Substantial Sonic Advancements: Sub-$100 Price Tag

Although my general focus these past few weeks has been on de-cluttering, I confess that I did recently buy myself one new tech toy. Considering the abundant features and the $99.99 price (which has apparently been as low as $89.99 in the recent past), I couldn’t resist, and it’s back on sale now. Pioneer’s HTS-GS1 5.1-Channel Home Theater System (product page on Pioneer’s website) consists of four satellite speakers, a center-channel transducer, a subwoofer with integrated 5.1 channel amplifier (Class D, I suspect), a preamplifier head-end unit with built-in AM/FM tuner, and a universal remote control. Pioneer markets the system in partnership with Microsoft and its Xbox 360 game console, thereby explaining the HTS-GS1’s color scheme and the functions of some of the remote control buttons:

but it’s actually quite generic in its usefulness, with three S/PDIF inputs (one RCA, two optical) and a two-channel analog audio input. In my case, I plan to use it in the bedroom, digitally fed by a Roku SoundBridge M1001 networked streaming audio player (which itself is fed over Wi-Fi by my NETGEAR/Infrant ReadyNAS and its TwonkyMedia UPnP server, and by my laptop running Windows Media Connect).

The front-end unit supports decoding of Dolby Pro Logic II, Dolby Digital and DTS digital bit streams, which in and of itself would be impressive considering the system’s price tag. But wait, there’s more (I feel like a Ginsu knife commercial)! First off, the unit will synthesize six-channel-surround variants of two-channel audio sources. And regardless of whether the surround channels are native-from-source or virtualized, you have several location options available for the surround speakers. You can, of course, mount them in the traditional behind-and-to-the-sides places. Alternatively, however, you can place them on top of the front-channel left and right speakers. In this configuration, the surround channels’ waves bounce off the side walls, and the HTS-GS1’s audio DSP makes appropriate latency, phase, frequency spectrum and other adjustments in order to fool your ears and brain into thinking that the surround transducers are instead in their traditional locales.

All of this setup might be quite tedious and complicated, and the results might be sub-optimal, if you had to manually handle it by yourself. That’s where the last notable feature that caught my eye comes into play. Pioneer includes a microphone that you place at your listening location ’sweet spot’, and the HTS-GS1’s Auto MCACC (Multi-Channel Acoustic Calibration System) then takes over and auto-configures all settings. I’m reminded of a demo that I saw (and heard) at Texas Instrument’s 2004 Consumer Electronics Show suite, moderated by well-known audio authority Tomlinson Holman, of the Audyssey auto-calibration system that TI had licensed and was porting to its Aureus audio DSP line. The target market at that time consisted of standalone A/V receivers with price tags in the multi-hundred-dollar to multi-thousand-dollar range. While I’m not suggesting that Auto MCACC is the equal of Audyssey, the fact that auto-calibration has now migrated to the point where it can be found in a sub-$100 surround receiver-plus-amplifier-plus-speaker set (admittedly, with an original MSRP of $299.99, but still…) represents a quite impressive poster child for Moore’s Law.

Granted, the HTS-GS1 won’t impress your bleeding-edge audiophile friends. But considering that I’m running a barely-above-$100 A/V receiver connected to a PC surround speaker set in my living room, you can probably already guess how much (or little) I care for the opinions of folks with more dollars than sense. I haven’t yet made the time to hook up my HTS-GS1 set, but the feedback on Amazon, AVS Forum and Buy.com is quite positive. My upstairs bedroom has some ‘unique’ wall angles by virtue of the home’s geodesic dome structure; it’ll be interesting to see how Auto MCACC acoustically handles them. Stay tuned for in in-depth review, which I’ll probably publish post-CES. Until then; any thoughts from other HTS-GS1 owners? I’d particularly appreciate any low-cost, decent-looking speaker stand suggestions.