Grrr....Begone DOlby, BEGONE! (back to 2-channel)

[mustang_steve]

Yeah, I got sick and tired of the speaker placement woes in my apartment, and decided I cannot get a proper speaker placement in my living room...the south end of the room is just the worst possible layout for it's size.

So I put my RX-496 reciever in my rack instead of the surround reciever, and guted my center, surrounds, and subwoofer....leaving just my mains...I also removed some lesser furniture so I could play with speaker positioning (the sub rested on one of these said pieces of furniture).

Overall I noticed that this setup was far mroe pleasing overall. I lost the coolness factor of Pro-Logic II when listening to music, but well and oh well.

As a bonus, I might finally buy a pair of truly "hi-fi" speakers like I wanted

....maybe even a Von Schweikert VR-1

...of course after I save up the dough


....so, anyone else ditched surround due to small/impractical rooms? Let's hear your woes, and have a virtual beer.

 

[Rob Babcock]

I feel your pain. I just leased a new place having moved for work. My room isn't as good there as my old one in SF. Perhaps good 2CH is better than bad DD, but I'd hate to give up on surround. With a bit of work most rooms can be dealt with.

Still, if you MC position is untenable, it's not like plain ol' stereo is the kiss of death.

 

[mustang_steve]

True.

Yeah my problem was I could have one of the following, not both:

Good surround

Ability to walk around the couch, to use the rest of the house, like the bathroom, kitchen, or bedroom

I went for mobility > sound.

...oh well, I'm still fine-tuning the speaker placement, but so far I'm about as happy as I was listening to music through Pro-LogicII.....funny part, I still swear there are speakers behind me sometimes.....which is probably a good sign that this room is in need of some acoustic treatments (the front wall and ceiling are concrete, the rest of the walls are drywall).

That, and my rx-496 is soooo much better at driving my BR-1s than the RX-v430 I was using for surround. The joys of a low-end surround reciever vs a mid-end stereo reciever.

I'm now considering an experiment....find out if the rx-496 can handle Magnepan MMGs alright...if so, there I go for nice new speaks to go with the 2-channel setup