Question:
I have £250 - £300 to spend on an amp and speakers!
Is this still the best out there? What about digitheatre dts by video logic?
What do you recommend? All help appreciated! :)
Well I picked up my Yam HTiB-45 yesterday, and I've got it up and running.
Just have a few more tweaks to do and I've got a couple of other guys that want to know about it and I'll include you in on my review of it soon.
I previously had a Digitheatre 5.1 setup and have this to compare it against.
What I will say now is that the Yamaha would probably be the better choice than the Digitheatre DTS. The Yam has a seperate amp and that will help for future upgrades.
But the Yam system is £320 from unbeatable, so you'll need to spend that little extra.
The Yamaha set-up seems to be well regarded in this forum.
The DigiTheatre DTS was blighted by a DTS dropout problem on earlier units. However, Videologic have done themselves no harm by swapping-out the faulty sub units (as that's what it turned out to be) without any hassle.
The HTiB-45 does have the advantage of being a separates solution and will allow you to upgrade in the future without replacing the whole setup.
Having said all that, I've had a DigiTheatre for over 2 years and I have no cause for complaint. :D
Been thinking about getting one of these babies as everyone round here seems to rave.
Unbeatable state that they only come with 3 speakers and a sub. Is this right, and if so, what is everyone using for rears?? What is the "virtual surround" like?
Can anyone post a link to some reviews.
Thanks
The Yam system does come with all 5 speakers despite what unbeatable says.
I've had mine now for a week and am very happy. There were a couple of guys that I sent a mail to which I did a review of it, and so I'll copy and paste it here for you all :
The amp is BIG and heavy, but I guess thats a good thing. I've only
got this system to compare against my Digitheatre 5.1 setup, and going
by the specs the DT has its 5 speakers rated at 7.5W compared to the
Yamaha's 30W. DT sub is 25W and the Yamaha's is 50W so there is a fair
difference of power between the two :)
The 5 speakers are quite small (against the digitheatre's) and the sub
is big, heavy but seems very solid and has its own power lead.
One thing that made me wonder was that on the amp the coaxial input
was marked for CD and the optical for DVD. As my Tosh 2109 only has
the coaxial output I plugged this in and had to select the CD input.
It didn't make any difference and its actually possible to change the
coax input from CD to DVD - its done in the amp's setup menu (which I
did).
You can get the amp to produce a tone which goes from speaker to
speaker - this allows you to hear that all the speakers are working and
you can set the volume for each speaker. The sub does have its own
volume control at the back - I left it set to the middle volume as
recommended in the manual.
The amp has loads of different modes, but I'm only interested in Dolby
Digital/DTS for DVD and Pro Logic 1/2 for TV. The sub can be put into
an AUTO mode to detect what signal is being sent to it.
So far I've not watched a film with the new system yet, but just picked
a few louds bits from The Matrix, Saving Private Ryan,
Fast and the Furious, Independance Day and Godzilla.
I had to turn the amp up a fair bit before the system really kicks in,
the 5 speakers are fairly quiet until the volume gets to about -50.0dB
once you get to this point and turn it up more....well then its pretty
amazing. I'm no sound expect, but the scene at the beginning of SPR is
great (I've got the R2, so its DD5.1) you can really hear the bullets
flying around everywhere and the sub really thunders out - to me this is
what LFE is all about. With the Digitheatre the sub while loudish,
didn't seem to have that real punch that the Yamaha has. The other great
thing is that there is no annoying hum whatsoever from the sub and the
speakers (it was pretty bad with the DT). I did try to hear the
difference between DTS and DD5.1 with the Fast & Furious, and I'd
probably say that DTS is clearer, but then again thats what I've
read - I need to do a bit more comparing on this but I'd pick DTS over
DD5.1 given the choice now.
While trying out Independance Day - specifically when the ships start
blowing up the buildings, the sub really lets rip - the sound is
tremendous the floor starts vibrating !!
I was getting a little worried that my neighbour might not appreciate the
noise and so I didn't have it too loud, so I've yet to really push the
volume !
I've also given a music CD a try (in the DVD player) and was surprised
that the output from that was much higher than the DVD's I've tried.
Sound from the CD seemed fine but I'm not likely to use that very often.
The amp also has a RDS tuner built in and I've not yet set that up but
again, its something I probably wont bother with for a while.
Since I wrote that, I've only managed to watch one film !! Last night I saw K-PAX with its dts soundtrack and was very impressed. I've also watched an episode of ST:TNG and the bridge scenes really do make the sub rumble !
