There is an old trick that has been forgotten. If you own 2 small two way speakers as an experiment mount them behind your listening position on the rear wall. About one foot apart at ear level. Wire the speakers out of phase to the mains.
You can use a receiver or intergrated to drive them. Just connect receiver to the extra output on your preamp. [ if you have one ] if noy sorry out of luck.
The extra dimension and quasi surround effect created will fill your room. When the volume is adjusted properly to the receiver or intergrated you will not hear the music behind just more of a fuller real presentation.
Check it out. You will be glad you did.
charles
If you enjoy that, try one of these...
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p4012.m570.l1313&_nkw=chase+hts-1&_sacat=See-All-Categories :thumb:
I have one you can borrow for a bit if you'd like.
Thanks Barry. The method described offers the advantage of zero processing of the signal.
While the quasi techniuqe reinforces the overall presentation as oppossed to creating rear channels throuh digital means.
charles
Charles, The Chase unit is passive, it contains some coils and resistors, no power supply, I like it. For "Ambiance Extraction" it works very, very, well :thumb:
I've also got one I built myself that works at the line level, again purely passive, and quite impressive for what it is ;)
Quote from: Barry (NJ) on December 23, 2011, 01:48:16 PM
I've also got one I built myself that works at the line level, again purely passive, and quite impressive for what it is ;)
That chase is a good unit. Love to hear the affect.
charles
A more effective setup may be to use the old DynaQuad hookup invented by David Hafler.
If you connect an 8ohm loudspeaker across the positive terminals of the left and right channels.
This connection of the left and right positive outputs through the loudspeaker driver results in you hearing the left minus the right output. The speaker's driver only moves when there is a phase difference between the left and right channels. What this means is that you are now listening to the out of phase information that exists in the recording from the rear if you place the speaker behind you. I use this setup to listen to the soundtrack when I play movies through my system. It gives me pretty convincing surround without having to use any home theater processors. You can wire in an Lpad to control how loud the rear channel is and balance the front with the rear.
The thing to remember is that the cone on the driver will only move when there is a phase difference between the channels, mono information has no phase differences which means there is no output from the driver.
Scotty
Scotty, Both the units I mentioned, the Chase HTS-1 at speaker level, and the home made line-level unit I made work on same principle as the Hafler circuit. My line level unit uses a transformer to derive the surrounds and a center. It works off of a second set of out-puts on a pre-amp. The chase units are often available for between $10 and $20 on ebay and is really a pretty nice unit :thumb: