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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RADIO ELECTRONICS AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING Home cinema - from a to z. Part 1
Encyclopedia of radio electronics and electrical engineering / Audio equipment This article "Tsifrovika" opens a cycle of publications united by the theme "Home cinema", and is a kind of introduction to subsequent articles that will consider certain aspects of this topic. In the meantime, our author, by the way, a great specialist in this field, talks about the first questions that every novice "home movie fan" faces. A home theater is more than a kitchen radio, a TV or a video deuce, and sometimes more than a music center. This is no longer just a device with which you can watch a video, it is a multifunctional device that replaces all of the above and, coming into our lives, often occupies a fairly large, and sometimes a huge part of it: it becomes a place of rest for friends or for the whole family . About DVD and more It would seem that quite recently, when the DVD format was just beginning its victorious march around the world, a home theater of any level allowed you to watch only movies on DVD media. Moreover, in our country, licensed films cost prohibitive money, and their pirated performance was of such poor quality that there was a desire to watch the same movie on a regular video cassette. Basically, it was this factor that held back the process of mass distribution of home theaters. In those days, only very wealthy people purchased home theaters and could afford to collect a more or less impressive film library. But today, progress, as they say, is on the face: now DVD players can play DVD-Video, Super VCD and VCD formats, MPEG-4 movies, as well as music in CD-DA, HDCD, MP3, WMA, DVD- audio. It may seem that the more expensive the player, the more formats it plays. However, the situation is exactly the opposite. Compressed audio formats, such as MP3 and WMA, are good for compact players: due to the deterioration in quality, such files can be recorded on a disc in huge quantities, this is quite convenient for pop music, voice recording, but in no way suitable for classical, good acoustic concerts or rock artists: if you compress such things into MP3 or WMA, you will lose all the charm and charm of these works. Of course, if you listen to music on a low-quality home theater, then the difference will not be so noticeable, and sometimes not noticeable at all. But if you have a good system at home that allows you to reproduce high-quality sound, then the difference will certainly be noticeable. The same can be said about the MPEG-4 format. For these reasons, manufacturers of expensive and good equipment often exclude MP3, WMA and MPEG-4 from the list of playable formats. Agree, it would be illogical to buy speakers of the highest price category, thin, tested on many discs and carefully selected equipment, put it in a specially processed room in which ideal listening conditions are created and listen to music cut down by MP3, in which everything is removed. overtones. The best sound reproducing equipment is one that makes you forget that you are not listening to music in a concert hall. They once asked Obraztsova: "How do you like the Basques?" She replied: "This is a dead voice. There are no overtones." But this all applies, as a rule, to significantly expensive models that are far from accessible to everyone and which, probably, should be called luxury items. These luxury items are purchased most often by audiophiles, people who live and breathe music, sound and give their passion most of their lives and a tangible part of their income. There are few such people, many more among home theater buyers who just need to be able to listen to music in addition to watching movies - then the MP3 format and less expensive components that will fit the interior and sound decent enough may well be suitable, showing quite high performance, developing great power. Geography and arithmetic Much, very much depends on the correct and balanced approach to the selection of a home theater. Here it is necessary to take into account many factors that initially seem insignificant. And even if you decide to purchase the most expensive equipment, then the question of installing this equipment in your home may seriously arise. There are many things to consider when installing equipment. It's not enough to simply wire speakers and equipment to make them sound. No. The wires must be laid correctly, so that their length is minimal, and at the same time try to nullify the number of their intersections with each other and make sure that they do not pass near electrical appliances. It is also desirable that the wires do not pass near the network cables, but in view of the improbability of this, it is desirable at least that the direction of the current in the wire is opposite to the direction of the signal in the cable. When arranging the speakers, it is necessary to take into account the "geography of the room". It is desirable to correctly position the loudspeakers relative to the listening position in order to create the correct sound picture. Today, many salons often recommend the following set of speakers for home theater: large floorstanding (or bookshelf) front speakers, a front center channel speaker, and two small rear speakers. However, this is not quite the correct equipment for home theater. Small speakers in place of the rear ones are the bad legacy of the Doldy ProLogic decoder. The fact is that it was with him that the rear channels, which were then considered insignificant, were fed a signal cut in frequencies. At the same time, it was cut both in the upper and lower frequencies. The sound that came out of the rear channels was then considered quite sufficient, acceptable - so they began to make them small. Now, when it is possible to move the sound not only from the left to the right front channel, but also obliquely from the left front to the right rear, the old system is not suitable. When using more or less modern Dolby Digital, DTS, etc. decoders, it is highly