Paradigm Studio 20 vs B&W 602 S3

[RGA]

which I use for home cinema and sometime for music. The two main speakers are B&W DM -602 S2 and the rears are Monitor Audio Silver S2. The Yamaha does a very good job playing music. Only opening a door is my main audio system which is Paradigm Studio 100 V2, NAD 521i cd player and NAD-370 integrated amplifier. Is there a big difference between these two systems? Probably yes but when you are listening to the Yammy, you don't turn off this to turn on the Nad staff. What I mean is my family and I enjoy both systems without be looking which is playing.
Jorge.

Well that is fine - I don't turn off my receiver when music starts up in the middle of a movie either.

I'm not going to get into what other people should be listening to because it's none of my business - your second system IMO isn't a huge step up over the first one so If the first one was alreayd on I might not be bothered to switch over either - it's been a while but the 602S2 is no slouch and easily hangs in with any Paradigm I've heard - I like the 604S3 over the new studio 100V3. I'm not talking about "like" sounds and even this set-up isn;t really helpful as you have NAD with Paradigm and Yamaha with B&W. The speaker makes the most noticeable change in the system - that however doesn't mean it's the most important change in the system. And some systems are less sensitive to changes in ancillary gear.

[dvjorge]

the B&W driven by NAD, Rotel (which I sold) and it doesn't mean anything. To compare the B&W 600 series with the Paradigm Studio Serie is missing the respect to this forum. Anybody knows the Studios are better, let say a lot of better than the 600 serie which I own too. What you conclude about this is really stupid for me. If you say other B&Ws, like 800 serie, I can admit that but the 600....it makes me laugh. Man, the hate you feel for Paradigm has more power than you. It is incredible how a person like you who sometime give good advise be so stubborn. If you don't want to hear anything about Paradigm, I agree but don't talk nonsense hard to believe by yourself.

Jorge

[RGA]

See your statement makes little sense to me - you are the one who just said that if you were listening to the B&W with the Yamaha that you would not bother to change over to the 100V2 Nad set-up - becuase you and your family enjoy the B&W's. If the Studio's were SOOOO much better then you would IMO bother to open the door and switch it. I would bother to switch if the other system were truly that much better - and the 100V2 is very good but it's not THAT MUCH better than the 600 series 2 - hell even the big Paradigm fan Woochifer was going back and forth between the two lines - so it is obvious the 600 series wasn't blown out of the water - great speakers and system SHOULD have that effect.

The Studio 100V2 I would prefer listening to than the Series 2 B&W series as well - but then I would prefer listening to the Paradigm 100V2 than a lot of speakers including the 100V3. I bought my amp based off an audition of the 100V2 - it's a fine value it's a good speaker - there is better much better out there - but for the $1900.00Cdn price for the 100V2 it was one of the better speakers around.

The B&W 800 series is overpriced for what you get - some people prefer the 100V2 to many more expensive B&W's - I would take the 100V2, 60V2 and the 40V2 over any of the B&W 700 series I have heard and these speakers are about double the price. Paying more doesn't mean you get more - and just because a company says one line is better than another line doesn't make it so.

Anyone on this forum who thinks I'm anti-Paradigm has to take a real look in the mirror - the only reason it SEEMS that way is because this particular forum has a lot of Paradigm owners on it and they come up a lot - bigger speaker companies like Paradigm and B&W are often in conversation - If I say something good about a Paradigm speaker - and I do often no one says anything - say something bad then wow everyone goes on a tirade. Other people like Kex says some $300.00 speaker blows his 40V2's out of the water and no one says anything. Paradigm simply doesn;t offer pinnacle sound - that's ok becuase they don't charge pinnacle prices - but they are what they are and they are not more than that. I am planning to buy a very good amplifier a high end amplifier - but I am not delesional enough to believe that because that is what I can afford that now diminihing returns stops and spending more doesn't get more. Some guy who can afford $2k speakers and then deludes himself into thinking that because he could afford $2k that any more than that is a waste. Yeah sorry but no.

B&W is the same on other forums people and me like some and hate some - Audio Note same thing - if it's no good it's no good period and if it's a great value IMO then I'm going to tell people about it - excellent speakers for value - Paradigm Atom V3/Wharfedale 8.1/Athena ASf1/B&W 602S3/Dynaudio A42/Audio Note AX Two as starters.

And if it's a lousy value or not so good a speaker like the JBL e10 /Paradigm Studio 100V3/B&W 705 and 703/Audio Note AX One/ Bose 901 etc then I'm going to say it.

[shokhead]

I've been on e-bay and a few classifieds for some 602's{i thought an upgrade from my 601's for DVD-A and SACD might be better} to go with my 603's and notice mostly 800 series for sale. Whats up with those?

[Woochifer]

I am far less critical of home theater because the reference points are less demanding in my view one T-rex scream on one set-up versus another t-rex scream on another system is of zero use to me. Nor frankly do I much care. I can enjoy Spiderman 2 on 2 channel just as I can enjoy films on tv with the crap tv speakers - because I watch movies for the story. I also have a problem that my firends and I would be amused by that I had a big surround system with a 27 inch tv.

No one's saying that you can't enjoy the movie through a two-channel audio system. The contradiction is that you're so dismissive of the very concept that music can be enjoyable played through a receiver just because you've heard something better, yet you enjoy a multichannel soundtrack that has been piped down to the DVD player's two channel analog output, played through a donkey ball sucking receiver, and with the LFE channel jettisoned.

Using your logic, then the movie soundtrack should not be enjoyable because there are many higher reference points. Even with your own receiver, a digital connection will at least recover the LFE information, and we're not even on the subject of the missing surround channels.

And what's wrong with playing the big surround sound with a 27" TV? I play widescreen movies on a 32" TV and don't see anything odd or "amusing" about that. What you and "your friends" regard as amusing in itself a source of amusement.

Frankly, just as when I was starting to builf a car stereo I realised that with the car - that no amount of money was going to make that work for me - and for movies - the amount of times I re-watch a film(and the TYPES of films that I would rewatch) the amount of money I would need to invest to make me happy would not be feasable. Movie prices have gone way up - but I enjoy the movie going experience(which is not just about the sound) more-so than any home theater system can hope to provide for me. I would need at least a 70 preferably 100 inch screen - without the kind of picture offerred up by LCD and Plasma. The though of buying two more sets of Audio Note speakers to have E's in the corners J's as centers and K's in rear - to be able to bypass the receiver out of the loop completely when i want to listen to music and the front projection system - is a bit much. And a receiver capable of real bass response not one that is "Expecting" the customer to buy a subwoofer when all channels are being driven.

And no home audio system can reproduce the experience of a concert hall either, so I don't see the point you're getting at.

While the big picture of a movie theater cannot be replicated at home, the audio part of the experience can be easily topped at home because the surround imaging on a 5.1 setup can be optimized to a single listening position rather than compromised for the entire auditorium. Furthermore, more and more DVD soundtracks are getting repurposed for home theater rather than simply ported over from the theatrical soundtrack. The sense of space and precise directionality in a repurposed soundtrack like "Master and Commander" simply cannot be duplicated in a theater.

But all of that is another issue - Home theater is not a major priority for me so a cheap H/T receiver is acceptable especially since the vast majority of films that I would re-watch don't make much if any real use out of surround channels or subwoofers - and I've had no trouble with any of my 200+ movies in 2 channel - mix downs they may be.

How would you even know what a movie makes of the surround channels if you don't even have surround speakers?

