Speaker Package Quandry

[admin_exported]

Hi all,

a liitle bit of advice please. I just bought the Onkyo 605 Amp to go with my Tosh HDE1 and PS3. Now I'm looking for a speaker package to compliment the set up. I've been interested in the WHF award winners Q acoustics 1010i's, and the best price I can see for those is £449. I've also seen on the same website an upgrade of the set, with the 1050i floorstanders replacing the bookshelf ones in the original. This set comes in at £625. I'd also be going for a pair of Q Acoustic Stands for the rears.

My question, is it worth the extra cash for the floorstanders in front? I have a very large room to fill with sound so I was thinking the larger speakers would be ideal for my needs.

Any thoughts would be gratefully received.

Dee

PS. Off topic completely but, does anyone know if the PS3 will, in a future update be able to send hi def audio via bitstream, or is this hardware limited?

Thanks again.

 

[Anonymous]

Quote:
The word is that it will hit the PS3 a month or two after the Panasonic BD50 gets released. The same firmware update for the PS3 is expected to provide both 2.0 profile and DTS-HD MA decoding, and they want to give Panny a chance to have their player on the market to get some sales before the PS3 trumps the "wow factor" of the 2.0 profile ability by providing it to the install base of PS3 users. The Panny comes out in May/June. Frustrating because it sounds like Sony has the update ready to go already but is holding it back intentionally. But there is a larger "market" upside: unlike another manufacturer who would make it difficult for other companies to provide competitive HDM hardware, Sony wants to encourage other manufacturers to do some R&D and BD-hardware product design/production. Part of that means letting them have some bragging rights in their marketing material... and in the case of Panny, this means letting them bring us the first fully-featured 2.0 BD player (if the PS3 did it already, the Panny BD50 would be old-news before it even hit the street).

we've been talking about this on PS3 forums for about 6 months and this is just the latest quote to come from the inside, so hopefully sometime this summer, but who really knows ??

 

[Anonymous]

bump. Anyone?

 

[Anonymous]

Well seeing as the PS3 is getting BD 2.0 within the next 10 days, who knows about dts-MA.We'll just have to wait and see (hear).

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that, but not really what I was asking. I was wondering if in the future the PS3 will be able to send ANY Hi Def audio (Dolby TruHD etc) in a raw bitstream state so that the amp can decode the signal instead of the work being done by PS3.

Anyone?

Dee

 

[FuzzyinLondon]

I can't believe everyone's getting so worked up over this bitstream thing with the PS3. For what the PS3 offers, I think it's great value for money. And that's before you consider the fact that it can play games too. I'm sure DTS HD MA will come at some point in the future. Whether it is through on board decoding or bitstream doesn't bother me - I'm sure it'll sound great either way. It seems that everyone's becoming obsessed with getting the light on their Onkyos to light up. If you know you're getting pretty much the same sound, what's the problem? I think the Q Acoustics 1010i package is a good choice. Be aware that the Q Acoustics speaker stands are quite low for rear surround speakers. If you can't wallmount, I recommend getting a taller pair of stands like the Atacama Nexus 10s which are 1m tall and would give a better height for rear speakers.

 

[mike aitch]

just want to throw this into the mix,will sony ever give us bitstream hd audio when they've got their own standalone bd players to flog? (just a thought).

 

[FuzzyinLondon]

It's a really good point and one that I made a while ago but got shouted down. The problem is that no-one, apart from Sony themselves, seems to know the actual hardware limitations of the PS3. Sony reckons it should have a ten year life cycle - difficult to believe that's ever gonna happen. However, with the sheer processing power of the machine, does it really make a huge difference if the objective is achieved via software or hardware if the end result is the same? Like you say, Sony have other hardware that they want to sell us and need to give us a compelling reason to do so.