Skip to content

5.1

Listen to This

On the other hand, I heart my sound & vision system. My new DVD/CD player came today from Richer Sounds. Like the amp/decoder (also from Mr. Richer’s emporium), it’s a Sony model. The whole system, including speakers, as it stands, cost 240 quid, which is a good deal.

Sony’s name speaks for itself, but what I like about their gear is that they’re so user-friendly, and the manuals (for once) are really comprehensive and helpful (rather than the usual badly-written sketches in several languages). For instance, the player was not automatically sending a 5.1 signal to my amp, but the manual pointed the way in seconds. I have so many issues with instruction manuals that this makes a big difference to me.

The new player is impressing me a fair bit. While the old player was perfectly acceptable, the Sony’s sound output has a definite edge. I am hearing things on my CDs I hadn’t heard before. The amp is not a powerful one (you couldn’t shake the walls with it, but in a residential setting, this isn’t a great idea anyway), but I love the complete ‘wall of sound’ I can get from the set-up, which includes a cheap-but-effective sub-woofer.
Read More »Listen to This