One Box Surround Sound

Simplifying Surround Sound

Many home theater enthusiasts dream of owning large and sophisticated surround sound speaker systems, but space and/or budget constraints sometimes rear their ugly heads, making our speaker system fantasies a practical impossibility. Apartment dwellers, for example, are often hard-pressed for floor space, yet constrained by leases that make in-wall or on-wall speaker options unworkable. Those who live in open floor plan homes, in turn, often discover their walls (or lack thereof) just won't cooperate with proper in-wall systems designs and that routing cables to freestanding speakers can be a nightmare. For any number of reasons, scenarios arise where traditional 5.1 or 7.1- channel surround systems just aren't appropriate. But thanks to the advent of single-enclosure multichannel speaker systems, there's a new way for enthusiasts to pursue the surround sound dream.

About now you might be asking the $64k question, which is: Is it really possible to get satisfying surround sound from a one-box system placed at the front of the room? And with this question foremost in our minds, The Perfect Vision set out to survey a representative group of five systems spanning a wide range of price points. Our test subjects include the ZVOX 325 ($349), the Soundmatters FULLstage HD ($599), the M&K MP-4512 ($650), the Polk Audio SurroundBAR ($950), and the Yamaha YSP-1100 digital sound projector ($1699). From the outset, let us emphasize that this is a survey -- not a "shootout," where our main intent is to see what's possible as enthusiasts climb the price/performance ladder.

Rules of the Road

The systems in this survey use different technologies to produce surround sound effects from single enclosure systems. The Yamaha and M&K designs reflect sound off of walls to achieve surround effects, while the ZVOX, Soundmatters, and Polk Audio offerings feature either active or passive surround processing schemes that, in theory, can produce surround effects without relying upon sidewall reflections.

Regardless of the technologies used, we found that all our sample systems benefited from being placed at the front and center of the room with acoustically reflective walls to the sides, though an alternative would be to place the speakers diagonally across a corner where reflective walls meet.

Before taking the plunge, prospective buyers should first ask whether their listening spaces will allow single-enclosure systems to sound their best.