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This is the first Archived Forum which was active between 17th April 2007 and 1st March February 2012

 

Latest post 10-28-2011 6:40 AM by geoff martin. 15 replies.
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  • 10-21-2011 3:50 PM

    Beosystem 3 phantom center

    As I understand newer versions of Beosystem 3 can create a phantom center channel by adding the center channel audio to left and right front. As an owner of a beovision 7-40 mk3 I don't have this option, but I'd be very interested in an update.

    However I heard that it's not a software update, but new hardware in the beosystem that allows the phantom center. If this is true? Then what new hardware is needed? Is it possible to upgrade my beovision 7-40 mk3 ? and what price range would such an upgrade be in?

    I have hesitated to install a cinema setup because I can't place the second center speaker on the wall adjacent to the TV. With a phantom center I'd go right ahead with this project.

    /Kim

  • 10-23-2011 3:31 PM In reply to

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    Hi Kim,

    What speaker(s) do you have currently?

    If you're in Speaker Mode 2 on the BeoSystem 3 / BeoVision 7, then it should be automatically sending the Centre Channel input to your Left Front and Right Front speakers, thus creating a phantom centre.

    Cheers

    -geoff

  • 10-24-2011 5:58 AM In reply to

    • akoro
    • Top 500 Contributor
    • Joined on 08-07-2008
    • Espoo, Finland
    • Posts 88
    • Gold Member

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    I just tried this - it is not possible. If you deselect center speaker you cannot choose speaker mode 5 anymore, you only have speaker 2 or 4 options and speaker 4 is just stereo signal thru all speakers and some bass boost.

    Just to make sure everyone understand what phantom center channels means:

    In surround sound setup some (or maybe most) other brand surround prosessors can mix the center channel into left and right front speakers so you can have setup with "true" surround sound without dedicated center speaker.

  • 10-24-2011 6:10 AM In reply to

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    Hi Geoff

    Yes, you are right. I have BL5's as my main speakers and they play the center channel excellent in speaker mode 2. But that is not surround! Even if I select the speaker mode 4 it's still just stereo played through four speakers.

    What I need is my two BL5s playing front and phantom center and my two BL8000 playing the surround channels.

    I have a BL7.4 used as a center channel in TV mode, but it is under the TV on the wrong wall.  My cinema setup / listening setup is rotated 90 degrees for optimal BL5 placement.

    As the software is, I have to add a second center channel for cinema mode. For testing it's two BL6000, but of course that is no match to the BL5s. That became obvious to me, when I did some listening tests A/B repeating a scene from Fifth Element in speaker mode 2 and 3.

    As I wrote in the first post I heard it's possible to enjoy surround with a phantom center channel on newer beosystems. However I also heard I needed a hardware upgrade to allow it on my beosystem 3. A bit odd considering my beosystem is already able to create the phantom center in speaker mode 2 and 4 as you suggest.

    Bottom line is I'm considering buying an external surround processor or upgrading my beosystem if possible, so any input on that is appreciated.

    My input to Bang & Olufsen is a software upgrade that makes speaker mode 4 play 4.0 and not a 2+2 when a multichannel signal is fed. Alternatively allow not to setup a center channel speaker and then have the fronts play a phantom center.

  • 10-24-2011 6:33 AM In reply to

    • akoro
    • Top 500 Contributor
    • Joined on 08-07-2008
    • Espoo, Finland
    • Posts 88
    • Gold Member

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    I forgot that there is AST. It might be the answer to your scenario - visit your local dealer to get a demo. It is more advanced sound prosessing than phantom setup is. Maybe Geoff can explain further how surround sound is decoded with AST?


  • 10-24-2011 9:39 AM In reply to

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    Please correct me if I'm wrong. My understanding is that the AST cannot be installed on older versions of Beosystem 3 due to hardware upgrades along the way.

    Thank you Akoro for also posting the image of a tv and cinema setup which closely resembles the setup I would like. That is without a dedicated center in cinema mode.

  • 10-24-2011 10:03 AM In reply to

    • quader
    • Top 500 Contributor
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    • Joined on 08-03-2007
    • West Yorkshire, UK
    • Posts 89
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    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    Hi

    i have a similar setup to akoro except Tv and screen being the other way round.

    I have installed a seprate centre speaker for the cinema setup but find myself using speaker 4 in both setup as the dialoge cannot be heard on speaker 5 setup.

    i have also enquired at my dealer who has quoted me over £600 for AST to be installed on my BV7 mk3 and £90 call out fee with £85 per hour to look at my speaker query -

  • 10-24-2011 11:29 AM In reply to

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    Hi quader

    It sounds like you're listening to stereo from two sets of speakers and not surround sound then.

    Have you tried adjusting the speaker levels in the audio menu? You can't adjust the center speaker level up but you can adjust all other speakers down. I adjusted my front and surround speakers two ticks down from the default level. This makes dialog more hearable.

    The AST should be for correcting less than perfect speaker placement. Not a missing speaker. My speakers are perfect, placed perfect and I spent days measuring, listening and moving around, so no artificial tinkering with the sound is needed.

