Small Home Theater – 1723 Monitor S vs 1961

[Luis]

Hello everyone… looking for additional suggestions and help in deciding between the 1723 Monitor S and the 1961 Towers for a small home theater setup.  The room is 10’11” x 15′ 7″ with 10′ ceilings; for the last 2+ years, the room was used as a dedicated 2 channel listening room; I attached a computer render of the room in its current state; plan is to reuse the acoustic panels.  The desk will remain in the room temporarily.

After trading a few emails with Kristoffer from Arendal, we came up with the following options for LCR:

1. 1961 Monitor and 1961 Center
2. 1961 Towers and 1961 Center
3. 1961 Towers and 1723s Center
4. 1723s Monitors and 1723s Center

Regardless of the decision for LCR, he recommended the following speakers to complete the rest of the system:

• 1961 1v (possibly 2)
• 1961 Surround Speakers (2 pairs – sides and rear)
• 1961 Height Speakers (1 pair mounted on the ceiling)

I’m leaning towards options 3 and 4 as I’m feel the larger center would provide the most benefit; however, I’m looking for additional suggestions / help from the community.

The 1961 1V has been purchased along with a Marantz Cinema 50 AVR; currently enjoying them within the room.

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[Lukas]

@Luis

Sound awesome. For me, the correctly placed dual subwoofers were a game-changer.
I have a very smooth frequency response without any EQ and awesome seat-to-seat consistency on my 4-seater couch.
And the cherry on top is that you can’t hear where the bass is coming from. It sounds like it is coming from the front speakers.

[Luis]

Haven’t posted in a while, so here’s a quick update of my setup.  Based on the 30% discount on 1961 speakers, I purchased another set of Surrounds and will be mounting them on the rear wall.

As with all of my previous orders… the speakers were delivered quickly, well packaged and arrived safe and sound.  After a quick visual inspection, I swapped them with my current side surrounds to make sure all was ok sound wise.  Plan is to leave them in place.  Not sure if “break-in” is actually required, but it was getting late and I, well, became a little lazy, so I didn’t want to go through the process of swapping them.  For my size room, I think it might be a little overkill with a 7.x.4 configuration, but we’ll see how things sound once everything is in place.

The Cinema 50 is capable of 11.4 channel processing however, it only has 9 channels of amplification.  So I purchased an Emotiva BasX A3 amplifier; it’s a 3 channel amp, so the plan is to reassigned the Marantz L and R amps to rear height duty and use the A3 amplifier for LCR; the Marantz will power the surrounds and heights.

The BasX A3 was delivered on Friday… I unboxed and connected it… although the box made the trip without a scratch, I’m happy to see that Emotiva still double boxes their gear.  I didn’t rerun Dirac, I’ll leave that for another day when I have more time, but after roughly 10hrs of playing time, I have zero complaints.  The amp is dead silent… I mean, zero noise, zero hiss, nothing… unless a signal is present, nothing to be heard.

All in all… very happy thus far with my Emotiva amp purchase.  Now to find the time to mount the rear heights and surrounds.

 

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[Morten Saeij]

Great looking room!

Do you notice any difference between the marantz and the Basx driving the speakers?

[Luis]

Thanks @Morten… much appreciated!!

In my humble opinion, an amplifier should not add anything to the sound signature of the preamp, AVR, etc.  It should simply amplify the signal and allow the sound to flow through.  Yes, some AVRs, premaps, etc may add their own coloration to the signal, I feel my Marantz sounds warmer; however, an amp… it should just amplify the signal. In that respect, the BasX A3 shines… it didn’t add anything to the signal, no coloration, no noise, no perceived sound signature difference… nothing… not even a hiss at the tweeter.  For a relatively inexpensive amp, I think Emotiva has a winner with this BasX line.

Do I notice any difference… the Marantz appears to be running a little cooler; however, that is to be expected as it’s driving 3 less speakers.  Not sure if it’s my mind playing tricks on me, you know, to justify the amp purchase, but it seems that my LCR is reacting faster with more authority to the dynamic swings of movie soundtracks.  There appears to be a little more impact in the midbass region… I rewatched a few movie scenes that I am very familiar with and the sound of bullets, punches, kicks, etc. appears to have more authority with the BasX amp.  I plan to rewatch these scenes over the next few weeks with and without the amp and will post my findings; however, for now, I can honestly say that the external amp didn’t add any difference in audio quality.  I will also perform temperature measurements with a digital thermometer as again, it simply could be room temp variations.  At the moment, I simply think the extra power, 200 vs 110, is providing better control of the speakers, but we’ll see how my testing goes….

[arkmann]

Luis thanks for the update.  Sounds like you’re enjoying your musical journey  which is another great benefit of our hi-fi hobby.  I’m already working on my next system for the lake house this summer.  Picked up a Yamaha AVR at a church fair.  Next is the DAC streamer and speakers.  My journey continues!

[Morten Saeij]

Thanks for the detailed answer Luis.

ideally one would do blind A/B testing of course. But that’s always difficult to arrange.

Aiming to do it though in the future, quite curious what an external amplifier would bring me. (running a Marantz 6014)

Just need to select some amps from some vendors who allow you to test and send back afterwards.

[Luis]

Thanks @Arkmann… it’s certainly a journey, and so far, we’re really enjoying the Arendal speakers.

I had a Cambridge CXN V2 as well as Denafrips and Schiit Audio DACs… in the end, I sold the external DACs as the dual DACs in the CXN v2 held their own during direct comparisons.

Keep us posted as to your decisions between streamer and DAC.

[Luis]

You’re welcome Morten… happy to share my experiences.

The Marantz 6014 has similar power ratings as my Cinema 50, so curious as to your experiences when you perform your testing; when possible, please post your results.

Another community member, @Jimmy Lindgren posted his results with an external Marantz amp… he heard a difference, but it would be best to allow him to weigh in and provide additional details as I certainly don’t want to speak for him.  He also has a Marantz AVR.

[Morten Saeij]

Sure, will share the results when I manage to arrange a test!

[arkmann]

Will do.  Right now I’m looking at the Wiim pro plus and the Node X but there are so many DACs coming out so fast I’ll wait until the spring to decide.  Will probably be my final piece of equipment when I finalize my setup.