Contrary to your assertions, it's not just action pics that make use of the surround channels and the subwoofer tracks. Even dialog driven movies like "Memento" and "Insomnia" have excellent surround soundtracks that greatly enhance the viewing experience, and make the movie more involving because they pull the viewer into the scene on the screen.

I'm not a fan of the action genres of films, if I loved deafeningly stupid Michael Bay films with car chases and planes blowing up I might care more - I prefer mostly story telling films that requires thinking about subject matter which needs two crappy tv speakers and a viewable tv screen. I'm willing to enhance those films a bit - but i won't throw the minimum $10k on sound alone(that would make me happy) to ge me more "into" this week's movie for morons action blow up cop buddy movie. Though I suppose paying attention to the little noises in the rear would help me take my mind off virtually every hollywood pice of crap that rolls out into video stores - give me pyrotechnics to show off on my grear rather than force me to listen to banal dialogue and formula story.

Again, it's not all about loud sound effects and stuff blowing up. If that's all that you value in home theater, then you're missing out on a huge part of the experience for other movies. It's not just "little noises in the rear" that are in these surround soundtracks, especially as more DVDs are getting mixed specifically for home theaters. It's about creating a cohesive soundfield that encircles the viewer and makes them part of the scene. Then again, you wouldn't know this if you're listening with a two-channel mixdown. More of the music is now getting shifted into the surrounds, more sounds are getting mixed at equal levels between the front and surround channels which solidify the side imaging and depth perception.

It's about making the experience more engaging and involving. I'm sure you can relate to this with music, so why is this point so elusive when it comes to movies? I mean, you're saying that a good movie would still be a good movie played through crappy speakers, so why would this not apply with music?

[RGA]

Actually it does apply to music - Miles Davis is still Miles davies on a clock radio or a level 6 AudioNote system. The difference is that Movies are story driven not sound driven (some movies are effects and sound driven) Music is all about sound(and lyrics are there to tell a story but it's all about the sound.

I have heard my receiver in surround mode and many movies watched in surround mode - not at my house as of yet becuase I'm looking for suitable loudspeakers that will be easy enough to drive and which meet my basic minimum standards. Money does not grow on trees however at elast not for me - big sound small screen is hoaky which is what causes my amusement. When a person puts his cup oin atable and it throws you off your seat from the thud(apart from that being horribly recorded or a product of the systems out there) it is plausible if the guy on screen is 50 feet tall as opposed to 27 inches. The movie going experience includes the picture - that is in fact the most important part of the film.

I'm not going to get into a debate regarding the value of home theater - if it gets you into the movie then buy it - It takes more than most of what I have heard to get me into the movie any moreso than I was into it with two channel - and none compete with the full movie going experience.

I agree live music is applicable to home 2 channel audio - but Sarah McLachlan comes around only eveyr few years and costs me $80.00 to see her - a movie is $9.50 - chances are I'm going to want to play the Sarah McLachlan CD more times in my life than I will watch even my most cherrished motion picture. I use the digital connection from the DVD player to the Marantz and let the Marantz also act as a DAC for the unit - simply because the DVD player is horrible for cd replay - well tha is obvious - it must be horrible if the Marantz improves it.

I am considering three sets of AX Two loudspeakers to be purchased in stages (becuase I need stands) - They are not magnetically shielded but I can space them well away from the tv - problem is I don't get the height match in the center which is critical for any system to be believable for me - no system not using the exact same speaker all around IMO is believeable at all. If I'm going to do it it has to be done right - or it's not worth doing - this is especially critical for SACD. It's not that i don;t care about surround sound - it is simply because I'll be anal about it and it's too costly to do right - so accepting that fact I will toy with it.

[shokhead]

MD is still MD on a clock radio or level 6 AudioNote system? Your hearing 1/10th what you should be hearing on a clock radio,come on. Thats like saying a picture of crap is the same as standing in it. One is as far away as you can get and the other is up close and detailed. Sound makes the movie better and gets you ready for the story and helps tell the story. I've enjoyed all my movies on my 8 year old 27" and hope they are better on my new 30" . I was brought up on four track so you dont know how cool it will be to hear DVD-A and SACD. I can hardly wait. For money growing on trees,i would rather wait and save to buy better then to buy now and not as good.

[kexodusc]

If I say something good about a Paradigm speaker - and I do often no one says anything - say something bad then wow everyone goes on a tirade. Other people like Kex says some $300.00 speaker blows his 40V2's out of the water and no one says anything.

Oh geez, I did say that, didn't I....Destroy, or blow out of the water is too strong. But they are significantly better....I'm sorry guys, please don't flame me...uhh...go Paradigm go!
Want another one, I bought a really cheap (though heavily modified) BIC America DV-62CLRS speaker that outperformed my cousins CC-370 and Monitor 5's in a head to head audition, and wrote some reviews...waiting to get flamed for that too...

Actually I find Paradigm is quickly becoming the next JBL as someone else on another forum mentioned to me. It seems in this industry, any time someone enjoys mass success, particularly among knowledgeable people, the audiophile community rejects it as being mainstream and inferior for a whole bunch of odd ball reasons. And vice-versa, more exotic gear is often deemed better just because it's not as popular. Paradigm's definitely at that stage now.
I don't think Paradigm makes a bad sounding speaker. They make some great values, and some not so great values (Signatures, Monitor 7's, 11's, Studio 100's) IMO. What I don't like is money to someone else though.

I've really only heard a few speakers I can genuinely say I did not like at their price point, and quite often they were sold in Sears, Best Buy, or Radio Shack. Oh, and then there's Bose.

As annoying as RGA gets, constantly bashing every Paradigm except the Atom v.3 (which is identical to v.2 other than production date from what I've heard), you have to respect that he's heard a bunch of Paradigm stuff, and decided against it.

I'm almost ready to ask for a rule requiring no more "this vs. that" threads...they always lead to flame wars between owners, non-owners, and brand-bashers. I'm not sure if this is really adding any value anymore...

[theaudiohobby]

The real issue is that many brand-bashers are simply furious at the sucess of the mass market manufacturers and take delight in concocting various conspiracy theories accusing them of trading in bad faith. I thought it fun, when JA named one of Paradigm 100v3 very good value in comparison to the boutique brands, the real truth that many boutique brands cannot compete on equal footing with the mass market manufacturers and force to restrict their products to upper end of the market. The last time I heard a B&W 802, I was very impressed, moreso because I had heard were regarded audiophile brands that simply did not cut the mustard, also the Revel M20, I was very impressed, these speakers perform well. Somehow I think many audiophile waste a lot of money and effort giving attention to a misguided prejudices, and end up paying exhorbitant prices for not a lot of performance. Some speakers are poor value but that applies to boutique as well as mass market manufacturers, a speaker that needs an amplifier with rolled-off frequency extremes to perform well , amazing.

[46minaudio]

As annoying as RGA gets, constantly bashing every Paradigm except the Atom v.3 (which is identical to v.2 other than production date from what I've heard), you have to respect that he's heard a bunch of Paradigm stuff, and decided against it.

RGA bashes everything that does not follow his opinion.kex I hope you dont own a recevier.If you do however, I have just learned it sucks donkey balls.I own one and almost hate to use it anymore because RGA (god of all audio)said it sucked donkey balls.Ever notice RGA will tell posters never to go by Personal,and pro reviews if they dont share his opinion,But will quote them and ask posters to view them if they agree with him..This guy is a AN shill and very biased. ANYTHING RGA says should be taken with a huge grain of salt...