    Of course if AST can make a phantom center without manipulating anything else it's worth considering, but I would prefer the Beosystem in itself being able to mix the center into the front.

     

  • 10-24-2011 1:44 PM In reply to

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    I'll respond to the later post first... then come back to an earlier one

    kimchr:

    The AST should be for correcting less than perfect speaker placement. Not a missing speaker. My speakers are perfect, placed perfect and I spent days measuring, listening and moving around, so no artificial tinkering with the sound is needed.

    This is correct - if your speakers are reasonably well-placed, then you should not go for AST... There was a long discussion about this in a forum about AST roughly a year ago. I put in a bunch of explanations there on what to expect (or not expect) from AST. However, if your speakers are in roughly the right positions, then turning on AST will be a downgrade... It's really designed for people who put their speakers in REALLY strange configurations...

    Cheers

    -geoff

     

  • 10-24-2011 1:54 PM In reply to

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    kimchr:

    Yes, you are right. I have BL5's as my main speakers and they play the center channel excellent in speaker mode 2. But that is not surround! Even if I select the speaker mode 4 it's still just stereo played through four speakers.

    What I need is my two BL5s playing front and phantom center and my two BL8000 playing the surround channels.

    I have a BL7.4 used as a center channel in TV mode, but it is under the TV on the wrong wall.  My cinema setup / listening setup is rotated 90 degrees for optimal BL5 placement.

    Ah! Your original post didn't mention any speakers - just that you had a BV7-40, I believe.
    Anyway... I think that if you tell your current BS3 that your BeoLab5's are Centre Left and Centre Right (or maybe Left Centre and Right Centre... it's been a while since I've used a BS3) and your 8k's as Left Surround / Right Surround, then the BL5's will be used to play the L/C/R with a phantom centre, and the 8k's will be the surrounds in Speaker Mode 5.

     

    kimchr:

    As the software is, I have to add a second center channel for cinema mode. For testing it's two BL6000, but of course that is no match to the BL5s. That became obvious to me, when I did some listening tests A/B repeating a scene from Fifth Element in speaker mode 2 and 3.

    One word of warning here... if your copy of the Fifth Element is the same edition as the copy that we use in the Acoustics Department in Struer for testing, then you should be warned that it's an old Dolby Surround (or Dolby Stereo) mix, which means that it's not a "real" 5.1... it's a matrixed 4-2-4 which means that your surrounds should be in Mono, and that your centre is a matrixed phantom right in the mix. On the other hand, maybe you have a different edition... in which case, ignore this warning... :-)

    Bottom line is I'm considering buying an external surround processor or upgrading my beosystem if possible, so any input on that is appreciated.

     

    kimchr:

     

    My input to Bang & Olufsen is a software upgrade that makes speaker mode 4 play 4.0 and not a 2+2 when a multichannel signal is fed. Alternatively allow not to setup a center channel speaker and then have the fronts play a phantom center.

    Speaker Mode 4 should really be thought of as a "Party" mode, and shouldn't be considered for any kind of "serious" listening... In theory, if your Speaker Roles are set up correctly, then you should be getting a 4.x (the .x depends on the Speaker Types in a BS3) with the setup I described above.

     

    Let me know if this works - if not, then let's start talking about what HW/SW version you have and I can do some asking around to people who know more about these things than I. My problem is that the stuff I'm working on is usually a generation ahead of what's in the stores... so I'm not a very good reference for the existing gear - but I know people who are... :-)

     

    Cheers

    -geoff

     

  • 10-26-2011 7:00 AM In reply to

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

     

    Hi Geoff

     

    Thanks alot for your suggestions. If I setup my BL5s as left centre, and right center I can't save and exit the menu. I have to assign left front and right front before save and I can't give the same speaker more than one role.

     

    I also tried connecting my BL5s to the dedicated center powerlink connection where my 7.4 is normally connected. Then in the speaker roles menu I can setup that I have a pair of BL5s as center. But still I cannot save and exit without choosing another set of speakers as fronts.

     

    My service menu ( menu + menu + 0 + 0 + Go ( for reference )) states the following key info:

     

    AP SW06.11a

    IOP SW23.00a

    Type no 9383

    Serial no. 2068xxxx

    Option setting 2

     

    An earlier thread exists here at Beoworld from around the time my TV left Struer, discussing BS3, phantom center and several people refering to ”the misssing phantom option”. It's an interesting read:

     

    http://forum.beoworld.org/forums/p/9005/68167.aspx

     

    Now I'm interested to know if and how a phantom is possible today or I'd have to go with an external processor as seems to be the suggestion in the old thread.

     

     

  • 10-26-2011 12:35 PM In reply to

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    kimchr:

    Thanks alot for your suggestions. If I setup my BL5s as left centre, and right center I can't save and exit the menu. I have to assign left front and right front before save and I can't give the same speaker more than one role.

