A friend of mine asked me to go see Furiosa today. When I looked at the movie schedule online, it showed at the theater that there were two versions available, one with Dolby Cinema and one without. Honestly, I don’t go to many movies anymore in the theater, unfortunately, so this was sort of new to me, to have something listed as being in Dolby Cinema as a selling point, and it reminded me of an idea I had for this blog concerning the audio I use to “consume” media, for lack of a better word.

Now, I don’t consider myself an audiophile and won’t be known as one, but I do have an interest in audio. I’ve been to three or four audio shows, I’ve read books on Hi-Fi, and I even own a few “field” manuals on how to set up a stereo, such as Get Better Sound! by Jim Smith and Paul McGowan’s audiophile guides to the stereo and the loudspeaker (along with their companion CDs). I own a laser measurement device and a pro-grade SPL meter that I use just to get placement correct.

I own a MiniDSP SHD Power amplifier with Dirac built in, and I’ve measured more speakers than I will admit to countless times with that software and a Umik-1 calibrated microphone. At least the in-room response. I can tell in a lot of ways what a speaker will actually sound like just by looking at its frequency response graph.

That doesn’t make me an expert, and I’m not claiming to be, but I do know what I’m talking about. And so I thought maybe I would profile some of my gear quickly just to give you all some idea of my setup, and maybe you will find it informational. I won’t have any affiliate links on this page, because I think a lot of this stuff can be expensive, so don’t worry, I’m not trying to sell you anything.

I guess I should start with what I use to watch movies, so here is a picture of my Samsung 990C soundbar.

You will notice that the TV there is ancient (although built like the Empire State Building). It’s not even 1080p. I had a 48 inch 4k OLED there up until about eight or so months ago. My father had a heart attack and was sort of hung up in bed while he was recovering, so I gave him that TV and my Pioneer 4k Ultra HD blu-ray player so he could watch movies.

Those are Iso-Acoustics iso-pucks underneath the soundbar. I have them there because I had some just lying around and that school-locker material of the TV stand is probably not the best thing when it comes to vibrations.

So, why a soundbar? Well, I’ve had a lot of different speakers in that room, from panel speakers to bookshelves to towers. For a long time I had an Outlaw Audio Ultra X13 subwoofer in that room too. It weighed 110lbs and at the time I bought it was the only subwoofer THX certified as a single sub available for consumers in the United States (most subs that have a THX certification only do so if there are two of them working together). I even used the MiniDSP SHD Power to connect a different sub at the same time and ran them in stereo and you could actually correct for a lot of the discrepancies between the two subs in the MiniDSP plugin and with Dirac. (stereo subs are different than just having dual subs both playing a mono signal, but that’s way beyond the scope of this post).

Music sounded awesome, as you might expect. Movies sounded great too, light years better than regular TV speakers.

I bought a soundbar almost out of boredom, but also because in spite of all the audio equipment I’d bought over the years, I’d never had a surround sound system before. At least, not since Dolby Digital first came out and my grandmother gave me a home theater system “in a box” when I was 15 (which, by the way, I still use and still sounds great in spite of what a lot of “audiophiles” would tell you, although I’ve replaced the speakers which were lost during a move.)

And here’s the thing, the soundbar stomps all over my stereo system when it comes to movies and TV. Really, there is no contest.

I was actually sort of surprised by this, because most of the people in the audio world look askance at soundbars. And a big part of the reason I had that monstrous sub was for movies. But, trust me, no amount of Dirac and speaker placement techniques are going to compete with Dolby Atmos when watching a movie, even when it’s something like a soundbar with bluetooth satellites (as opposed to actually wiring speakers in your walls or something.) But you do need to have the space to put the rear speakers on a stand.

So that’s why I have it.

But it’s not perfect.

Like I said, for movies and TV it excels. Music is another story.

It’s really only suitable for casual listening, like if you’re watching a YouTube video on your phone. The bluetooth connection sure beats your phone’s speakers. But for anything more ambitious than that–no. I actually won’t even watch any of the concert blu-rays I own on this system. Just won’t even bother, it’s so unsatisfying. Even the ones encoded in 5.1 or Atmos.

Keep in mind that my basis for comparison is systems that are significantly more expensive than the soundbar. Nothing crazy, we’re not talking hi-end audio here, but, I mean, the Outlaw Audio Ultra X13 cost about the same as this thing, and that was just the sub in my 2.1 channel system. So actually, considering the price, it holds its own. Stereo music wasn’t what it was designed for is all.

I still have some speakers in my bedroom that I listen to at night, but during the day I actually have found a different solution to try and scratch that Hi-Fi itch, and that’s with near field listening at my desk.