[kexodusc]

RGA bashes everything that does not follow his opinion.kex I hope you dont own a recevier.If you do however, I have just learned it sucks donkey balls.I own one and almost hate to use it anymore because RGA (god of all audio)said it sucked donkey balls.Ever notice RGA will tell posters never to go by Personal,and pro reviews if they dont share his opinion,But will quote them and ask posters to view them if they agree with him..This guy is a AN shill and very biased. ANYTHING RGA says should be taken with a huge grain of salt...

If you substituted AN with Paradigm, and Paradigm with BOSE, RGA would be the resident AR.COM hero.

I don't think he's here to shill specifically, or to troll etc...I think he really believes he's found a great speaker and wants all to share.

Perhaps he'd be better served by openning his mind to the possibility that to some people, those same speakers don't sound real, life-like, or good at all. (Though having heard alot of AN stuff, I can honestly say they are great speakers until you get into the exotic E models).

He's slowly toning it down a bit...have faith.

[Woochifer]

Actually it does apply to music - Miles Davis is still Miles davies on a clock radio or a level 6 AudioNote system. The difference is that Movies are story driven not sound driven (some movies are effects and sound driven) Music is all about sound(and lyrics are there to tell a story but it's all about the sound.

No, books are story driven -- movies need both visuals and sound to be a movie. Without the audio or visual angle, movies are nothing more than screenplays or storyboards. Citizen Kane or Goodfellas would not be the same if you took out either the sound or the visuals.

I have heard my receiver in surround mode and many movies watched in surround mode - not at my house as of yet becuase I'm looking for suitable loudspeakers that will be easy enough to drive and which meet my basic minimum standards. Money does not grow on trees however at elast not for me - big sound small screen is hoaky which is what causes my amusement. When a person puts his cup oin atable and it throws you off your seat from the thud(apart from that being horribly recorded or a product of the systems out there) it is plausible if the guy on screen is 50 feet tall as opposed to 27 inches. The movie going experience includes the picture - that is in fact the most important part of the film.

Surround mode? As in Pro Logic or a 5.1 format?

You have the means to try surround sound out at home. Just use the digital connection so you can route the LFE channel through the mains and temporarily use your ANs as surrounds or mains.

Also, it's NOT at all implausible to go with the big sound and a 27" screen. Why? Because at home we sit a lot closer to the screen than we do at the movies. Nowadays, stadium theaters are designed with smaller screens than before (often under 20' wide), yet audiences perceives the image area as larger because the steep angle puts the majority of the seats closer to the screen than with a conventional rectangular setup.

The sound in a 5.1 setup can elevate the overall experience because the visuals are flat and two-dimensional. The sound is the only part of the experience that can envelop the audience and make them part of the scene. Doesn't matter how big or small the screen size, better sound makes for a more involving experience. I don't know why you would think that this applies to music and not to movies.

I'm not going to get into a debate regarding the value of home theater - if it gets you into the movie then buy it - It takes more than most of what I have heard to get me into the movie any moreso than I was into it with two channel - and none compete with the full movie going experience.

That's probably because you've yet to actually hear a properly setup 5.1 system. Don't bring up the demo room experiences again. I'll reinterate again, the vast majority of demo rooms that I've visited do not have the surround setups configured properly. And without a SPL meter, proper adjustments to the delay timing, and proper placement, it won't sound right at home either.

As far as the full movie going experience, yeah it's not the same. At home there's no loudmouth chatter, cellphones going off, speaker channels shorting out, grainy overprojected prints, focus that shifts between projectors, long lines, overpriced junk food, etc. And at home, the audio portion that I get with my system sounds better than at all but the top showcase theaters. Better imaging, better tonal balance, better dialog intelligibility, more precise directional cues, etc. The only area where my system might fall short with the audio is in the deep bass extension, and even there a lot of theaters overshoot the bass beyond what the subwoofers are capable of and distortion's audible.

I use the digital connection from the DVD player to the Marantz and let the Marantz also act as a DAC for the unit - simply because the DVD player is horrible for cd replay - well tha is obvious - it must be horrible if the Marantz improves it.

Or it could be that the Marantz is bad at handling analog signals. A lot of entry level receivers convert all signals to digital and reconvert them to analog, even if the signal gets played with no signal processing. Don't know if your Marantz model does this, but it is a very frequent design approach at the entry level, and it's not until you get to midlevel or higher models that you see more analog bypass features incorporated.

[Woochifer]

Actually I find Paradigm is quickly becoming the next JBL as someone else on another forum mentioned to me. It seems in this industry, any time someone enjoys mass success, particularly among knowledgeable people, the audiophile community rejects it as being mainstream and inferior for a whole bunch of odd ball reasons. And vice-versa, more exotic gear is often deemed better just because it's not as popular. Paradigm's definitely at that stage now.

Believe me, JBL's reputation went into the dirt for a lot of reasons other than their mass success. The main hit that they took was when they abandoned their long-time specialty markets and moved a lot of inferior product through mass merchandisers. The speakers that these specialty dealers sold were no better or worse than before, but JBL introduced a lot of bottomfeeding junk that got sold through mass channels and did not measure up to the best of their vintage models. But, rather than compete with the big box retailers, nearly all of JBL's long-time dealers opted to go with other brands that did not distribute to mass merchandisers. That's why JBL continues to put out well regarded speakers, like the K2 and the TiK series, that hardly anyone has heard in North America. And the only JBLs that most people hear are whatever gets stocked and displayed at Best Buy, which is basically entry level speakers getting demoed in a terrible acoustical environment. Not exactly the best way to establish or maintain high end credibility.

Paradigm has been successful, but that did not occur by going through the typical mass merchandising channels like Bose and JBL do. The Canadian speaker manufacturers in general emerged right around the time that JBL was alienating their specialty dealer network. If anything, they filled a hole in the market that emerged when all those dealers were looking for alternatives in the midlevel price points. Basically, at a lot of dealers, Paradigm (and Energy and Polk and B&W) replaced JBL, but I'm not sure if that means that they're on their way to becoming the next JBL. In the U.S. at least, Paradigm has been fairly selective about who carries their speakers. If anything, they're more selective than Energy and even B&W because they don't go with even regional specialty chains.

You're right though in that audiophiles often embrace and reject brands for a whole litany of illogical reasons that are outside of the bottomline performance. Once you get into some of the more esoteric approaches, it indeed is often "different" as opposed to "better."

[kexodusc]

Thanks Wooch, for the little history lesson on the "demise" of JBL...Too bad, I guess. I've got no problem with pushing inexpensive models if there's demand, but it's unfortunate if causes your better products to disappear because of this.

But still, even hearing their inexpensive junk, to me it's not nearly as bad as alot of people say it is. Not my first choice, but not terrible.

I know first hand that big box stores can back fire in a big way for large manufacturers. If JBL becomes too dependant on Best Buy and Circuit City and such for distribution, these stores can command a lot influence on the MSRP, etc. Sometimes they prevent savings from being passed on to the consumer. And besides, who among us has really heard a Polk or JBL system properly calibrated and setup in a decent room with running on decent equipment recently? My trip the other day to Future Shop (Best Buy Canada) might as well have been a stroll through a large grocery store...Crowded shelfs, messy wires, 20 foot tall boxes of gear and 200 screaming customers isn't what I'd call optimal listening conditions.

