Fri May 11, 2007 4:53PM EDT
Here at the Home Entertainment Show at the Grand Hyatt in New York, there's an $8,000 pair of loudspeakers behind every door, blaring out all manner of music at absolute full volume. Inside one of the demo rooms, however, I found a humble speaker that's shaping up to be a worthy competitor to virtual surround speaker—and it's actually less than a thousand bucks.
The Slimstage40 surround console ($899) from is a long, slim silver unit that attempts to simulate 5.
1 channels of sound from a single speaker—something I've seen (and heard) from plenty of manufactures, most notably Yamaha and its impressive YSP-1100 ($1,300). The Slimstage (which should arrive in stores this July) tries to do the same job in a slightly smaller package than the Yamaha: just 39 by 3.3 by 3.
4 inches, or four inches shorter and an inch thinner than the YSP-1100. All you do is plug your DVD player into one of the Slimstage's three digital audio inputs (two optical and one coaxial), put the speaker in front of (or above) your HDTV, and you're ready to rock.
The Soundmatters PR folks had the Slimstage blaring during a mid-air dogfight scene from the questionable Owen Wilson vehicle, "Behind Enemy Lines," and while I'm pretty skeptical of most virtual surround systems (which typically just sound hollow and echo-y), the Slimstage sounded impressive.
Jets and missiles seemed to whoosh behind me, and the center dialog channel sounded loud and clear. Best of all, though, was the low-end sound—explosions sounded deep and boomy, even through the Slimstage wasn't hooked up to a separate subwoofer (the speaker has nine built-in bass drivers, I'm told). We're not talking subtle, here, but for those who want some surround action without hooking up five speakers and a subwoofer, the Slimstage40 is worth a listen.
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