anyone "coming around" to SACD / DVD-A?

[jdm56]

...What I mean is: Has anyone who has been against the idea and/or execution of multi-channel music, beginning to feel differently now, after some exposure to it?

[synthfreek]

I'm interested in the higher resolution formats but not multi-channel. It would be impossible to add speakers in my 2 channel room(with the nicer gear) and I just wouldn't feel as though I were getting everything out of the format using my older HT setup for multi-channel. Maybe I'll buy 2 players. I REALLY wanna hear The Flaming Lips-Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots in DVD-A. I hear it's one of the best ever mixes throwing the rulebook out of the window. Entirely different drum tracks in each speaker and even the David Letterman trick to boot.

[Bruinsrme]

It all depends on the quality that is put into the production.

for instance Steely Dan dvda is incredible. where the fleetwood mac rumors blows.

The bangles sacd is mediocre where the pink floyd dark side of the moon is unreal.

diana krall sacd great, where the rem auto for people is ok

some of the multichannel gives me the feeling of being in a studio and others makes me feel like I am listening to a boom box

[timbley]

I think the potential is certainly higher with more channels. It's just expensive and makes things complicated. I have a few DVD-A, including Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now", and I think they sound very compelling in the 5.1 format. The only problem is my two main RF-7s and their matching tube amp completely out-do the RCA center and surround channels that I run off my RCA receiver's surround amps. It's just too much money now for me to buy all the Klipsch surround and centers, and then tube amp them all.

Maybe I'd get more satisfaction bi-amping the RF-7s with an active tube crossover for the same money? Or, get a Linn-Sondek turntable?

If these new digital amplifiers from Sony, HK, and others are really as good as some folks say, then the amplification part will be easy and inexpensive. In that case I'd definitely go for the extra channels on the recordings that have them.

[jdm56]

I guess what I'm drivin' at is this: I was practically foaming at the mouth, with anticipation of multi-channel, with the feeling that it offers the POTENTIAL for a much more lifelike recreation of recorded music. But on the other hand, I've always felt it (multichannel) should be used in traditional, conservative ways that preserve the two-channel perspective of having the performers in front of you, with the surrounds used mainly to reproduce the acoustic space of the recording - to put you in the room with the music.

Well...I'm starting to see what's behind door number 3. Look at it this way: When you break down many (if not most) two-channel studio recordings, how spatially realistic are they? -Compared to a typical live performance? How many CD's do we have that pan drum kits across the full width of the soundstage? -Not exactly natural, is it? Likewise with piano. Piano tends to be spread across the width of the front speakers, while many instruments and voices seem to all be sharing the exact same location in the mix. Yet we accept these deviations from reality quite happily, usually. -As long as it sounds "good".

Well, many of my very limited selection of multi-channel music discs are challenging my preconceptions of what m-c can and should be used for, with many placing lots of music in the rear channels, thereby placing the listener in the middle of the music. And you know what? I think I'm starting to like it; at least some times. It kind of turns convention on its head, but if you think about it a certain way, it kinda starts to fall into place. Think of it as a paradigm shift of what listening to music at home or in a car can be. A totally new canvas for musical artists to paint on. Instead of stretching between two speakers placed in front of you, it wraps all around you.

And with a little more reflection on the conventions of musical performance and reproduction many of us have grown up with and lived with our whole audio lives, I think "Why be bound to the live performance paradigm of music in front of us"? The only reason that paradigm exists has nothing to do with artistic expression, and everything to do with cramming as many paying customers into a given space as possible to see and hear a performance.

Let the mix serve the music!

[toddvj]

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On 3/28/2004 10:42:24 AM Bruinsrme wrote:

for instance Steely Dan dvda is incredible. where the fleetwood mac rumors blows.

----------------

Correction: Maybe the Multichannel Fleetwood Mac Romours blows, but the Stereo version is Awesome.

But maybe that is kind of the point of this thread.

[Klewless]

Here is my two bits on multi-channel limited to three.

I have never been against things like multi-channel but at the same time have tended to be a little slow in accepting such things.

I put a Synergy center channel between my Khorns and use it in the receiver's milti-channel stereo mode. In my "bad room" it stabilizes the image so well that I never indend to remove it. I ignore the rear channels.

I have noticed that movies sound great with this arrangement. Their coding is the reason since each channel has its own signal (as opposed to trying to get multi-channel from only two).

CDs sound much better also. I am getting more of a 3-D sound with the center channel going. The center sounds too loud for music wNow if only the industry would get its act together before it is too late and encode MUSIC for multi-channel.

I know SACD and DVD-A have the ability to do justice to music but getting there takes a little effort at the source. Just duping old two channel stuff to multi is not the way to go (at least to me).

Bottom line. I have high hopes for multi-channel. It can be as much a change as stereo was to mono.

[Klewless]

Sorry about the chopped off sentence. My connection dropped out while I was editing.

Was going to say the center sounds too loud for multi-channel stereo but not for DVD movies. I have gone through the setup. So I just put up with it.

[Strabo]

I was originally looking forward to MC music but after trying it with my current setup I have come to the conclusion that I don't want to because I can't afford to and don't have the space to make it work.

You must have at minimum three speakers across the front that match, and at best five speakers that are the same. If I am not getting the most out of my two Forte's playing in stereo, how is the addition of three more cheaper speakers with even cheaper amplification going to fix it? I don't have the room and I can't afford the dollars necessary to make it work so I'm going back to perfecting two channel listening that is adequate for movies.