I'd be curious to know exactly what happened to Acoustic Research...seems to me they've long since fallen from grace...any ideas there?

[RGA]

Kex - wow you leave the board a few hours and suddenly the influx of OT.

I don't think the point is to have to listen to JBL in the best acoustical environment since most people don't have that - The Future SHops are not ideal - okay but it's not ideal for all th other brands - you should always be able to get a sense of how a speaker sounds - Sarah Mclachlan is sarah McLachlan in the bath tub or Queen Elizabeth theater or at an outdoor concert etc etc. What I think is important is to compare the speakers in the same acoustic environment and see what happens. A recent discussion going on about phase coherence etc going on at AA makes the same point - our ear filters out much of the crap and focuses in on what we wish to hear same as in a crowded room as it is in a room with a lot of echo - none of that shows up in measurements because they are woefully inadequate compared to what the human brain is capable of with regards to hear location.

Kex - you are in Canada now no? Paradigm is in a big box chain called AudioVideo Unlimited - Paradigm is better than JBL. You're in the east and I don't know if A&B sound is out there but all of the high end dealers have dumped Totem and they have gone to A&B Sound. I odn;t think it necessarily says anything about the quality and I don;t believe it's because people want to own boutique brands(some are better than others in both camps). High end dealers here simply don't carry Paradigm because they are not high end speakers - Soundhounds carries Wharfedale/Paradigm as good budget speakers and with the V2 I can't argue with that. As Terry said you need to carry a lot of selection so that people can make up their own mind and people want what they read about in last months stereo magazine - he noted that there are speakers you carry to sell and speakers you carry to own. Then there lines like Totem they carry in name only - he said it was useless they got dropped by Dynaudio on the drivers - they sold 6 Totem products all year - they sold 6 AN products in one day. So he keeps them becuase basically you can compare them in an A/B session which helps sell their biggest selling line in AN. ANd Totem takes up little space. They dumped ML and the Big Nautilus speakers because they kept coming back - sooner or later the faults became noticeable - the same set of N801's were brought back by three different customers - that's tough on a dealer so now he carries the smaller N803 and N805.

They have 6-7 people this year scouting at CES looking for brands to carry.

I think Polk ran into financial trouble - they simply never were THAT great - and if you're a marginal high end brand like a Totem and you're selling 6 speakers a year at a huge dealer - then somewhere aloing the line you gotta eat - so you call up A&B Sound and Future Shop where you'll instantly be the prestige line at those places(Energy Veritas as well at A&B Sound). The problem is is that High end shoppers tend not to bother with A&B Sound and Future Shop and average Joe is probably not going to want to drop $3k on a standmount or $800.00Cdn on the Mite. These speakers are good I like the Rainmaker among others - but they're really small and average Joe likes big bass - and none of these cn produce bass with credible SPLs and if it's all about home theater - then the energy C series is cheaper and will do it H/T just as well. Which is why at least at this store Totem's prices are hacked and the manager told me they do the worst of all they carry in sales. If that is true across the board I don't see a big future for Totem - unless they cut corners - and then what's the point.

[RGA]

MD is still MD on a clock radio or level 6 AudioNote system? Your hearing 1/10th what you should be hearing on a clock radio,come on. Thats like saying a picture of crap is the same as standing in it. One is as far away as you can get and the other is up close and detailed. Sound makes the movie better and gets you ready for the story and helps tell the story. I've enjoyed all my movies on my 8 year old 27" and hope they are better on my new 30" . I was brought up on four track so you dont know how cool it will be to hear DVD-A and SACD. I can hardly wait. For money growing on trees,i would rather wait and save to buy better then to buy now and not as good.

Well actually thinking it over I agree with you. I was one of hte people who bought and owned a Laserdisc at the age of 17 rather than buying a car because I wanted to see movies the way they were meant to be seen in widescreen. I didn;t really care about the picture quality and truthfully i suppose I still don't - I prefer the theater screen resoultion to what I saw on a $10,000 plasma or LCD at Future shop - there is a brightness issue for one design and a slowness of edges on the other - I can;t ay exactly what they're doing but they distract me - theater screens do not. Neither do picture tubes now out of style I gather - oh well.

And I do admit it is fun to impress everyone with that big THX comes up and the room rumbles - I even saw some cheap used Wharfedales(Diamonds $90.00Cdn) at a pawn shop that I could use as rears for my fronts They are form the same period as mine because of the type of wood grain.

That's the toy system for me but it's low priority because I don't watch a lot of movies anymore - judging by what gets nominated and what WON last year i'm not inspired by the quality of the film industry.

A good two channel system can capture the sound of a film and dialogue well - and with Saving Private Ryan will have gun fire coming from behind above and beside you - I have that disc and on a two channel Sugden that was quite impressive - worked on Mel Gibson's "The Patriot" as well(My pick for worst film of the year - but great sound).

The other option and I've considered it is the a H/T system around the Paradigm Atoms - that set may actually be cheaper than one set of AX Two's. My dealer has all Paradigms on at 20% off and might give me em even cheaper - since I will soon be buying the OTO Phono SE

[Woochifer]

Thanks Wooch, for the little history lesson on the "demise" of JBL...Too bad, I guess. I've got no problem with pushing inexpensive models if there's demand, but it's unfortunate if causes your better products to disappear because of this.

JBL has made numerous speaker models designed to compete in the high end, but hardly anyone in North America sells them since JBL is barely a blip among high end dealers for the aforementioned reasons. You certainly won't see Best Buy stocking the K2 models (includes a $25k horn speaker with a 15" woofer that weighs 200 lbs)! And they even have a second assembly plant in Denmark that manufactures an entirely different line of speakers exclusively for the European market.

All these other manufacturers that have pushed their way into some of the mass merchants in recent years have tried to avoid the pitfalls and bad blood that JBL created when they went mass market. That's why you see guys like Yamaha, Klipsch, Denon, Sony, and Onkyo going to a two-tiered distribution system. Yamaha gives its specialty dealers the RX-V series, while the mail order houses and mass merchants get the HTR series. Klipsch sells the Synergy series through Best Buy, while the Reference series goes to the specialty dealers. Denon has a number of rebadged products that they sell at Sears and other mass merchants. Onkyo sells its Integra branded products through specialty dealers, and its own products everywhere else. And it's the same rationale behind Sony ES and Pioneer Elite, which have numerous products that are simply rebadged versions of garden variety Sony and Pioneer models.

But still, even hearing their inexpensive junk, to me it's not nearly as bad as alot of people say it is. Not my first choice, but not terrible.

I don't think it's coincidental that in recent years JBL's speakers have begun to sound more like the Paradigm/Energy/PSB speakers whose performance parameters were influenced by Floyd Toole's research at the NRC. He was hired on at Harman in 2000, and the quality of the JBL's recent Studio and Northridge speakers are a noticeable step up from what they were producing before. Not my favorite speakers either, but certainly not junk and actually a decent value considering how often I see them on sale. Unfortunately, it takes more than just better products to recover from a tarnished reputation.

I know first hand that big box stores can back fire in a big way for large manufacturers. If JBL becomes too dependant on Best Buy and Circuit City and such for distribution, these stores can command a lot influence on the MSRP, etc. Sometimes they prevent savings from being passed on to the consumer. And besides, who among us has really heard a Polk or JBL system properly calibrated and setup in a decent room with running on decent equipment recently? My trip the other day to Future Shop (Best Buy Canada) might as well have been a stroll through a large grocery store...Crowded shelfs, messy wires, 20 foot tall boxes of gear and 200 screaming customers isn't what I'd call optimal listening conditions.

