Parasound CSE 6.1 final analysis (1 Viewer)

[RichardMA]

Unfortunately, the product simply induced too much noise

in my surrounds to be useful for me. But it did appear

to work. This is Parasound's implementation of the

Circle Surround product, meant to allow 5.1 preamps to

have the 6th (centre rear) channel. According to one

respondent, the Circle Surround Jr. product has this noise

problem as well.

Here is a response regarding CSE unit:

"The S/N is limited by the specs. of the Analog Devices Circle Sound chip. We kept the remainder of the circuit as quiet as possible."

 

[Kevin C Brown]

There are older Dolby Pro Logic units out there that are a lot quieter.

Yamaha, Sony, Pioneer, Shure, etc.

 

[RichardMA]

Just for the heck of it, I tried a Rotel 960 Prologic

processor, feeding the rear L-R from my Sony TA-E9000ES

processor into it's "main in" and using it's centre out

to "create" a centre-rear channel. But the output was

way too low to use effectively.

I figured any line level analog source would have worked ok,

but apparently this is not the case.

 

[Kevin C Brown]

I also have an E9000ES!
Right now, I use a Shure HTS-5300 to get the rear channel. But I've also tried the Yamaha DSR-70 Pro, and the 100 Pro, a Pioneer SP-91D, and a Sony SDP-777ES. They all worked fine.
One trick, is to jack up the rear output levels on the source. (For example, I have the fronts and center at or near 0 dB on the Sony, but I run the rears at +7.5 dB.)