Sounds Like Home Theatre
Dear Gary Thank you for printing both of my letters over the past few years. It is wonderful that your magazine is very responsive to its readers with well thought out and thorough answers. A few questions have been lingering in my head for a while, so I’ve come to you again for the answers. Richard Hardesty addressed in Issue 44 about the current sound of home theatre products as a step backwards for audiophiles, bringing sound quality to that in the ’70s. While I wasn’t around to hear ’70s equipment, I agree entirely with this statement based on what I hear today on high-end two channel systems. So where do these problems lie if we run two channel material through home theatre gear? Does the inferior sound come from the multichannel amplifiers that possibly don’t sound as sweet as a great two-channel amp? Does it lie in the pre-stage, even if it does have an analogue pass through? Or if I play a DVD or DTS Audio disc through to digital out, does the problem lie in the DVD player? (I imagine all three create problems of their own and I understand this is a big topic to explain). This brings me to my next question: back in Issue 24 when DVD was first tested by Widescreen Review, you stated that there were problems with jitter in DVD players that are 1000 times worse than that of a CD player. You basically said that audio was limited to 12 bits. I have never heard this statement anywhere else, nor have I ever heard it discussed again in the magazine about improvements that have come about in this area. Could you please discuss what happened to this issue and if in fact home theatre is still limited severely by the DVD player’s audio performance? Thank you again for publishing a statement magazine!
Michael Osadciw, Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada,
Audio Review Editor Richard Hardesty Comments:
I’ll be addressing these issues in future articles but most of the quality problems associated with home theatre audio can be traced to the concept of using the dubbing stage as a paradigm of fidelity for home theatre. The PA system in a dubbing stage or in a movie theatre does not measure up to the standards of home high fidelity audio reproduction. Trying to make home theatre systems sound like movie theatres sets us back about thirty years in my opinion. Some of today’s multichannel amplifiers are among the best sounding amplifiers available. Other home theatre components will get better when we begin to hold them to the same standards that we use to judge high quality stereo components. The statement about 12-bit resolution from DVD players is the opinion of the author of that article. This is an opinion that I do not share. Some inexpensive DVD players do sound pretty bad but the better ones can offer excellent audio performance.
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