This speaker looks interesting. Might it improve one's experience of listening to orchestral music? Can you find enough well-engineered music to feed it? Are BBC Radio 3 experimenting with Dolby Atmos, or other options that might make this speaker shine? Amazon Firestick has options for choosing Dolby Atmos. If you select that option do you get better sound with Amazon Prime TV programmes? Is one speaker really enough, or would you need two to match current good stereo speakers. Assuming two speakers, is this a KEF LSX killer? (That is, the best active, stereo speaker solution below £1000?)
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There is simply no physical way that a single speaker can reproduce the spatial spread and definition of (for example) an orchestra with the clarity of a stereo or multichannel system. As the article says, "Vocals appear to float in front of you, while backing tracks and individual instruments surround you including overhead, all backed by powerful bass that flows over you like waves." If that's how you want music to sound, fine; but it isn't going to sound like an orchestra playing in a concert hall. -
Well, it's not actually one speaker, is it? It's six speakers in a single housing which aims (projects) various channels in various directions. That said, it seems to be just another update on the dire Bose Wave Music System and the like. It seems apposite that it is destined for the coffee table.Originally posted by RichardB View PostComment
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I see the same article says that you can create “a stereo pair “ by buying two speakers thus implicitly acknowledging Richard’s point. These all in one speakers create a kind of stereo effect by having the left and right channels on speakers on either end. They won’t create the effect you get on classic EMI / DG or BBC relays where you can position the string sections , brass and woodwind in the stereo image. Mind you more than a dozen rows back in a lot of concert halls you can’t do that and there are quite a few stereo recordings where you can’t do that either.Comment
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Rather off-topic, I know, but does anyone remember these, promoted as being revolutionary in that the main driver vaguely resembles an inverted auricle and was claimed to thus offer more realistic audio?
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I am a fan of what I would label “traditional “Multichannel Audio”. I have a 5.1 system in my basement—2 front speakers, a center channel, 2 rears and a subwoofer. My AV receiver will only play 5.1. When Atmos came out a few years ago, one was supposed to add 2 height speakers (minimum), angled about 45 degrees. My ceiling is too low to contemplate this and I also don’t want to purchase a different amp.
The whole concept baffled me because while I enjoy my 5.1, multichannel bombed spectacularly in the marketplace in the era where most people think the lousy Apple earbuds was enough , who weren’t going to be bothering with all that equipment. Atmos seemed to be recycling a commercially failed idea, and it is indeed interesting that Sonos is trying to market Atmos from a single speaker.
I think that it is Digital Processing that is behind most of this. It has advanced to the point where it can create various weird effects and now Apple is trying to market that in attempt to diversify their revenue from reliance on the iPhone. The reviews that I have read from real people (as opposed to industry shills masquerading as independent reviewers) is that it is generally awful for Classical Music and hit or miss for pop. Caveat emptorComment
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Indeed - so any idea of the kind of spatial definition you get from listening to an orchestral recording on a stereo system is out of the question. It will certainly fill the space with some kind of three-dimensional sound image, but it won't be a "realistic" one, which of course is OK for studio-produced pop music, for which the unit has no doubt in many ways been optimised.Originally posted by Bryn View PostComment
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