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REVIEWER’S GUIDE
11
To best experience the Revolution 7.1’s awesome sound you should have:
• Seven powered speakers (left, center, right, surround (2) and rear (or center)
surrounds (2). Ideally, you’ll use 6 matched speakers, plus a center speaker
designed to work with the others. You can use passive speakers with a high-
quality multi-channel surround receiver for even better quality playback.
• Powered subwoofer
The Revolution 7.1 works well with almost any receiver or powered speaker set. It
fully supports stereo, headphones, stereo with subwoofer, 2.1 (with discrete sub-
woofer), quadraphonic, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, and 7.1 configurations. Though 7.1 multimedia
speakers sets for the consumer market are just appearing, 7.1 is firmly entrenched in
the home theater receiver market. See additional information about speakers in the
next section, and refer to the “7.1 Surround Sound Receivers” section for a list of
some of the many 7.1 receivers currently available.
Content
You can use your favorite game, movie, DVD, MP3, WMA or other audio file, or
just about anything else. However, the appendix lists sample scenes and songs that
make great test content for certain applications. We recommend you use the rec-
ommended content unless you have known content that you are comfortable with.
Not all movies, for example, are mixed with use of surround channels, which can
skew a surround listening test.
About Consumer Multimedia Speakers
Revolution’s audio quality exceeds that of any consumer multimedia speaker
system. Consequently, you should use the best speakers and amplifiers available
for your evaluation.
• If you do not have access to a quality 7.1 home theater receiver and
speakers, you can use any off-the-shelf multimedia system.
• If using a set of multimedia speakers, it is best to use a “higher end” set
rather than an inexpensive set with poor sound quality. Klipsch, Logi-
tech, Cambridge, Midiland, and Harman Kardon can be good sources
for better quality multimedia speakers. Creative’s Inspire 6.1 offers an
additional surround speaker, but at under $100, we believe the set sacri-
fices quality for price.
Speaker availability. As of March 2003, 7.1 multimedia speaker sets were not
generally available. This is largely because 6.1/7.1 sound cards are only now
reaching the retail market. Now that these sound cards are available, several
speaker manufacturers have begun development of 7.1 multimedia speaker sets.
Since Revolution provides discrete 7.1 line outputs, some users may elect to
“upgrade” their existing 5.1 multimedia speaker set by connecting a stereo set
of powered speakers to the rear surround channel. Though this may not provide
ACCORDING
TO DOLBY AND
THX, DOLBY
DIGITAL EX
DVDS ARE DE-
SIGNED TO BE
PLAYED BACK
ON A 7.1 SUR-
ROUND SYS-
TEM.