When is enough enough? If the subject is automobile engines, orchestral CDs or watch complications, most aficionados respond, “Never!” But ask the same question of a home theater enthusiast, and you are as likely to see rolled eyes as you are to hear a verbal reply.

Many people feel that surround sound has come far enough. And they have a point. Even an ordinary 5.1-channel surround-sound system—three speakers in the front, two in the back and a subwoofer for the bass—can produce stunningly realistic sound effects.

With its automatic setup capability, its professional-style BNC video connections and XLR audio connections, and its front LCD screen, Parasound’s Halo C1 must be considered a state-of-the-art surround-sound processor. Add a tactile transducer and a couple of ceiling speakers, and a new world emerges.  (Click image to enlarge)

But still, don’t you wonder what more could be done? I do. Seven speakers encircle me in my home theater, but they all sit about three feet off the floor. How can they reproduce the calls of the hawks that hovered over me on my hike this morning? It seems home theaters have ignored one of the three dimensions entirely. We can place sounds anywhere front to back or side to side, but they all occur at the same height.

A couple of hardy pioneers have tried to expand surround sound into three dimensions. For several years, Tomlinson Holman, the originator of Lucasfilm’s THX program, has been promoting 10.2-channel sound.  To a 7.1-channel system, he adds an extra subwoofer, an extra center speaker and two “height channel” speakers above the left and right front speakers. David Chesky, founder of Chesky Records, has created a 6.0 format, which adds two height speakers in the front and eliminates the center speaker and subwoofer. Both systems expand on the ambience of 5.1, but neither has achieved commercial success.

A Fresh Start 
Undaunted by naysayers, some audio manufacturers—most notably Goldmund, Parasound and TAG/McLaren—have quietly expanded their surround-sound processors with the capability to add extra channels of sound. If you’re happy with 7.1, you can ignore the extra channels. Noticing that most people have, in fact, ignored them, I call in test assistant Alex Gonzalez, get out my RotoZip drywall cutter and proceed to add a new dimension to my home theater.

The vessel that takes me where few home theater fans have gone before is Parasound Products’ Halo C1 surround-sound preamp/processor. The C1 offers two extra channels that can be practically anything you want them to be. You can blend the sound from any of the 7.1 channels into these two new channels, adjust their tonal character and delay their sound relative to the other channels for a more spacious effect.

Combine Parasound’s C1 preamp/processor with a few special-purpose speakers, and bring home-theater sound to places where few have dared venture.  (Click image to enlarge)

Here’s where the RotoZip comes in: I use the C1’s extra channels to feed two flush-mount ceiling speakers. Unless you want boxes hanging from your ceiling, putting in ceiling speakers means cutting holes (and, of course, calling your custom installer). I choose Niles DS6500AT ceiling speakers and mount them so that they straddle the sides of my ceiling-mounted video projector, about halfway between my chair and the screen.

The C1 also has a “shaker” channel, which adds a sense of rumble and vibration to your surround-sound experience. It feeds a tactile transducer, which is like a speaker without a cone.  The transducer bolts to your couch or chair; you can also attach it to your floor, provided the floor is made of plywood or some other material that vibrates easily. I choose the Platinum TST-429.2, the top-of-the-line product from Clark Synthesis (a company that specializes in tactile transduction) and attach the transducers to a plywood platform that supports my chairs.

Flying Blind 
Alex encounters one challenge in setting up the C1—we are not sure how to configure the extra channels.  We seek sage advice in the manual, but find only bare mentions and vague suggestions.

So we fly blind. We try mixing in a lot of sound from the surround channels and just a little from the front channels. We also add lots of delay, so the sound from the ceiling speakers reaches us several milliseconds later than the sound from the other speakers. We hope that adding the extra delay will mimic the sound of a cavernous theater.

You or your installer can configure the Halo C1’s extra channels through its front-panel or on-screen displays, or through a computer running Parasound’s HaloControl software. To create the extra channels, you can mix in sound from other channels and cut the treble or bass at any desired point.  (Click image to enlarge)

The results are dreadful. Instead of the focused, dramatic surround-sound effects my home theater usually produces, we hear an amorphous, confused blob of sound. Nothing seems to come from any speaker in particular.  The overall effect reminds me of the public-address system at Los Angeles International Airport—a bunch of haphazardly arranged speakers pumping out sound. We struggle haplessly with the C1’s controls, trying to pull out of our nosedive, but no matter how we experiment, we cannot achieve good sound.

The next morning, I decide the time has come to seek professional help. Sadly, my psychiatrist is unavailable, so instead I call Parasound President Richard Schramm.

