Review Details
Signature HiFi 2-Way Bipolar Surround Speakers
Product Rating:
| Overall Performance |
Product Review (submitted on December 17, 2019):
Excellent surround sound speakers that bring surround sound effects in movies to life like I've never heard. These speakers are playing in a custom-built home theater room that was built to one of the “golden ratios” for home theater, the Volkmann ratio of 1.0 : 1.5 : 2.5 (The Home Theater Book). With minimal acoustic panels in place, this architectural feature of the home theater accentuates subtle nuances in digital sound processing effects for music and movies like I've never experienced. So the point is I instantly can hear the difference between DSP effects and the quality of speakers.
I have auditioned these speakers for about three weeks with one of the best scenes for surround sound effects and action sequences I know in the film Act of Valor that features actual Navy Seals in a recreation of a CIA agent hostage rescue. The sound improvement as the Navy Seals drop into the jungle in Central America and move through the operation was so dramatic in comparison to the other Fluance surround speakers, Reference High Performance Two-Way Bipolar Surround Speakers, I had installed previously that it was definitely a “wow” experience even though I'd watched that scene many times before since 2013. The sound is like what you want to hear in a movie theater, but usually don’t because you sit in the “sweet spot” in a home theater unlike in a large movie theater.
For DSP effects that recreate an acoustic environment from two channel stereo I am still working on tweaking them and so I can't give a verdict on whether they are better than the Reference High Performance Two-Way Bipolar Surround Speakers I had in the Left-Right surround channel before I installed these ones. I often listen to classical music with Yamaha's Natural Sound DSP that attempts to recreate the sound of a concert hall in Vienna, more reverb than a dry concert hall, or studio, or other DSP effects, and these add a lot of depth and a much wider sound stage, but I couldn’t say that I actually hear them during classical music listening. Of course, that is the point, you don’t want to hear the surround sound speakers. The improvement in sound quality with DSP on two-channel stereo is less noticeable at this time after listening to these speakers for about three weeks.
As soon as I have the recordings and technology to listen to classical music recorded for Dolby Atmos I expect to hear an increased sense of the acoustic environment of the concert hall/venue and a far more three-dimensional sound, but I won’t know until I hear it for myself in my home theater.
Take Away: For film soundtracks and surround sound that is designed by an audio engineer for a cinematic experience in Dolby Digital 5.1/7.1, that is the same precision Left-Right placement of surround sound effects as audio engineered in a Dolby Atmos system these speakers work amazing. They achieve the cinematic sound experience you expect when you install surround sound speakers. Highly recommended.