threshold from "better than TV audio" to proper full-blown movie audio. In fact, one of the first things I thought when I heard it working was that it reminded me of being in demo rooms when I was first on the lookout for a projector.
It's a cliche, but yes, you can hear lots of nice little details that you couldn't hear before. The sound is just much more detailed and pleasing; voices have that nice Hollywood texture to them, and the surround speakers now actually DO something rather than sitting and making barely audible croaks. The subwoofer (I got an MJ Acoustics Pro 50 mk.II) creates bass that actually feels spacious, instead of just being there for the sake of it to conceal shortcomings in the main speakers (like in the last setup). I checked out Kill Bill: Volume 2 on BD, using the PCM surround track, and was happy to be able to pick out clicks and crackles from the vinyl-sourced background music, and just generally appreciated the believability and impact of everything.
As for the amp, I really enjoy having a high end one which can actually draw on screen menus. Making adjustments on the amp instead of on a tiny 2-line LCD display is much more convenient. Oh, speaking of which, the HQV Reon-VX video deinterlacing and scaling chip is implemented nicely. For DVD content, I'm feeding 480i/576i direct from the Oppo DV-980H player, and I'm very pleased with the deinterlacing and scaling provided by the amp. Scaling is beautifully clean and seems to be very close to completely ring-free; and the diagonal interpolation for smoothing out video jaggies is fantastic. It passes all the important film cadence hurdles, too. I'm disappointed that Onkyo didn't implement any of the chip's Detail Enhancement or Mosquito NR functions, but I'm happy with my projector's Sharpening feature for SD DVD anyway (trust me, at 8 feet wide, a little bit of sharpening can go a long way).
Next up: calibration!
I still need more cable so I can bi-amp the Left and Right speakers, but even now in these early uncalibrated days, I am a very, very happy boy. Clearly, a £2000 setup is going to perform a hell of a lot better than a £200 one, but nothing can really prepare you for when you finally pass the threshold from "better than TV audio" to proper full-blown movie audio. In fact, one of the first things I thought when I heard it working was that it reminded me of being in demo rooms when I was first on the lookout for a projector.
It's a cliche, but yes, you can hear lots of nice little details that you couldn't hear before. The sound is just much more detailed and pleasing; voices have that nice Hollywood texture to them, and the surround speakers now actually DO something rather than sitting and making barely audible croaks. The subwoofer (I got an MJ Acoustics Pro 50 mk.II) creates bass that actually feels spacious, instead of just being there for the sake of it to conceal shortcomings in the main speakers (like in the last setup). I checked out Kill Bill: Volume 2 on BD, using the PCM surround track, and was happy to be able to pick out clicks and crackles from the vinyl-sourced background music, and just generally appreciated the believability and impact of everything.
As for the amp, I really enjoy having a high end one which can actually draw on screen menus. Making adjustments on the amp instead of on a tiny 2-line LCD display is much more convenient. Oh, speaking of which, the HQV Reon-VX video deinterlacing and scaling chip is implemented nicely. For DVD content, I'm feeding 480i/576i direct from the Oppo DV-980H player, and I'm very pleased with the deinterlacing and scaling provided by the amp. Scaling is beautifully clean and seems to be very close to completely ring-free; and the diagonal interpolation for smoothing out video jaggies is fantastic. It passes all the important film cadence hurdles, too. I'm disappointed that Onkyo didn't implement any of the chip's Detail Enhancement or Mosquito NR functions, but I'm happy with my projector's Sharpening feature for SD DVD anyway (trust me, at 8 feet wide, a little bit of sharpening can go a long way).
Next up: calibration!
Leave a comment