recommended to use speakers similar to the front speakers in the rear speaker position to achieve the full effect, otherwise you deprive yourself of some of the pleasure that you could get from watching a movie. And in general, an incorrect installation can negate many of the advantages of the purchased system, that is, in fact, subjectively reduce its cost. However, there are quite a few options for installing and using a home theater. True, we have to admit that they are rather conditional and largely depend on the size of the amount you want to spend. The boundaries are, of course, rather blurred, but they are there. Multimedia, hi-fi or hi-end? Conventionally, the home theater market is divided into three segments: multimedia, hi-fi and hi-end. It is conditional: it is impossible, for example, to attribute a home theater to any of the above groups in terms of the number or size of speakers, or in terms of output power. Even the presence of a built-in amplifier does not allow you to unconditionally set the class. Undoubtedly, the main thing that allows you to determine the "class affiliation" of the equipment is its sound. It is painstaking listening that allows you to distinguish hi-fi equipment from hi-end. When you first start choosing a home theater, it seems that you will never learn to distinguish the advantages of one speaker over another, it seems that after listening to five amplifiers, you can no longer decide which one is preferable. Of course, experience comes with time, however, not so much is needed for the first steps: having literally tested good equipment several times in different salons, you will already begin to understand what “high graininess” means and how it is when “the sound stage is not visible ". In listening, as in the installation, there are subtleties. Even, perhaps, not the subtleties, but the canons that you need to know in order to adequately assess the advantages and disadvantages of a particular acoustic system. First and foremost, of course, the main thing: if you are listening to the system, only one of its components can be replaced at a time, only under this condition can you objectively judge the quality of the tested component. That is, if you choose an amplifier for yourself in a store, then you need to ask to assemble a circuit into which you will alternately turn on different amplifiers, then you will get a more or less adequate idea of \uXNUMXb\uXNUMXbits characteristics. Of course, you still need to be able to do all this, but some stores provide it. True, it should not be abused either. It is important to choose the right music and movies that you want to listen to and watch when testing. It is very important. Often in stores they put discs that hide the bad sides of the kit and, on the contrary, demonstrate only its good qualities. You will need to pick up several tracks, and maybe even discs, that would allow you to evaluate the set, analyzing the nuances of playback, the pros or cons of preamping, the presence or absence of a background, and many more of the same global and smaller, but no less important parameters. Why is the smaller parameter so important? Imagine that the kit you are purchasing does not reproduce any one frequency well. When you listen to the set for the first time, inattentively, using the seller's disc, this drawback may not be particularly noticeable and may not spoil the overall picture. And then you will purchase this system and listen to it at home - and after a while you will feel this shortcoming very strongly: after all, every day on each of your favorite discs the same defect will be heard at the same frequencies. I must say that such a thorough approach is, of course, necessary when choosing hi-end equipment, and partly hi-fi, and is hardly applicable when choosing multimedia. There is no class war. Both inexpensive solutions and expensive cinemas with ideal sound are needed. It happens that the owners of different kits treat each other with, to put it mildly, misunderstanding. For a person who has a hi-end system, as a rule, is an audiophile and is proud not so much of the system itself, but of the sound it gives. The creature of the "audiophile" breed at home is quite easy to distinguish. If the person you came to visit turns on the equipment "to the fullest", the operation of the subwoofer creates the impression of a good earthquake, this is hardly a connoisseur. But if he takes you into the room, sits you in a chair and, turning on the music at medium, sometimes stops closer to a quiet volume, you listen to music not for five minutes, but for half an hour, then most likely you fell into the clutches of an audiophile. But be warned, a good kit and a slight attachment to good sound can push anyone down this crooked audiophile track. And this means that thick special magazines and books will be found in your house, on the Internet you will begin to climb sites related to acoustics. All this will take you quite a lot of time and money, besides, you may encounter misunderstandings from relatives and friends ... etc. etc. Of course, the quality of the purchased kit is proportional to the amount of money spent. But this dependence is not always linear, sometimes it is impossible to clearly attribute a certain set to a certain group. For example, recently we came across a relatively inexpensive set of acoustics, which, by brand, price and many other parameters, could be safely attributed to a solid average hi-fi, but when listening, we came to the conclusion that this set could well be included in the hi range. -end. Another thing is that it was a shelf version and it would not be enough to "pump" a large room, 30 meters or more, but it's not the power that is the determining parameter, but the sound quality. We've also seen the exact opposite, where large expensive loudspeaker models from the most famous brands turned out to be of rather mediocre quality with loose bass, grainy highs and other shortcomings. Components We will immediately agree that for the time being we will not include a TV, a plasma panel or a projector in the concept of "home theater", but we will consider the cinema rather from a musical point of view. We will consider it through the prism of the sound path. Still, the main difference between a home theater and a VCR is the sound, not the video. In this case, the main role is played not only, and not so much by the presence of six-channel (or more) sound, although this is not unimportant, but by the sound quality itself. We have already talked a lot about the quality of the whole system, on which the level of home theater depends. But the overall quality is made up of the quality of the individual components. Therefore, let's consider the minimum audio path. The sound path consists of certain components, these elements are unchanged in any system, regardless of whether we are talking about multimedia, hi-fi or hi-end home theater. Some of them may be embedded in others, but they are still required in the chain: 1. DVD player. (source)