Check out the thread that I started in the Home Theater section about Best Buy adding Magnolia (a high end AV chain on the west coast that BB acquired in 2000 and currently operates as an independent subsidiary) ministores to some of their California locations. These ministores have acoustically treated demo rooms, with a separate sales staff and noticeably higher tier products. If these ministores stores perform well, then brands like Primare, Vienna Acoustics, Def Tech, M&K, and maybe Sonus Faber, Martin Logan, B&K, and McIntosh will be available nationally by walking into Best Buy.

Surprisingly, Polk has managed to straddle that line between distributing into mass merchandisers and still maintaining at least some portion of their dealer network. Even among high end dealers, it's very hard to find any of them with optimally set up multichannel systems. My local Paradigm dealer was one of only two dealers in my area that sets up their multichannel demos using the ITU reference alignment.

I'd be curious to know exactly what happened to Acoustic Research...seems to me they've long since fallen from grace...any ideas there?

Their parent company, Recoton, went bankrupt. NHT spun off as its own company, and Recoton tried for a long time to peddle the remaining brands. The main interest in AR was its accessories line.

Audiovox wound up acquiring most of the remaining brands (which include Advent and Jensen), including the entire AR lineup. In the meantime, I've seen that AR introduced some new speaker models, but none of their former dealers in my area stock them. Not sure how the AR brand will be handled given that Audiovox is mostly known as a low cost mobile and wireless electronics manufacturer. Considering AR's illustrious history with both speaker and turntable innovations, I would have preferred a more worthy suitor, but that's the times we live in.

[RGA]

No, books are story driven -- movies need both visuals and sound to be a movie. Without the audio or visual angle, movies are nothing more than screenplays or storyboards. Citizen Kane or Goodfellas would not be the same if you took out either the sound or the visuals.

Your changing the argument however from one kind of sound to no sound. Movies are fo course story driven or character driven. Yes you need a picture and yes you need sound so you can hear what people are saying - you don't necessarily need to hear the bullet coming from behind you - just so long as you can hear the bullet. Of course Goodfellas needs sound so you can hear what they are saying - but a TV speaker can tell me what they're saying - since when is tv speakers producing dialong - no sound?

Also, it's NOT at all implausible to go with the big sound and a 27" screen. Why? Because at home we sit a lot closer to the screen than we do at the movies. Nowadays, stadium theaters are designed with smaller screens than before (often under 20' wide), yet audiences perceives the image area as larger because the steep angle puts the majority of the seats closer to the screen than with a conventional rectangular setup.

Be serious I have a 27 inch TV - watching Terminator 2 on this screen and I confess the three times at the theater there is nothing about the visuals on the TV screen that made it SEEM bigger because I sit closer - let's get into reality - I'm sory if your hoaky ass theaters have itty bitty screens. And it applies to films like "In the Bedroom" - as for the loudmouth problems - well this isn't America

The sound in a 5.1 setup can elevate the overall experience because the visuals are flat and two-dimensional. The sound is the only part of the experience that can envelop the audience and make them part of the scene.

Well I won;t argue this point because it's subjective - My take on this though is that I don't and should not be a "part of the scene" just as I don't want to be or am not a "part of the band." This harkens back to the theatrical form where intelligent audience members suspend their disbelief. In some forms the writer would actually let you see the props and have characters perfrom an aside to fill in the audience as to what is happening. There were other forms where the audience would be more immersed in the goings on. Something like the recent High Fidelity and the original Alfie(have not seen the new one) had the audience immersed because they talk directly to us - I can buy an arguement that if Michale Caine is talking to me and i can hear a streetcar go behind me and plane flying over my head that I would be immersed as if I were standing right there - I don't feel that is necessary however - because the story is good enough on its own to do it and I'm used to the theater instead of let the movie do all the thinking. But I get the argument for the proponants of this moving to a virtual reality vision.

In fact i see it more-so in the very popular new wave of video games from Sony and for the X-Box - I bought a role playing game called Star Wars Knight of the old Republic - which is offerred in 5.1 - it's a role playing game and your character wanders around environments and talks to people and saves the universe etc - and the stories are actually quite interesting. And because the games are not static like a movie - you decide where it will go - The sound on these games can actually scare you and I perceive more of a value for surround sound on these kinds of video games than I do in movies.

That's probably because you've yet to actually hear a properly setup 5.1 system. Don't bring up the demo room experiences again. I'll reinterate again, the vast majority of demo rooms that I've visited do not have the surround setups configured properly. And without a SPL meter, proper adjustments to the delay timing, and proper placement, it won't sound right at home either.

Were you there? you say vast majority which implies some got it right - how do you know for sure they got it wrong. These guys Commercial Electronics then is the biggest High end dealer in BC and does custom home theater installs - if they can;t do it with Sony's help then no one on this planet and certainly not you can do it any better. Heaven they put on the show to impress people so that people would buy the stuff. Man it sure would not be the time to slack - they spent days setting it up - when they put shows on they close days in advance.

Yeah I would not trst a future shop to do it right but CE? Have you been there? And it was impressive.

Or it could be that the Marantz is bad at handling analog signals. A lot of entry level receivers convert all signals to digital and reconvert them to analog, even if the signal gets played with no signal processing. Don't know if your Marantz model does this, but it is a very frequent design approach at the entry level, and it's not until you get to midlevel or higher models that you see more analog bypass features incorporated.

That could be the case - I didn't think of that and here I was blaming the little Aspire DVD player - I should connect it to my Sugden to see what happens. The Aspire kills my Pioneer for features and has a better remote and cost me about 1/7 the price. It even looks better and does stuff like JPEG and MP3 and Progressive scan - and has a nice power saver so if you accidentally leave it on it will shut off by itself in ~20minutes. $50.00Cdn might be the best value thing I've ever bought. Hey it's even lasted more than a year now - surprise surprise.

The living room won't support the J's or my Wharfedales as rear speakers as the couch touches the back wall - so the rear speakers would have to be placed at best beside the two arms on the couch - wall speakers won't work as this is a rented apartment.

I lost the link of rear positioning with this kind of room set-up.

[kexodusc]

I'm on the east coast, in New Brunswick for now, yes we have Future Shops, but no A&B sound. I spend lots of time in Toronto, Edmonton/Red Deer, and Winnipeg though so I'm familiar with them.

Regarding Totem: They have a good following and are highly successful in their market at what they do. I'm a fan of about 1/2 their models, and their prices aren't so bad. Mind you, most retailers I know cut quite a bit off the price, so maybe mark-up is high?

I actually visited them in Montreal though, and they have enjoyed tremendous growth internationally with the expansion of home theater, and have a fairly loyal following. They're small scale though. I agree that the do seek to add value in lovely cabinetry, but there's a portion of the audio community that does look for that. I'd love some fancy veneers, but at the rate I still waste, I'll stick with cheaper Canadian woods.

As for the environments in best buy. It's pretty hard to relatively compare the soundstage, and imaging capabilities of a speaker system when they are placed 10 feet apart, in a 6 foot deep room, at different heights, crammed against a wall. Sure, all the speakers suffer, but it's inaccurate to say that these compromised conditions treat all speakers the same. My Studio's 40's, for example, require a toe in to sound their best, while my ar.com DIY's sound phenomenal with none at all...great off-axis response. My Axiom M3Ti's need more toe-in than I'd ever give a speaker, but when set up properly, they sound acceptable. My point is, some speakers could be more forgiving of the environment. Every Maggie I've ever heard requires more trial and error with placement than most speakers I demo to sound good.

