I picked up my Hsu Ventriloqist/STF-3 package Saturday morning. I haven't had much time to play with the sub, but I've had a chance to hook up the Ventriloquist and I'll give my initial impressions. For those that like to skip to the end, I'll save you the time and tell you my overall impression is one of disappointment. I read some good reviews of the system and expected more, much more.
For the uninitiated, the ventriloquist system is a 6.1 satellite system with the unique feature that the center channel intercepts the L/R signal and extracts the 80-250hz frequencies and adds them to the center's playback, leaving the smaller satellites to play the remaining frequencies. The idea is that the center channel can fill the mid-bass gap suffered by most small sat systems. Also, the sixth channel can be matrixed from the L/R surround channels.
The speakers themselves look and feel like high quality pieces with some solid heft and a nice feel to them, but of course, look and feel isn't what speakers are about. I set the system up in my 10' x 11' bedroom. On the wall at the foot of the bed, I have a 26" LCD mounted on the wall with a 6' long shelf below it. I put the center channel under the TV with one sat about 2' to each side. Another sat is on a night table on each side of the bed. I did not use the sixth channel. I used my existing Sony SA-WM250 sub from my previous system. I did not use the STF-3, as I have other plans for that. It's not intended as boom-boom for the boom-boom if you know what I mean. I hooked it all up to my Denon AVR-686S and Denon DVD player and was ready to listen.
With neutral settings on the receiver, the Ventriloquist sounded awful in 2 channel stereo. I'll try to describe what I heard accurately. The lower treble and mid bass were horribly overboosted, yet hollow and unnatural. Imagine somebody playing a fine sound system as low volume, then at the same time, somebody is playing an old Victrola with the same music very loudly through that bent horn shaped thing. Flicking the Ventriloquist switch to the off position only made things much worse so back on it went in a hurry.
With some creative use of the receiver's settings, I've managed to bring the sound somewhat in line to normal sound instead of having it sound like listening to somebody else's music through a 20' air shaft. The first task was to minimize that horribly overboosted mid range, so minus 4db on the receiver's bass setting did that. Then to bring the highs to the same level, plus 2dB on the treble. Then the sub level was brought up to match. Most telling of the system was that without a sub, it was completely unlistenable. However, with these settings, it was up to the level of any bargain HTIB for 2-channel.
Switching to HD cable with a dolby signal fed through coax, I followed a similar setup process and the system actually turned out fairly decent for HT use. Dialog is clear and legible and ambient surround effects sound decent. I haven't had the chance to try any action/explosion type movies yet. I would say that this system is far better suited for HT use than for music, which is damning praise at best.
I'm no stranger to HTIB's having had a Sony 6.1, Samsung 5.1, Sony DAV-X1 and Bose 321 II. Call me the HTIB King if you want. I would put the Ventriloquist in the middle of this pack, better than the Samsung, which I gave to my next-door neighbor, but not as good as the Sony 6.1, which came with a receiver for $350 cdn on sale at Best Buy and which now resides at my in-laws'.
Had I paid full price for this, it would most certainly be on its way back to the dealer, but the way my deal was structured, it was $99 cdn with the purchase of the sub. Since I have a plan for the sub, I will keep this system and try to fine tune it some more and probably call Hsu for guidance. But as things stand now, I definitely fall into the "unimpressed" category, especially for a product that had good reviews. I'll add more later if I figure things out better and get it sorted out so that it meets expectations.
