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RE: Suggestions for HT Amping... oddball stuff!

Posted by David Aiken on November 29, 2010 at 11:53:22:
Earlier this year I dismantled my 5.1 setup in order to get a living room back, but wanted better speakers than I've got in my Panasonic plasma. One suggestion I saw was to use computer speakers and I ended up buying a pair of B&W MM-1 computer speakers and hooking them up to the analog audio outs from the Panasonic. They work very well, much better than I expected a small speaker to work, and they're capable of filling my room quite well with sound.

They have a reasonable bottom end down to 50 Hz or so. You won't get the sort of bass you get with a sub, something I occasionally miss but not as often as I thought I might.

Using the Panasonic's analog out passes the sound from my PVR and BD player, both of which are connected to the Panasonic by HDMI, and the sound from off air TV to the speakers so they work with everything I view. I don't use cable but my guess is that the sound from all inputs gets passed to the analog out connections. The analog out connection, however, is basically intended for videotaping and the sound options provided by the Panasonic, which include a dialog enhancement option, don't work with them so you won't be able to get dialog enhancement from the TV but you may be able to get it from some of your sources if you need it. I find the sound from the B&Ws cleaner and clearer than the sound from the Panasonic's internal speakers and haven't felt a need for dialog enhancement with them.

Losing the Panasonic's sound enhancement features also means you lose the 2 channel virtual surround option but, once again, you may be able to get that from some of your sources. If I wish, I can get it from my Panasonic BD player when I'm using it and it does a good job of creating a more spacious sound but I tend to prefer not to use it and dialog can be clearer without it.

So, if you want a budget option which is 2 channel only and doesn't take up much in the way of space, consider a pair of good quality powered computer speakers. They can do a surprisingly good job if subwoofer bass and surround sound aren't essential to you. The sound isn't as good as you could get from a good AVR and speakers but with the right speaker choice I think you can do better than you can do with a budget AVR and speakers.

Warnings: you need powered speakers with their own volume control. The Panasonic's volume control doesn't work on the analog out terminals. You could use the headphone out socket but I didn't get as good sound quality from there as I did from the analog audio out terminals and the volume control on my Panasonic doesn't control the headphone out terminal, you have to dig into the Panasonic's menu settings to do that. While some of the small, active speakers used in the pro audio field might be great for this kind of use, they don't have their own volume control so you need to look at the high end of the computer audio speaker range. The other thing is to remember to mute or turn the volume down on the Panasonic's speakers. I turn mine down to zero because when I use mute I get on onscreen icon which I'd rather not have.