Of course, this list can include additional devices that at first sight expand the possibilities and improve the sound, such as, for example, an equalizer. Indeed, with the help of this device, we can raise or remove where necessary, or we can add bottoms. But the prevailing opinion that the more such additional features are in the system, the better, is fundamentally wrong. The fewer devices that pass the sound from the source to the playback components (speakers), the better. The presence of the same equalizer implies a change in the original signal, which is nothing more than its distortion. Therefore, the presence of the listed four components is optimal. Many high-end systems consist of just them, and this is precisely their great advantage. A good option is to include a crossover in the circuit, of course, if there are appropriate inputs in the loudspeakers, but this is already the fate of a very expensive hi-end. All these components, of course, are connected by wires, the quality of which also greatly affects the operation of the entire path. It would seem that such wires? What can they influence? But when using high-quality acoustics, their role is difficult to overestimate. It would seem that there is something special? A signal is transmitted over copper wires, the maximum that can be thought of there is to change the conductor material, increase or decrease the cross section. But, all these wires, even having the same technical parameters, sound completely different. Of course, they do not sound, but the speakers connected by this wire. But this does not change the essence of the matter. Each wire must be listened to and, accordingly, selected for the appropriate acoustics. For example, consider the simplest case. Let's take a room, one wall of which is lined with a wall full of many books, a huge shaggy carpet hangs on the other wall, and outdoor flowers stand in the corners. This room is considered well silenced. Quite "voiced" or "normal" wires are quite suitable for her. Let's take a hall-type room, in which, if something is said loudly, a metallic effect appears. The sound wave walks along it, reflecting. In general, in such a room it is recommended to rearrange, break the wave, in general, somehow jam it. And it is recommended to use "deaf" wires there. To distinguish them, we repeat, you can only try and compare. To pick them up, it is better to use the opinion of a specialist, without relying on your taste and price, since even quite expensive wires can sound very, very mediocre. It is no coincidence that we use the word "system" so stubbornly. Home theater is a system of devices. Like many other systems, it is similar to the human body. In order for the body to function fully, it is necessary that each organ separately functions normally. The same is true for home theaters. Let's take the simplest example. In a path with an excellent amplifier and speakers, we will put an average or even a bad source in the face of an inexpensive DVD player with a built-in preamplifier. And what? From the output of the player, we get a low-quality signal. It reaches (even if on good wires) to the amplifier, but there we will not be able to improve it. And since we took a high-quality amplifier, then, passing through the amplification path, the signal will not undergo fundamental changes. And so on, until it is fed to good high-quality loudspeakers, which will give us the same initially bad signal that we received on a low-quality player. Based on the foregoing, it is possible to approach the construction of a system based on considerations of a balance of cost and quality. It is no coincidence that all three segments of the home cinema market coexist and progress. Both hi-end and multimedia kits have every right to life. But components of one segment should not be used with components of another, because you will ruin the path of a higher quality, and using a component of a higher quality in a simpler system, as a rule, does not make sense, since it does not significantly improve the overall quality. This can be done when for some reason, usually financial, you assemble the system in parts and subsequently intend to purchase high-quality components, replacing the worst links in the chain with them. The first and most important step in choosing a home theater is to determine the segment. You must decide whether multimedia, hi-fi or hi-end components will be included. Even for people with a high level of income, if they want to arrange a small movie viewing room in their country house, it will be enough to put an average multimedia kit there. And already at home you can equip a large hall with high-quality equipment. If you set a goal and go around a lot of shops, listen to a lot of kits and read a lot of articles, you can pick up a quite decent inexpensive set of equipment that sounds at the level of hi-end acoustics. The main thing is not to overdo it. Sometimes it happens that you begin to capture the nuances of the sound, to distinguish where the bottoms are loose, where they are dense, where the sound stage is too clamped, etc. No need to bend the stick. Learn to just enjoy the music or the movie. Author: Goran Severov; Publication: cifrovik.ru
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