Whats the difference in Home Theater and 2ch Stereo.

[sentinel]

Question1
I am in the market for a Home theater system and i went throgh many threads. Whenever one asks for a home theater, The question asked is what do you mostly listen to. If you say music, You are asked what genere of music you listen to?

As a normal human being i like to listen to everything right from mono, 2 channel , 5 channel and other formats. Also my preferences keep on changing as to genere and style of music and movie experiences.

So how does it matter whether one listens to music or home theater?


Question 2
Now a hifi means "high-quality reproduction of sound or images that are very faithful to the original performance" i.e. a sound whether it is bird flying, noise, bell, whistels, drums,strings, flowing water, natural sound, the sound of a fart hyeah: , sound of a cricket,sound of vibrating noisy AC machine should be as close to original as you can hear it naturally. This is a highly ideal scenario.

And how do speakers suited for particular genere of music or dedicated to reproduction of particular frequencies or meant for applications and having colouration of sound qualify as HiFi?
Why manufacturers instead of trying to get a flat frequency response try to reinforce certain frequencies to make the speakers sound musical and still qualify as hifi?

Your expert comments please.

 

[marsilians]

I will answer briefly and will let you search around for more info or will let others chime in.

Question1
I am in the market for a Home theater system and i went throgh many threads. Whenever one asks for a home theater, The question asked is what do you mostly listen to. If you say music, You are asked what genere of music you listen to?

As a normal human being i like to listen to everything right from mono, 2 channel , 5 channel and other formats. Also my preferences keep on changing as to genere and style of music and movie experiences.

So how does it matter whether one listens to music or home theater?

Different genre of music stress different frequency levels for the most part - rock for mid and high freq's, jazz for mid and lower ones, female vocal is high freq's and so on.

Speakers tend to follow a similar pattern emphasizing certain range(thats what a cross over does and has the greatest impact wrt quality).

So your aim when purchasing speakers should be to match the genre you listen to with speakers that are either neutral (dont colour the sound - very hard to imagine and reproduce as there are too many natural constraints) or emphasize the range - this results in detailed sound.

Its very hard to therefore get speakers that match the genre well.

Home theatre in general will go over the entire freq range with a major focus on the higher and lower ones. This is the reason its OK to get any speaker - or to get the best effects one that emphasises higher freq because thats where all the "action" based sounds are coming from.

Finally because of the stricter requirements of matching to music vs. HT, you can rest assure that a well matched music system will likely please you for HT as well.

Question 2
Now a hifi means "high-quality reproduction of sound or images that are very faithful to the original performance" i.e. a sound whether it is bird flying, noise, bell, whistels, drums,strings, flowing water, natural sound, the sound of a fart hyeah: , sound of a cricket,sound of vibrating noisy AC machine should be as close to original as you can hear it naturally. This is a highly ideal scenario.

And how do speakers suited for particular genere of music or dedicated to reproduction of particular frequencies or meant for applications and having colouration of sound qualify as HiFi?
Why manufacturers instead of trying to get a flat frequency response try to reinforce certain frequencies to make the speakers sound musical and still qualify as hifi?

Your expert comments please.

You are right in that it is impossible to achieve high fidelity with the best of equipment. So you settle for the closest. Because music tones tends to focus on specific frequencies for relatively larger period of time than movies where 'its all over the place', good matching with other components in your system is important for music.