Denis Fodor responds to what I wrote concerning a DTS surround sound
recording of Holsts' Planets from Telarc:

>>The performance is very good, as is the sound, but the surround sound
>>engineering is nearly ideal.
>
>To get the benefit of this, how large a space is required? Is special
>preparation of surfaces needed? About how much would a modest, but
>efficacious system cost?

Excellent questions, and with respect to the first two, entire books have
been written.

Room size and acoustic response are very important, especially to the sound
of classical music recordings, whether trying to reproduce the intimacy of
a chamber music recital or a full orchestra in a large hall.

To be truthful, I haven't thought much about this, and I haven't read
anything at all about it, but I tend to think that the more speakers you
have, the less you need to worry about room acoustics.  In modern digital
surround processing, effects such as hall ambience are created all around
you.  You don't have to hope that the sound emanating from the front will
bounce around your room correctly and give a feeling of depth.  For many
discrete, multi-channel recordings, the sound coming from the surround
speakers mostly or completely overwhelms the reflected sound coming from
those positions.  In other words, it seems reasonable to say that to some
degree surround sound overwhelms your room acoustics.

My room is an incredibly complex shape.  It's narrow in the direction I
sit facing the front speakers, and wide to the left opening to a dining
room.  The dining room and listening room share a 18' vaulted ceiling that
follows all the way upstairs into the master bedroom.  There is no wall
directly behind the listening position, but there is a partial wall to the
left.  To the right is a wall at an angled wall and the front double doors.
There's lots of glass and bare, acoustically untreated (though textured)
drywall.  I sit off center from the two front speakers, as I have to share
this system as a home theater.  My center channel is up too high.  Get
the picture? Even if you can't visualize what my room looks like from my
lousy description, I think I made the point that this is anything but a
rectangular box.  You might also have restrictions on where surround
speakers might go.  My speaker arrangement isn't even close to the ideal.

I lived here for two years with my system set up as a regular stereo.
Though I could get a reasonably good soundstage up front, the room
reverberations were all over the place.  One of the things I noticed when
I went to a surround sound system was that the room mostly disappeared.
Once I went through the calibration setups, adjusting for distance and
volume on each speaker, the recording dominated.  The image was solid, and
I could sense the ambience the engineer intended, even on stereo recordings
using matrixed sound.

My general feeling is that a small room is not a problem.  I have heard
some excellent home thearters in small rooms.

As to price, it depends on what you have, and what you want (I'll let
Denis do the conversions to Deutsche Marks).  As this market has exploded
over the past two years, there are some incredibly low-priced components
out there that perform very well.  You can get a five- or six-channel A/V
receiver in the $500-1000 range, or perhaps a little less.  There are many
good receivers in this price range from Harmon Kardon, Onkyo, Denon, Sony,
the list goes on, but one of the best buys for the budget conscious may be
the Model 1050 from Outlaw (www.outlawaudio.com).

There are some amazing 5.1 speaker systems available that are in the
$700-1500 range, such as the HC6 system from Acoustic Research (yes, that
AR, www.acoustic-research.com) that lists for a measly $799.  Her's a good
review:

    http://www.hometheatersound.com/equipment/acousticresearch_hc6.htm

Then you add a quality DVD player, or combination DVD-Audio/DVD-Video
player, which will run about $400-600, perhaps a little less (there are
some good DVD-Video players out there that list for $250, such as the new
Sony model).  Of course, in each category, including the player, you could
also spend five figures.

Add another $100-200 for quality cables, and you're pretty much set.

So, for as little as $1600 (or less if you are into haggling) you could
have a complete system that would be quite respectable.  I recommend
hooking up with someone locally who can give you advice that can be
tailored to your needs.  There are some tricky aspects, but nothing too
intimidating.  Make sure that whatever you buy you can return if it doesn't
sound good in your room.  The magazines I mentioned previously are all
great sources of information, and some even have reviews of complete
systems that might be just the thing.  The links to those sources are:

    http://www.stereophile.com/
    http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/
    http://www.theperfectvision.com/

Dave
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http://www.classical.net/