RGA, as far as your possible home theater goes, I've got an honest suggestion for you...try the BR-1 DIY kit from Parts Express. For $140 US (roughly the price of Atoms) plus a bit of shipping, duty, etc you will buy a pair of speakers that are far superior to the Atoms, Mini Monitors, and the Energy C-3's (I've personally head-to-heads against all 3) and I don't lie when I say any other speaker I've heard under $450. They're not pretty but they sound exceptional for the price.
What's more, the skills/tools required are very minimal, the desigin philosophy is simple, and this would be a great practice run for you before building an AN E kit or something.
For home theater on a budget, you simply cannot beat 5 or 6 of these...I'm quite tempted to do this for my mom and dad to upgrade them from the Atom/Titan system they have now..

[Woochifer]

I don't think the point is to have to listen to JBL in the best acoustical environment since most people don't have that - The Future SHops are not ideal - okay but it's not ideal for all th other brands - you should always be able to get a sense of how a speaker sounds - Sarah Mclachlan is sarah McLachlan in the bath tub or Queen Elizabeth theater or at an outdoor concert etc etc. What I think is important is to compare the speakers in the same acoustic environment and see what happens. A recent discussion going on about phase coherence etc going on at AA makes the same point - our ear filters out much of the crap and focuses in on what we wish to hear same as in a crowded room as it is in a room with a lot of echo - none of that shows up in measurements because they are woefully inadequate compared to what the human brain is capable of with regards to hear location.

Actually, listening to JBLs in a halfway decent acoustical environment is part of the whole point. The acoustical environment does not make Sarah McLachlan sound like Axel Rose, it's the REPRODUCTION of that source that is heavily influenced by the acoustics, which makes comparisons of how differently the speakers render an identical source difficult at best. I don't think that listening to a pair of JBLs at Best Buy and a pair of B&Ws in an acoustically treated room is at all comparable, or vice versa.

The noise level in the audio section at Best Buy is probably somewhere in the 75-85 db range, which is the reference playback range that I use while measuring my system. Inside the acoustically treated demo room at my local Magnolia Hi-Fi store, I measured the ambient noise at 50-55 db. Considering how obsessive audiophiles get over line level hissing on amps, the order of magnitude in the differences between these two acoustical environments is far more agregious, yet you say that the brain can filter out a noise level difference that large? If that's the case, then why would infinitesimal noise floor differences matter so much to other audiophiles, if gross room distortions can be filtered out by the brain, then why not these much smaller anomalies?

And then you add the variability of the room gain at the low end, and I don't see how the sound of the speakers can be even remotely comparable.

Kex - you are in Canada now no? Paradigm is in a big box chain called AudioVideo Unlimited - Paradigm is better than JBL. You're in the east and I don't know if A&B sound is out there but all of the high end dealers have dumped Totem and they have gone to A&B Sound. I odn;t think it necessarily says anything about the quality and I don;t believe it's because people want to own boutique brands(some are better than others in both camps). High end dealers here simply don't carry Paradigm because they are not high end speakers - Soundhounds carries Wharfedale/Paradigm as good budget speakers and with the V2 I can't argue with that. As Terry said you need to carry a lot of selection so that people can make up their own mind and people want what they read about in last months stereo magazine - he noted that there are speakers you carry to sell and speakers you carry to own. Then there lines like Totem they carry in name only - he said it was useless they got dropped by Dynaudio on the drivers - they sold 6 Totem products all year - they sold 6 AN products in one day. So he keeps them becuase basically you can compare them in an A/B session which helps sell their biggest selling line in AN. ANd Totem takes up little space. They dumped ML and the Big Nautilus speakers because they kept coming back - sooner or later the faults became noticeable - the same set of N801's were brought back by three different customers - that's tough on a dealer so now he carries the smaller N803 and N805.

High end dealers don't carry Paradigm because they're not high end, yet YOUR very own favorite high end dealer carries them. So, does this mean that Soundhounds is a low end dealer because they carry Paradigm? Sorry, but you can't have it both ways.

In the U.S., Paradigm is not even carried by regional specialty chains. Regional chain Magnolia Hi-Fi sells Martin Logan and Sonus Faber, but those companies aren't high end either because Magnolia also sells Bose, right? Or if we assume that Magnolia's a high end store, does this mean that Bose is now high end because they're sold through a "high end" store?

At least you're now stating up front that where a brand gets sold doesn't say much, yet you still make the point that Paradigm is sold through whatever chain stores in Canada and that Totem now sells at those same chain stores, as if that actually says anything about the product quality. Where something gets sold is a BUSINESS decision, with a lot of dimensions attached to it. You talk about products to SELL versus products to OWN, yet you cite Soundhounds' AN sales. I guess that when they SELL to a customer, then that customer OWNS it. Again, it's a BUSINESS decision. AN sells well, so Soundhounds keeps that line. I don't think that Soundhounds operates as a charity, they're out to make a buck or two and keep their doors open just like anyone else. The high end dealers in my area all carry speaker lines in the affordable price ranges, because it makes good business sense to do so. I don't think they care one bit if they fit everybody's arbitrary definition of "high end" or not. If it's a good speaker that's competitive with other models at its price point, then why would a "high end" store not carry it?

I think Polk ran into financial trouble - they simply never were THAT great - and if you're a marginal high end brand like a Totem and you're selling 6 speakers a year at a huge dealer - then somewhere aloing the line you gotta eat - so you call up A&B Sound and Future Shop where you'll instantly be the prestige line at those places(Energy Veritas as well at A&B Sound). The problem is is that High end shoppers tend not to bother with A&B Sound and Future Shop and average Joe is probably not going to want to drop $3k on a standmount or $800.00Cdn on the Mite. These speakers are good I like the Rainmaker among others - but they're really small and average Joe likes big bass - and none of these cn produce bass with credible SPLs and if it's all about home theater - then the energy C series is cheaper and will do it H/T just as well. Which is why at least at this store Totem's prices are hacked and the manager told me they do the worst of all they carry in sales. If that is true across the board I don't see a big future for Totem - unless they cut corners - and then what's the point.

Credible SPL in the bass? Isn't that where subwoofers come in? If someone likes the Totems better, then the Energy C-series will not do HT "just as well" because in that person's view, the Totem's a better speaker. If Totem was already a low volume speaker manufacturer, then being the worst seller at Future Shop doesn't necessarily mean doom and gloom for them. I mean, if they're only selling 6 units a year at Soundhounds, they would be improving their situation if being the worst selling speaker at Future Shop still represents an increase in sales volume.

Do you know for a fact how Totem conducts their business? The independent store managers that I've talked to will typically search for new options if one of their supplier companies decides to go with a chain store. They simply have no interest in competing head to head with the big box stores or even the regional specialty chains, when they have other options that they can pick up. Paradigm has held onto their U.S. dealer network by being a top seller, and by not going into U.S. chain stores. Not biting the hand that feeds them, and providing a popular product that generates foot traffic for independent dealers, most of whom stock very high end products as part of their offerings. Sounds like good business practice. But, "high end" dealers won't carry Paradigm because they're not "high end." Uh, okay.

