The Dolby Truck hits Los Angeles

Over the next few months, Dolby is driving a tricked-out surround sound truck around southern California to promote its surround sound technology. The Dolby Truck features Definitive Technology speakers, Toshiba HDTVs, Pioneer Elite receivers, and even some Nokia and HP cell phones and notebooks to demo.

The tour started today at a Torrance Best Buy, and tomorrow the truck will be in Los Angeles at a Weyburn Avenue Best Buy and later at the Lakers-Memphis game. For a full schedule of the truck's various stops, check Dolby's web site. The truck will be zig-zagging all over Los Angeles until January, when it will head to Los Vegas for CES 2010.

— Will Greenwald

[Source: Engadget HD]

PS3 Slim supports high-end audio bitstreaming

The Playstation 3 is one of the most popular Blu-ray Disc players on the market, mostly because it pulls double-duty as a game console. However, it still lacks a few key aspects that make it a really good home theater device. Mainly, it doesn't bitstream Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio codecs, and its internal decoding was prone to distortion and garbling the audio of those codecs. If you want to watch your Blu-ray Discs with the most advanced audio tracks available, you're out of luck if you have a PS3.

Sony's new PS3 Slim, the smaller Playstation 3 the company announced this week, corrects that oversight. According to EngadgetHD, the new console can bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio tracks straight to a receiver. It's a small addition, but one that should be welcome among home theater enthusiasts. Since the PS3 Slim will have the same $299 price tag as the PS3, it could become the newest most-popular-Blu-ray-player.

— Will Greenwald

Will add-on height channel decoders ever emerge?

Sound & Vision reader Lee Carroll brings up a great point that I completely overlooked in my two articles about Dolby Pro Logic IIz height channel technology. Having recently bought a new receiver, Lee asks, "Don't the merits of this new technology just scream for some interim gear that will only decode the high speakers? Then those of us with 5.1 systems can have this new technology."

I, too, recently bought a new receiver, and would love to have an aftermarket height channel decoder. However, I think it's unlikely that anyone will create a dedicated decoder for height channels in the same way that some companies made add-on boxes for Surround EX back in 2000.

Audyssey Labs introduces 10-channel surround

Yesterday, Audyssey Labs announced DSX, a new technology designed to add extra channels to a 5.1 or 7.1 surround-sound system. DSX, or Dynamic Surround Expansion, adds two front height-channel speakers, just as Dolby’s new Pro Logic IIz technology does, but it also adds two width speakers, each positioned 60 degrees to the side of the listener. The scheme also supports a center surround channel. The goal is greater listener envelopment and a more seamless listening experience.

You’re counting in your head, right? Yep, that’s a total of 10 speakers, plus a subwoofer. However, DSX is an a la carte proposition. According to Audyssey Labs chief science officer Tom Holman, of all the additional speakers you can add with DSX, the width speakers are the most important, because human hearing is most attuned to hearing differences in horizontal placement of sounds toward the front. You can use the height speakers instead of or in combination with the width speaker. And you can add one or two rear surround speakers in addition to the side surrounds.

Atlantic Technology gets high with new satellites

Good news for audiophiles interested in this new-fangled height channel business. Atlantic Technology has announced its first satellite speaker designed specifically to deliver height in a Dolby ProLogic IIz set-up. The 1400 SR-z's are dipole/bipole surround speakers intended to be placed above the main LR speakers in a home theater, adding more spacial detail to surround sound.

The 1400 SR-z speakers use dual 3 1/2-inch polymer-treated cone drivers with Atlantic Technology's High Frequency Assistive Radiator (HFAR) technology, which the company claims expands the speakers' range while keeping the physical size small. Indeed, the speakers are quite small; each satellite measures just 12 1/4" by 8" by 5 3/8", and weighs only 7 pounds.

The speakers will be available by the end of May, with a suggested retail price of $425 per pair.

— Will Greenwald

Onkyo announces new budget-priced HTiBs

Onkyo has introduced two new home-theaters-in-a-box, budget-priced for consumers looking to get a full-featured surround sound system for less than $600.

The HT-S5200 features a 1200-watt 7.1-channel receiver (at 130 watts per channel) with Onkyo Micro Fiber satellite speakers and a 10-inch, 290-watt subwoofer to give it plenty of thumb for its $599 MSRP. It offers Audyssey 2EQ room correction, Audyssey Dynamic Volume and EQ for keeping music even and balanced, and Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES Discrete/Matrix processing for handling surround sound. It also sports a built-in iPod dock and charging station, always a nice touch.

For less than two-thirds the suggested price of the HT-S5200, the 5.1-channel HT-S3200 offers a more modest feature set at a much more modest price tag. It puts out 110 watts per channel and its 8-inch subwoofer is powered by the receiver, which uses DTS and Dolby Digital surround processing. It will retail for about $379.

They're not high-tech room-shakers, but at those price points they're certainly tempting for anyone looking to dip their toe into a surround sound home theater system.

— Will Greenwald

Guitar Hero a Wii Bit Off

Wii users, stop banging on your speakers. It's not your system or your ears. Your Pearl Jam solo is suffering from a glitch in the Wii version of Guitar Hero 3 that's putting out mono sound rather than a multi-channel version advertised as Dolby Pro Logic II on the package. The only way your Guitar Hero 3 will output multi-channel audio is via an update due out early next year.

Activision sent out this mea culpa with a promise of making good--without providing details.