Article: Scalable Dolby Atmos Music System

[PeterG]

Great piece, Bob, and a very cool system!  

 

One interesting thing about your system is the reasonable price.  A few months ago, before he detailed his choice of gear and budget, I asked Chris what he thought of the tradeoff between spending his budget on 12 speakers and their amps compared to spending the same money on stereo.  As we know, Chris's choices showed that he was not concerned with budgets.  (Awesome!)  But I am still interested in understanding tradeoffs...Did you consider spending the same $20K or so to upgrade your stereo system?  Having listened to a $20K immersive system and $20K stereo systems, what are your thoughts on how they stack up for a person trying to lose themselves in the music?  Thanks

[PeterG]

41 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I talked to Bob many times throughout his research and one thing we talked about was the fact that most people won’t start from scratch when building such a system. Many will have a solid two channel system and perhaps 20k speakers for stereo already. Adding the Atmos channels will be much cheaper than a whole system. In a way it may be a false choice between 20k spread out for 12 speakers or 20k for 2 speakers because many people have the stereo pair already. 

Yes, I agree with that specific example, and I do not mean to pose a false choice.  But the basic cost issue is still there.  Maybe the stereo upgrade is trading in the current speakers and spending that plus $20K on  new pair, or going from a Yggy to a Berkeley Reference DAC?