Well, I have been slowley accumulating my home theatre components, thanks to a great contract that pays well, if slowly. Had the new TV a few weeks, and yesterday I went out and got my reciever and speakers. Today I have been playing with it, and having a blast, and as expected the DTS-ES 6.1 tracks, and Dolby Digtal EX tracks sound fantastic, but that's a given. What is even more fun is Pro-Logic II.
Today I decided to plug anything I could think of into my receiver and see what Pro Logic II could do for the sound. I tired everything from my NES to my Gameboy Advance. I am going to break it down system by system.
1.) GameCube. Of course this is going to sound great, since it was designed with PLII in mind. Zelda's sound was completely enveloping, very directional, and the bass was fantastic. Next to impossible to tell from a true 5.1 track.
2.) SNES. Oh my god. I had no idea what this system was hiding. When I played it with regularity years ago it was hooked up to a basic TV through RF, the sound was catchy, not too beepy, and many games had classic tunes, but I certainly never felt the desire to crank it up. Well, The first thing I noticed was the great varaition in sound quality game to game, somce games had almost monoural muffled sound (which if course is how ALL of them sounded through RF) but others had epansive stereo with very clear samples. Final Fantasy 3 and Chorno Trigger have somegreat songs with drum tracks, that put my subwoofer to work. It's like a whole new system. If you're reciever has Pro-Logic 2, defintley try this.
3.) NES. Call me crazy, but I tried it. Aside from the fact that the insturments consist only of beeps and bloops, this was really rather impressive as well. Great stereo effects I never knew existed, and who knew the NES had bass?
4.) PC. My computer has a really basic soundcard, so I used a cable with RCA jacks at one end, and a mini plug on the other to rig this up. Then I popped in Baldur's Gate II and had fun hearing crows all around me in the marketplace. I played some oldies like Leisure Suit Larry 7 and was very impressed by the quality of the music. Naturally I had to test my MP3 and while the pl2 music mode producded the same exansive soundfield as with CDS, all it really served to do was show how awful MP3s really sound. Mp3s are great for portable devices, and for playback over PC speakers, but my opinion is that on even a modest sound system like mind, their flaws become very apparent.
5.) GameBoy Advance. Took that same cable and put it in the headphone jack of my GBA, and tired a few games. Wow. Headphone sound pretty decent with many GBA games, and I figured I would get that same heapdhone sound through my speakers. Nope. It completely opens up the sound, brings out the bass, and make many game music totally unrecognizable as Gameboy games. Try Mario Kar Super Curcuit and just listen to the title screen. Or Wario Land 4 for the LFE effect when you jump into the portals.
Topic: Pro Logic II is pretty damn fun if you ask me. (Read 1469 times)