    I also tried connecting my BL5s to the dedicated center powerlink connection where my 7.4 is normally connected. Then in the speaker roles menu I can setup that I have a pair of BL5s as center. But still I cannot save and exit without choosing another set of speakers as fronts.

    Just to be sure... When you did the Left Centre & Right Centre attempt, your BL5's were on PowerLink connector 1 (the one for the Centre channel), right?

    Cheers

    -geoff

  • 10-26-2011 1:47 PM In reply to

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    I made two attempts. 1) With the BL5s in a normal powerlink connector 2) With the BL5 to the special center connector.

    Ad 1) I can assign the BL5s to left center, right center but I have to also assign another set of speakers to front left and front right. Otherwise I can't press Go to Save and Exit.

    Ad 2) When connected to the special center powerlink connector my BL5s will play the center channel but again I have to assign speakers to front and left in order to save and exit.

    Since my last post I did two more discoveries. Though they add to my understanding of the system they do not provide a solution.

    1) I think I know now where you want me to go. Because it's true that I can assign my BL5 as center left and center right. If I assign nothing else than that, I can save and exit. My Daughter is sleeping next door so I can't really test and hear what is delivered, but I would think in that case it is the complete stereo signal.

    The problem is that I can't assign my BL8000 as surround speakers without also specifying front speakers. This is where it won't allow me to save if I try.

    2) The other discovery I did is a way to cheat the system. If I setup all channels in the speaker roles menu and then completely remove a set of speakers from the connections menu, then I actually have a setup where for example no front speakers are assigned. The problem is then, that the audio from these channels is completely missing. So sadly still no luck...

  • 10-26-2011 2:09 PM In reply to

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    After some hours of tinkering with the sound setup I think I'm ready to conclude. The speaker role setup menu have have som built in rules, that prevent me from assigning some roles without also assigning other roles. My problem is this rule

    1) you cannot assign surround speakers without assigning front left and front right.

    There are other rules of which at least some make very good sense

    2) You cannot assign back speakers without assigning surround speakers.

    3) another rule is that you cannot assign front right and front left without assigning either center or center left and center right.

    4) then there are the rule that say you can't assign for example a left speak without also assigning an equal right.

    If you break one of these rules nothing happens when you press Go to save and exit. I recall having seen other users of beoworld asking questions about this, wondering why nothing happens.

    So my problem is that I can't assign surround speakers even when center left and center right are assigned because I have no front speaker roles assigned and therefor rule oneis not met.

    If there is a way around this of course I'd be very pleased. If not the question is if and how an upgrade of my beosystem 3 can cure this problem or I'd have to go for an external processor.

  • 10-28-2011 6:40 AM In reply to

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    Hi,

    I'll start this posting by exempting myself from the Truth (once again), since I spend my days working on the next-generation B&O gear instead of the stuff that's currently in the stores.... however, here's what I've found...

    I wouldn't be surprised if the rules that you "reverse-engineered" are probably exactly right for your HW/SW configuration. They have been changing slightly between SW versions, so I don't know about version 6.11.

    I've tried duplicating your setup on two different BS3's with two different SW versions here (10.x and 11.x) and I have found the same problem as you. I can't have a centre-less surround setup and use Speaker Mode 5. This is true even if I have an AST-capable SW (with AST ON globally, but disabled for the Listening Preset I'm working on).

    Since I can't make it happen with newer gear than yours, I would say that, if you do decide to go for the upgrade - make sure that it'll work before you leave the store... The dealers know far more about the existing gear than I do - so there might be a neat trick that I'm missing to make this work... In other words, for this issue, trust your dealer more than you trust me - but I can't make it work.

    I'll dig around on the weekend to see if there's a 3rd-party solution for your problem. I'll assume that you want to buy a pre-made box and that you don't want to get out a soldering iron and start building circuits...

    Cheers

    -geoff

  • 10-28-2011 6:40 AM In reply to

    Re: Beosystem 3 phantom center

    Hi,

    I'll start this posting by exempting myself from the Truth (once again), since I spend my days working on the next-generation B&O gear instead of the stuff that's currently in the stores.... however, here's what I've found...

    I wouldn't be surprised if the rules that you "reverse-engineered" are probably exactly right for your HW/SW configuration. They have been changing slightly between SW versions, so I don't know about version 6.11.

    I've tried duplicating your setup on two different BS3's with two different SW versions here (10.x and 11.x) and I have found the same problem as you. I can't have a centre-less surround setup and use Speaker Mode 5. This is true even if I have an AST-capable SW (with AST ON globally, but disabled for the Listening Preset I'm working on).

    Since I can't make it happen with newer gear than yours, I would say that, if you do decide to go for the upgrade - make sure that it'll work before you leave the store... The dealers know far more about the existing gear than I do - so there might be a neat trick that I'm missing to make this work... In other words, for this issue, trust your dealer more than you trust me - but I can't make it work.

    I'll dig around on the weekend to see if there's a 3rd-party solution for your problem. I'll assume that you want to buy a pre-made box and that you don't want to get out a soldering iron and start building circuits...

    Cheers

    -geoff

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