Back on Course 
“We just figured that out ourselves,” Schramm says. I plead with him to share his mastery. He responds with simple instructions:  “For the left ceiling speaker, set the mix to 100 percent for the left front channel, 100 percent for the left back channel and about 30 percent for the left side channel.  Turn the delay down to about 8 milliseconds. Filter out the treble above 12 kilohertz. Then do the same for the right ceiling speaker; just mix in the sound from the right and right back channels the same way you did for the left channels.”

And what should I feed my new system? “You get the best effect with action-movie DVDs,” Schramm says, “especially the ones that have a lot of sounds moving from front to back. Like the mother ship flying over in Star Wars.”

Couch-shaking tactile transducers like the Clark Synthesis Platinum TST-429.2 add another dimension to the sonic height, width and depth created by the Halo C1.  (Click image to enlarge)

I summon Alex again, present him with Schramm’s instructions and tell him to have at it. “Come get me when it sounds good,” I say, half convinced that he will never come get me.

Thirty minutes later, he’s all smiles. I enter the room to find him playing not some Jerry Bruckheimer bombast, but music—a blues cut from a CD I’ve never heard. And it sounds great.

My home theater system has been transformed. The harmonica player in the blues recording sounds like he’s standing on a large soundstage instead of in a tiny recording studio.  The music fills my room like never before.  It’s enveloping, addictive. I quickly reach for a stack of my best CDs and throw on a few favorites. No matter what I play, the results go far beyond what I had hoped for; the sound is huge, yet it retains most of its focus and precision. It sounds like I’m sitting in a concert hall, but it’s not the annoyingly fake effect that the so-called concert hall modes on inexpensive surround-sound processors produce.

Alex mentions that he’s using Dolby Pro Logic II, a technology that expands the sound from ordinary two-channel CDs to fill 5.1 channels. With the ceiling speakers, it works even better.

In my euphoria, I’ve overlooked the fact that Alex isn’t playing the material Schramm recommended. “What does it do with movies?” I ask. “It’s OK,” he shrugs. “Try it.”

The Clark Synthesis Platinum TST-429.2  (Click image to enlarge)

I cue up the opening scene of Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones, in which the sound of Senator Amidala’s space yacht travels from the back speakers to the front.  The effect is nice. I hear a bit more sound overhead as the ship passes. It’s a more convincing “flyover” effect, but I would not liken it to a thrill ride.

As I skip to different scenes in the movie, though, I notice that the ceiling speakers jump to life when the soundtrack swells.  The rich orchestral score saturates the room; again, my home theater becomes a large soundstage instead of a living room. After playing several more discs and fussing more with the settings, Alex and I decide that the music’s the thing.  The sound effects in the movies are pleasingly enhanced, but music is what really takes on new life.

Rumble from Below 
The novelty of the ceiling speakers makes it easy to ignore the tactile transducers—and the fact that Parasound is the only company so far to get this right. Tactile-transducer manufacturers demonstrate their products in a way that could be charitably described as dramatic. Your chair vibrates almost all the time, even when the soundtrack is just actors speaking. I find it difficult to imagine that Katharine Hepburn’s fragile delivery of the classic line from On Golden Pond—“You’re my knight in shining armor”—would be powerful enough to shake my chair, but transducer manufacturers seem to feel it should.

Wisely, Parasound decided to limit the transducer channel to sounds below 20 hertz, which is so low you cannot hear it.  You can feel it, though, and with the C1, you’ll only feel it when there’s a particularly dynamic and low-pitched sound in a movie—car crashes, huge spaceships passing by, cannons going off.

The shaker channel itself merits an article.  Alex and I find that it greatly enhances action movies without detracting from them in any way.  And thanks to the C1, the setup is foolproof.

  

Niles Audio’s DS6500AT is well-suited for adding height channels to a 7.1 surround-sound system. It points 15 degrees in any direction, so its sound focuses where you want it.  (Click images to enlarge)

Future Dimensions
It’s likely that someday the industry will move beyond 7.1 channels to something resembling Tom Holman’s 10.2 scheme. Granted, not every film will warrant a 10.2-channel soundtrack. But in commercial movie theaters, the path has already been paved for 10.2. New digital cinema systems are trickling into theaters; in these systems, playback equipment based on computer-style hard drives replaces film.  All of these systems are capable of reproducing 12 channels of sound, even though no such movie soundtracks exist yet.

Meanwhile, Parasound’s C1 surround-sound processor can give you a taste of what lies beyond 7.1. Since the body of knowledge that exists on this topic is limited, you’ll need an adventurous, capable and dedicated installer. But you’ll be entering a world where no one in your neighborhood—or perhaps even your state—has traveled.

Clark Synthesis:
800.898.1945,
www.clarksynthesis.com

Niles Audio:
800.BUY.HIFI,
www.nilesaudio.com

Parasound Products:
415.397.7100,
www.parasound.com