B&W, Energy, Vienna Acoustics, Martin Logan, Krell, and Sonus Faber, among others, have gone into regional chain stores, and created more jockeying around in the various business relationships. My local Paradigm dealer used to carry Sonus Faber, but they don't anymore. Magnolia (which carries SF at all 22 of their stores) opened a location nearby, and I don't know if it was the store's decision to drop SF or Sumiko (SF's distributor) that dropped them. Doesn't matter, the store picked up Acoustic Energy and they seem to be doing fine. In the case of B&W, they dropped one of the stores in my area because another one of their dealers relocated to that same city. Rather than have two B&W dealers within a mile of one another, B&W dropped the store that was there first in order to maintain their territorial protections. That store has since expanded, and picked up PSB and Vienna Acoustics. B&W did the same thing when one of their larger dealers opened a new location in an area already served by a B&W dealer. Again, B&W dropped the existing dealer, which later on went out of business. Simple business decisions all the way around, nothing more.

Like it or not, all of the big box stores are looking to expand their reach into the higher market segments. Best Buy has owned Magnolia Hi-Fi for five years, and recently started adding Magnolia ministores to place higher end product lines inside of Best Buy stores. Would not surprise me at all to see them try a similar approach with Future Shop (which they are trying to differentiate from their BB stores) and BB Canada.

[Woochifer]

Your changing the argument however from one kind of sound to no sound. Movies are fo course story driven or character driven. Yes you need a picture and yes you need sound so you can hear what people are saying - you don't necessarily need to hear the bullet coming from behind you - just so long as you can hear the bullet. Of course Goodfellas needs sound so you can hear what they are saying - but a TV speaker can tell me what they're saying - since when is tv speakers producing dialong - no sound?

You're the one who's telling me that movies are a story driven medium, while music is sound driven. Well, how can a movie tell a story without the visuals or the sound? A story driven medium is a book or a bedtime story. A movie by definition has moving pictures and sound (silent films excepted, but even they had musical accompaniment).

You only need a transistor radio and an earpiece to hear music, yet you talk about how receivers render music unlistenable, and the reason you know this is because you've heard better. Yet, with movies, it's perfectly enjoyable to experience movie sound through the very same receiver that you considered unlistenable with music -- AND you're not even getting the fully intended dimensionality that goes with the audio part of the movie. I'm pointing out that watching a movie with a fully appointed surround system is very much analogous to the added enjoyment that's possible with music when played through a great system. Improving the sound improves the overall enjoyment of the movie, it's that simple. It won't cure the ills of a bad movie, just as a great audio system will not make bad music any better. Why this applies to music and not to movies, I don't see the disconnect.

Be serious I have a 27 inch TV - watching Terminator 2 on this screen and I confess the three times at the theater there is nothing about the visuals on the TV screen that made it SEEM bigger because I sit closer - let's get into reality - I'm sory if your hoaky ass theaters have itty bitty screens. And it applies to films like "In the Bedroom" - as for the loudmouth problems - well this isn't America

"hoaky ass" theaters? "itty bitty" screens? You mean, everybody in Canada goes to single-screen auditoriums with 80' wide screens, acoustic controls, and state-of-the-art sound systems? (Only residents living in L.A. are that lucky) Sorry, but I've been to your country and you got the same multiscreen megaplexes dotting the landscape that we got stateside. (In fact, some of the first big megaplexes in California in the late-80s were developed by Cineplex Odeon, a Canadian company) And nobody in Canada talks during a movie? Maybe I should have spent my entire Canadian vacation last year just going to movies if that was the case (doesn't matter if they would've been dubbed into French, nobody would be talking!).

I've talked to movie theater developers before, audiences like the steep stadium seating configuration because they think that the screen is larger than it actually is. This is what their audience response feedback is telling them. It's not something that I'm making up. Put that same screen into a traditional rectangular configuration and it seems smaller because the majority of the audience is sitting further away. Personally, I prefer the traditional configuration because the steep stadium seating angle truncates the imaging and the sound is more inconsistent in different spots of the theater.

Same thing with a home TV. Why would a 27" TV even be remotely tolerable if your standard is a 60' wide big screen? The movie theater screen will of course cover a wider portion of your peripheral vision, but the reduction will not be on the order of 30:1. That's why I don't see anything odd at all about going with a 27" TV with the full surround sound. Are you saying that the reduction in the scale of the sound quality should be proportional to the screen size in order for it to not be amusing in your view? I view the benefit of surround sound in much broader terms than just the pyrotechnics. If all you care about with home theater is the crashes and explosions, then maybe that explains why you find the odd humor in this.

Well I won;t argue this point because it's subjective - My take on this though is that I don't and should not be a "part of the scene" just as I don't want to be or am not a "part of the band." This harkens back to the theatrical form where intelligent audience members suspend their disbelief. In some forms the writer would actually let you see the props and have characters perfrom an aside to fill in the audience as to what is happening. There were other forms where the audience would be more immersed in the goings on.

And we can all go back to grade school too where we "pretend" to do everything with imaginary friends and invisible objects to interact with. Are you saying that "intelligent audience members" are better off without surround sound because sound coming out of a crappy TV speaker will let them better suspend their disbeliefs? In my view, the suspension of disbelief is all the more convincing when the overall movie experience takes me into that world, rather than one that leaves me with telltale reminders that I need to overcome.

Aside from IMAX 3D (geez, a Canadian invention at that), which can't be practically replicated at home convincingly, sound is the only pragmatic avenue available to everyday consumers to bring the audience into the world on screen. Doesn't matter to me if I'm watching "Insomnia" on a 32" TV, the surround effect brings me into the eerie fog, with "Master and Commander" I can feel closed in beneath deck or wide open on the seas, with "The Haunting" I sense the ground giving way, and in a multitude of dialog driven movies, I get the much better perception of being a participant in a scene rather than some distant observer. Not bad for a dinky TV screen. If this is merely a crutch for a less intelligent audience, then bring on more lack of imagination. When I view performance art or go the the modern art museum to see an exhibit on minimalism, I'll let my imagination run wild.

Were you there? you say vast majority which implies some got it right - how do you know for sure they got it wrong. These guys Commercial Electronics then is the biggest High end dealer in BC and does custom home theater installs - if they can;t do it with Sony's help then no one on this planet and certainly not you can do it any better. Heaven they put on the show to impress people so that people would buy the stuff. Man it sure would not be the time to slack - they spent days setting it up - when they put shows on they close days in advance.

Because you spout off about how unconvincing surround sound is, how it's about nothing but little sounds in the back, and how you've yet to hear a setup that you like, etc. You're right, I wasn't there. Maybe the setup was correct, but you just don't like the surround effect. I mean, my mom to this day prefers mono and hates the stereo because in her view it's distracting. But, even a lot of dedicated theaters that I've heard are designed to sound like large movie theaters (with dipolar surrounds that run the surround output out of phase), rather than something optimized for the best imaging effect at the listening position (which is how multichannel music gets mixed, and how more movies get remixed for their DVD transfers).

The living room won't support the J's or my Wharfedales as rear speakers as the couch touches the back wall - so the rear speakers would have to be placed at best beside the two arms on the couch - wall speakers won't work as this is a rented apartment.

I lost the link of rear positioning with this kind of room set-up.

You only need enough space behind the sofa to create a 110 degree offset from the center line. Depending on how big the sofa is, that's usually less than one foot behind the sofa. Elevate the speakers above ear level and point them directly at one another, and that should be close enough to optimal positioning. Match the levels and set the delay timing, and you're good to go. Besides, it doesn't have to be permanent.