And that was one of the initial impetuses for this blog post, because I recently purchased some Kanto Ora speakers, and for the price of a pair of these, their dedicated stands, and a matching sub, which comes in at around $550, you can get as much of a Hi-Fi experience as you could ever want. Just about. And it makes most of the other stuff I have spent money on seem pretty silly. And now with an external blu-ray drive hooked up to my computer, I can watch those concert videos I own and enjoy them just as much as with a full sized setup.

Don’t worry, I’m still not trying to sell you anything, just offer some friendly advice. I’ve had that MiniDSP SHD Power on my desk before, along with some Quad S1 speakers, hooked up with Aperion Audio cables that they make for their super tweeters and all calibrated using Dirac, and those barely beat these and actually lose to them in a few ways. Detail retrieval and clarity are better with the Oras. So is imaging. Soundstage, scale and dynamics are better with the Quads, more life-sized and therefore a little more realistic, which makes sense considering they are much bigger. And you don’t need a subwoofer with the Quads at all. (for desktop use at least)

But their size is also a disadvantage and the reason I took them off the desk in the first place. Once you have all that stuff set up, there’s no more desk left.

But what’s more important, is that the Oras easily go toe to toe with the full sized system set up correctly out in the living room. And they do so at a fraction of the cost.

How could this be, you ask? Well, in some ways it’s like listening to headphones. About half of what you are hearing when you listen to a stereo is the room it is in, which can be fine, but more often than not, rooms don’t sound good and so the sound suffers. When you listen to headphones, you’ve eliminated the room and almost universally you will hear more of the recording through headphones than through a stereo, no matter how good the system is.

But you lose a lot of the visceral power of music when you listen to headphones. The most obvious loss is in the bass region, where you feel bass more than hear it. You don’t really feel bass through headphones, not in your chest. You don’t get that jolt, for example, when they raise the chandelier at the beginning of The Phantom of the Opera, the one with the new electric lights that suddenly come on. The sound there at that moment is supposed to shock you, like electricity. It’s a loud clang and sizzle. Through the Outlaw Audio Ultra X13, that sound would literally make my plates rattle in the kitchen thirty feet away.

You’re not getting that experience through headphones.

Near field listening is sort of a hybrid approach. You get a lot of the clarity and detail of headphones, because the speakers are so close to you that sound reflections play a minimal role in what you hear. {And this is in spite of what some audiophiles will tell you, and some speaker companies, that you still need about three feet of space from your desktop speakers to the nearest reflection point because…physics…or some such. No you don’t. If you are using Magnapan’s desktop solution, which are mini-panels and still dipole speakers, which means they bounce sound back off the wall behind them as well as projecting it forward, then maybe you need three feet for the soundstage to form}. You still get some of that satisfying visceral sensation of sound hitting you though. To be clear, you’re not going to get the plates to rattle through a near field setup like the Oras, but you’re not getting that without a monster sub anyway, even with tower speakers.

Audioholics.com has measurements of the Oras, if that’s your thing. I could try measuring them through REW, but why bother when they did it already? And they have dispersion and impedance graphs and the whole suite of stuff if you want to head over there and take a look at them. Or you could just trust me that they sound right.

The tracks I was using to evaluate them are the aforementioned companion CDs to Paul McGowan’s books, as well as some of the other releases from PS Audio’s Octave Records, such as The Art of HiFi: Percussion, which I can recommend. I’m not downloading the DSD files because I gave away all of my DAPs that play DSD, but my computer can actually play the 352.8 khz, 24 bit files, so I got those. These are some primo recordings that are designed to really shine through a good set of speakers and the Oras do them justice. Although keep in mind I am using a Kanto Sub 6 with these, which definitely helps with percussion instruments like the kick drum. And it is possible to get them to distort while listening to the Gongs track for example on the above mentioned album. I think there is just too much energy coming out of that instrument for these little speakers to handle.

And as for Furiosa, it was actually pretty good. I didn’t know what to expect with a female lead in the Mad Max universe, but it worked just fine. This isn’t a “girl bossing” movie in any case (and there are ways to do girl bossing right, Hollywood just doesn’t know how. See eg, Evangelion, Dragon Ball GT), nor is it one where a 130lb female kills an entire platoon of male soldiers with her bare hands. I thought they handled the action just fine. I might write my own review of it, because I have some thoughts about the story.

As for the Dolby Cinema experience, I was pleasantly surprised. I had no idea that there was a tactile feedback mechanism built into the theater. So your seat shakes when an explosion onscreen occurs. Or your seat vibrates in time with the revving engines of motorcycles. Furiosa is probably a perfect movie to experience this tactile feedback for the first time, because there’s a lot of explosions and a ton of revving engines. It definitely brought the experience closer to a “ride” which a lot of writers try and do.

So I learned something new today, which I wasn’t really expecting.

Happy Memorial Day!