subject: Marantz NR1501 - Makes a Compromise When Adding Two Speakers For 7.1 Surround Sound? [print this page] Marantz NR1501 - Makes a Compromise When Adding Two Speakers For 7.1 Surround Sound?
When deciding whether to add even more sound channels and loudspeakers to your already cluttered home--there is just one question to answer. Is it better to havemore channels orbetter quality with fewer channels? This is the choice the home theater owner is faced with these days where 7.1 Surround Sound Amplifiers seems to be the order of the day.
For a quick description of 7.1 surround sound--this is a model where you have 8 speakers in your home theater system: 2 main speakers to the left and right as in a normal stereo set, 1 subwoofer for the deep bass and full impact of low frequency effects, 1 middle speaker mostly used to have clear dialogue in films, and then 4 back speakers for an experience of being inside the scenery when watching movies. 2 of those back speakers get their signal from the actual DVD or Blue-Ray disk. The last 2 channels have their signal calculated by the equipment so the viewer will feel an even better realism to almost feel himselfincluded in the action.
Obviously, more channels of sound is always better. In public theaters there are often many more loudspeakers than eight. But when you go to the cinema you will also notice that the entire room is build with the ultimate sound and vision experience in mind. The walls, the ceiling, the furniture--everything is arranged to get the best possible sound. That can seldom be said of an ordinary living room compromising between an extraordinary sound quality and having tolive in the same environment.
In this particular example we will take a closer look at a specific 7.1 surround sound amplifier, the Marantz NR1501. The first thing you might notice when looking at the back panel, is that the 5 regular channels have high quality sockets for the loudspeaker cables while the last 2 channels have cheaper sockets of the kind prevailing decades ago. This clearly shows that the Marantz company puts less priority on those last channels. This is actually not a bad choice from them because if you absolutely must have 7 channels then it is better to have the highest sound quality in the main front channels while the sound from the back channels do not need to have the same high quality. It is likewise confirmed by scientific studies that the human ear is less sensitive to the quality of reflected sound which is anyway distorted by the environment.
