Going from 5.1 to 2.1 cinema sound, very surprised.

[pieman109]

I'm currently downscaling me cinema setup due to not being able to justify the cost for the useage it gets. So I connected my "14 year old" cambridge audio P25 mk II amp to a pair of MS302, the MS308 sub via the sub output from a C/A DVD57, did a quick volume balance to set the levels and then tried it out. The result is musically the c/a P25 mk II knocks spots off the c/a 540r V2 I've currently been using! thats 25w per channel versus 100w channel, and old technology as well. I sort of expected the old'un to be good with music 'cos thats what its there for but not that good, and the 540r v2 is known for being good with music also.
I'm gonna try this setup tomoz connected via DVD89/sharp 32GD7e and see how it sounds with dvd playback, but I'm quite sure its gonna be good.
If this works out ok, then the 540r V2 is going on members market pretty sharpish

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

And not only does it sound better, but instead of splitting your speakers funds between 5 speakers, you get to concentrate on just the two, meaning that they should in theory be 2.5x more expensive, and therefore substantially better.

 

[pieman109]

Its nice to have a simplfied system, these recievers you get look like summat out of NASA at the back and I'll bet most ppl not only don't use half options, but like me, don't even know what it is /does, so it keeps the cost down. Don't half sound nice fully set up in the living room. Sounds a LOT better with music discs too, more of an integrated sound

 

[fish99]

Think of it this way, an amp designed to drive 5 speakers at 100W should be something like 10X more expensive than one designed to drive 2 speakers at 25W. Since it's not 10X more expensive then it's not going to be the same quality as the stereo amp. Plus you're paying for a decoder too in the av amp. Ontop of all that av amps are designed for films, which to me is a more forgiving medium, whereas music requires more control and subtlety.

 

[squiffy]

I couldn't go back to 2.1 for films, HT sounds just too damn good. You don't get the surround sound placement in stereo systems.

That's if you have to compromise a budget between a stereo and multi-channel. If you don't it doesn't matter. You just spend more money.
The poweramps I use for my HT are from the same range from my Hi-Fi setup, generally pretty upper end speakers too.

 

[MeddlE]

To get round the cinema amp vs music amp I used to run both. Music amp running the fronts, cinema amp running center and rears with fronts pre-out to the music amp. Worked a treat.

 

[Rambaud]

To get round the cinema amp vs music amp I used to run both. Music amp running the fronts, cinema amp running center and rears with fronts pre-out to the music amp. Worked a treat.

I used a similar system with a Rotel power amp for the surround speakers and a single Quad 22 valve power amp for the centre speaker.