[RGA]

Kex - the kit may be an option since I'm looking to buy the stripped down Nitty Gritty LP cleaning machine called the KAB Or something along these lines. So I'll see how that is all dealt with at the border to see how it goes. Right now I'm on path for the AN OTO Phono SE which I'm trying to work on with taking out some RRSP's to get it. LOL yes it's crazy. (Sorry but it is better than any SS amp I've heard and it's not close - but yeah it's subjective and it may only apply with specific speakers in question).

I would like a cheap option on kits because the Atoms are not world beaters -though they;re very good under $170.00Cdn.

Wooch

Yes my post was contradictory in that i said no high end dealers carry Paradigm here but that Soundhounds carries them and Wharfedale as entry level stuff - in fact the issue of High end is spurious because it really doesn't have any context other than high priced. The B&W 705 is considered High End I bet and the AX Two at $700.00 is not - that doesn't say much about which is better however.

I was not clear on my dealer's comments either. But I don't want to be any clearer out of respect for their business with other brands that he carries - I'll leave it at what he and everyone who works there owns all fall in line with one brand they carry(even years before they carried the company for himseld) while all the other brands they sell they choose not to own themselves.

Of course they sell AN because AN sells - you'd be crazy to do otherwise. I'm surprised it seels as well as it does at the location due the prices of AN relative to others there. But according to Terry they are the biggest(or near it) AN dealer and probably the only one that can truly demonstrate what the company is about and have enough big name competition in the store to put on the demos. A lot of big high end dealers here only carry a few 3-4 speaker lines - To me that is no help because they usually carry a couple of inexpensive lines and then one mid line and one high end line. Hi-Fi Center downtown Vancouver carries most B&W speakers but they carry little else and they are not set-up to do comparison as a couple of the rooms are set-up as surround sound living rooms where all speakers are fully stagnant and set-up more to show how good they are at customizing(lots of money in that).

So if you have $700.00 they can really only point you to a B&W and maybe somehting from Mordaunt Short and that's it(and at some prices maybe nothing else). At Soundhounds you could listen to about 20 speakers that range between $500.00 and $900.00 from maybe 8 plus brands all in the same room. Most places carry one flagship line - B&W Nautilus and no other speaker at those $8k prices - which forces you to listen to the competing brand say a Martin Logan $8k speaker somewhere else and a Tannoy Flagship somewhere else - and it's not practical to order 12 of them to bring home and do all your comparisons. What I try and do is find the best systems and best speakers each store carries - Luckily Soundhounds carries much of them - ML is arguably the best thing Commercial Electronics carries B&W is the best Hi-Fi center carries within their stores - Soundhounds carries both. There is only so much that can be compared - so one ois then forced to try and listen to say JM Labs in different rooms at COmmercial Electronics and with similar gear that Soundhounds carry and attempt to project an opinion when an A/B comparison is not possible.

I had to do that with Wilson's Sophia - I did not compare that directly to Audio Note - but I'm sure I can conclude that the J and E are better music reproducers for several reasons - I would be less sure of myself however making a clear statement agains something like the N801 however which has some similar problematic traits.

I would not base a comparison of JBL in a bad environment with B&W in a good one - A&B Sound has acceptable auditioning rooms that are away from traffic (at least the one I go to in Vancouver) and it is more than fair to compare the Totems to the JBL's there. It does not require a great room to be able to tell thatthe Rainmaker sounds coinsiderably better than the JBL Northridge standmount - even at the crappy A&B Sound in my town where they'll all lined up - it would be difficult to compare soundstage, imaging but that is barely scratching the surface of what music is about.

[RGA]

Wooch

Maybe I'm not being clear - a book and a movie are closer than music is to either. Most Novels, Plays and Films have a story arc which usually begins with soem kind of intro or set-up, rising action to build suspense, a climax, falling action, and some sort of conclusion and denoument. The Novel is read and you the reader place the images and sound in your mind - language is descriptive because it requires the reader to fill in the visuals tastes smells and sounds that are not there. The play is a visual and has sound - it is real live braeathing and engages the audience in a way film can not approach. Films have the advantage of, for the actor, that mistakes can be re-shot it is and always will be exactly the same and it is stamped for all time - spectacle is placed high (which is low on Aristotle's form of good plays) usually higher than everything else. Films also have the best opportunity to manipulate audiences. Spielberg gets blasted for this often in criticl circles by using the rising music to suck out a tear from the audience - I defend him on that because the so called greater directors like Kubrick used camera tricks and colour to induce emotion or other feelings.

I am not trying to say people are stupid if they need home theater to be able to watch a movie - but neither do they need home theater to "get" or enjoy a movie any better. I enjoy the comedy Plains, Trains and Automobiles whether i watch it at the theater on home theater or when it pops up on tv(though I dislike the cutting out of the big F-word scene at the airport and usually has me running for the DVD about 5 minutes before that happens so I get the real version.

I simply go back to the T2 argument - It was better in the theater than it is at home - and it's not because I' not currently running rear channels - it's because the screen isn't as big. AHHNOLd's head isn;t the size of truck on a 27 inch tv - I am presently about 6 feet from my tv watching some Star trek Enterprise thing watching ships fly through space and ain;t no Enterprise on the big screen. I have been to FS and even their big screen tvs - while much better in the big department won't have me avoiding the movie theater(though what look to be bad films are).

I'm picky - If I'm going to get home theater at home or better it as the claims may be that requires me to FEEL that that is the case - there is absolutely nothing about the picture size and or quality of televsion screens and DVD resolution that makes me buy into the picture quality. The picture Quality I don't care too much about but I'd like the size impression(the impression of scale) as for sound how exactly do you know for sure what isthe appropriate time delay and level of a bird chirping should be at the rear channel - I can;t believe all movies are recorded in exactly the same standard and volume level so the bird chirp in the first movie may be louder in the next movie - one reason I disliked Prologic is because I was fiddling with the remote every single film. This moive needs the center turned up and the rears down then the next movie some other issue and then you turn one thing up and some breaks some glass and it blows you out the door.

Again I'm not saying H/T won't enhance the experience if done properly - this is obvious since 2 channel Sugden enhances films over tv speakers.

[dvjorge]

Hi- end or not, isn't the dealer. Here in Miami, for example, Sound Component is one of the few Hi-End dealers. They carrie Paradigms together with Wilson Audio, Pro-Ac, Thiel, Snell, B&W, etc. The same case is Audio Artisan, another Hi-end dealer here. They carrie PSB and when you want a demo, it is with PS Audio, VTL, Conrad Johnson, and other hi-end staff running PSB. Who understand it? On the other hand, Sound Advise, which is a mass market shop, carries Sonus Faber and Martin Logan together with cheap Polks and others worse than Polk which I don't remember its name. Another case is Kef. It has been selling by mass market shops here in Miami. In spite of RGA has some reason when he says some hi-end dealers are more selectives, the hi-end category isn't given by the dealer who carries the product. This is my opinion.

Sound Advise(now tweeter) has had Krell in the same shelf they have cheap Sony receivers costing less than 250 bucks. Does this mean Krell isn't hi-end? I don't think so.
Jorge.

[kexodusc]

I would just add, with the home theater boom, more people are demanding something better than your entry level Polk, JBL, Paradigm, B&W, Energy, etc, speakers and looking at "middle of the road" or Mid-Fi stuff, and in some cases even more. I think this has as much to do with Totem and other brands moving to larger stores than their inability to sell. Truth is, these stores get much more traffic.