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View SlideshowToday’s home theaters owe as much to audio as they do video, and many people are adding additional speakers to take advantage of multichannel audio.
Aside from expanding your surround sound system from 5.1 to 6.1 or 7.1, there’s another option: Presence speakers. These additional front speakers work with Yamaha’s exclusive Cinema DSP technology. In other words, you need a Yamaha receiver.
According to the FAQ section on the Yamaha web site:
Presence speakers supplement the sound from the front speakers with extra ambient effects produced by CINEMA DSP. These effects include sounds that filmmakers intend to locate a little farther back behind the screen in order to create more theater-like ambiance.
“The idea of Presence speakers is to really open the front surround field while preserving the imaging and sound quality of the main channels,” says Gene DellaSala, President/Owner, Audioholics.com.
Yamaha has a long tradition of acoustic design. According to Philip Jones, National Product Trainer, Yamaha Electronics, where other DSP engineers made educated guesses to create sound fields in receivers, Yamaha has always based its off measurements taken from actual settings (audio captured at the Roxy Theater, for example).
“We took this history and created Presence - the technology where these speakers are enhancing the sonic signature by providing acoustical information in the room that blends in with the main speakers,” says Jones. “Since these speakers are recreating a specific room’s acoustics through reverb and echo, so that they are producing limited frequency response, this means that the power is not demanding and small satellites can be used.”
The Setup
Get a pair of bookshelf or satellite speakers and place them behind and above the main front speakers (View diagram). The most sensible approach being to wall mount them (since they need to be about 3-4 feet above the mains). Matching these speakers to the mains will work well, but it’s not an absolute requirement - nor do they have to be rated for a great deal of power in order to function efficiently.
Audio channels have to be assigned to the Presence speakers just like any other. Those planning on doing this with a 5.1 surround system will need for their amplifier to have at least 7 channels available, since the signals normally assigned to the surround back channels will now be used to drive these two added front speakers.
Test Run
I’ve decided to try the Presence technology on my Yamaha RX-V1800. My rear surrounds are moved and mounted to the wall behind and above my two front tower speakers. Wiring connections are made as are the menu selections to activate their use. After calibrating and saving a setting for Presence, I’m ready to proceed.
And you sound like the people who think they need everything a consumer culture tells them the need…
you sound like the people who said we don’t need the internet….
I really don’t buy in to matrix decoding extra channels, especially from 5.1 source material… PLIIx decoding to 7.1 on top of 5.1 material muddies the surround field too much for my tastes. I can see the benefit for theaters with multiple wide rows of seating where folks on the edges are outside of the imaging sweets pot of a 5.1 arrangement, but even in these sittuations, making things better for those outside the sweetspot ends up comrpmising the surround sound field for those in the sweet spot.
Now we’re doing this for the main speakers as well? Yamaha has been pushing this for years, and now the newest version of ProLogic, PLIIz, is going in a similar direction… this really worries me. There are tons of people who try to shoehorn 7.1 speaker arrangements into rooms where they don’t belong, with speakers directly above the listening position and/or seating directly against the back wall. Now with Dolby pushing a height/presence arrangement, you’re going to see people shoehorning even more speakers into spaces where those extra channels will do more harm than good.
For those who say that these types of extreme setups will only end up in higher-end dedicated theaters, tell me why the first PLIIz AVR is going to be the Onkyo SR607, a decidedly entry-middle market unit? Good job AV industry, let’s push some more newest-greatest features on to consumers to get them to buy newest-greatest electronics and more speakers instead of educating on what will sound best in a given situation.
Why doesn’t the industry understand that, with some education, people would probably move their purchases up market where margins are higher, putting their entire budget towards a quality 5.1 system instead of a mediocre 7.1/9.1/11.1, making the mfgs more money in the process?
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IsleOfMan, I would love to be able to share your thought process, as I think that groundwork would lead to more people having the same level of discretion for audio as I do. That said, I think you assume too much of the typical consumer. I DON’T think that people would spend the money to go “up market” for a better 5.1 system, when they can boast having a 7.1 system for the same/less money. The consumers determine the market and the manufacturer’s have to cater to their wants. Your average person wants 7.1 instead of 5.1, they want a “1000w” HTiB instead of a “500w” component system, they want a V6 Mustang with stripes and other body accessories instead of a stock GT, they want 20” rims on their Nissan Altima instead of a factory equipped Maxima, they want a Jagerbomb instead of a fine Scotch. Look around, you will find everyday examples of polished turds that give people the chance to boast having more than the regular version of the same thing.
That is why Onkyo and Yamaha (and countless others in this industry and beyond) continue to release features that you and I deem unnecessary, distorted, gimmicky, etc.