Is this still the best out there? What about digitheatre dts by video logic?
What do you recommend? All help appreciated! :)
Answers:
Well I picked up my Yam HTiB-45 yesterday, and I've got it up and running.
Just have a few more tweaks to do and I've got a couple of other guys that want to know about it and I'll include you in on my review of it soon.
I previously had a Digitheatre 5.1 setup and have this to compare it against.
What I will say now is that the Yamaha would probably be the better choice than the Digitheatre DTS. The Yam has a seperate amp and that will help for future upgrades.
But the Yam system is £320 from unbeatable, so you'll need to spend that little extra.
Answers:
The Yamaha set-up seems to be well regarded in this forum.
The DigiTheatre DTS was blighted by a DTS dropout problem on earlier units. However, Videologic have done themselves no harm by swapping-out the faulty sub units (as that's what it turned out to be) without any hassle.
The HTiB-45 does have the advantage of being a separates solution and will allow you to upgrade in the future without replacing the whole setup.
Having said all that, I've had a DigiTheatre for over 2 years and I have no cause for complaint. :D
Answers:
Been thinking about getting one of these babies as everyone round here seems to rave.
Unbeatable state that they only come with 3 speakers and a sub. Is this right, and if so, what is everyone using for rears?? What is the "virtual surround" like?
Can anyone post a link to some reviews.
Thanks
Answers:
The Yam system does come with all 5 speakers despite what unbeatable says.
I've had mine now for a week and am very happy. There were a couple of guys that I sent a mail to which I did a review of it, and so I'll copy and paste it here for you all :
The amp is BIG and heavy, but I guess thats a good thing. I've only
got this system to compare against my Digitheatre 5.1 setup, and going
by the specs the DT has its 5 speakers rated at 7.5W compared to the
Yamaha's 30W. DT sub is 25W and the Yamaha's is 50W so there is a fair
difference of power between the two :)
The 5 speakers are quite small (against the digitheatre's) and the sub
is big, heavy but seems very solid and has its own power lead.
One thing that made me wonder was that on the amp the coaxial input
was marked for CD and the optical for DVD. As my Tosh 2109 only has
the coaxial output I plugged this in and had to select the CD input.
It didn't make any difference and its actually possible to change the
coax input from CD to DVD - its done in the amp's setup menu (which I
did).
You can get the amp to produce a tone which goes from speaker to
speaker - this allows you to hear that all the speakers are working and
you can set the volume for each speaker. The sub does have its own
volume control at the back - I left it set to the middle volume as
recommended in the manual.
The amp has loads of different modes, but I'm only interested in Dolby
Digital/DTS for DVD and Pro Logic 1/2 for TV. The sub can be put into
an AUTO mode to detect what signal is being sent to it.
So far I've not watched a film with the new system yet, but just picked
a few louds bits from The Matrix, Saving Private Ryan,
Fast and the Furious, Independance Day and Godzilla.
I had to turn the amp up a fair bit before the system really kicks in,
the 5 speakers are fairly quiet until the volume gets to about -50.0dB
once you get to this point and turn it up more....well then its pretty
amazing. I'm no sound expect, but the scene at the beginning of SPR is
great (I've got the R2, so its DD5.1) you can really hear the bullets
flying around everywhere and the sub really thunders out - to me this is
what LFE is all about. With the Digitheatre the sub while loudish,
didn't seem to have that real punch that the Yamaha has. The other great
thing is that there is no annoying hum whatsoever from the sub and the
speakers (it was pretty bad with the DT). I did try to hear the
difference between DTS and DD5.1 with the Fast & Furious, and I'd
probably say that DTS is clearer, but then again thats what I've
read - I need to do a bit more comparing on this but I'd pick DTS over
DD5.1 given the choice now.
While trying out Independance Day - specifically when the ships start
blowing up the buildings, the sub really lets rip - the sound is
tremendous the floor starts vibrating !!
I was getting a little worried that my neighbour might not appreciate the
noise and so I didn't have it too loud, so I've yet to really push the
volume !
I've also given a music CD a try (in the DVD player) and was surprised
that the output from that was much higher than the DVD's I've tried.
Sound from the CD seemed fine but I'm not likely to use that very often.
The amp also has a RDS tuner built in and I've not yet set that up but
again, its something I probably wont bother with for a while.
Since I wrote that, I've only managed to watch one film !! Last night I saw K-PAX with its dts soundtrack and was very impressed. I've also watched an episode of ST:TNG and the bridge scenes really do make the sub rumble !
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