Al Klappenberger Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 Parrot, I have never seen a discrete 3 channel playback system. What equipment was used? I have heard that PWK did some 3 channel recordings. I think he used some special 3 head tape transport I think. Al K. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parrot Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 Al, Three-track recording was used extensively in the early 1960s, but with the intent of mixing to mono! I know many Bob Dylan sessions were recorded that way, for example, and The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl was recorded on three-track. Certainly they weren't the only ones. But as far as Mercury Living Presence goes, here is a nice intro to the label, written back when their recordings were being transferred to CD. In the last couple of years there have been some SACD releases, which is the first time outside of the studio anyone has ever heard all three channels discretely. You need, of course, a SACD player to hear the three channel layer. http://www.xs4all.nl/~rabruil/mercury.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 Al, "I haven't bothered to look into the verious surround encoding schemes." Encoding isn't terribly interesting but the decoding is. Some are built to work with non-encoded material (most music) and how they extract the information can be interesting to those interested in that sort of thing. Some are also built around psycoacoustic research/principals so learning about that can be interesting too. The link I posted earlier about some of how L7 works gets into the math behind some of this if it interests you. " I think I remember seeing L-R someplace as being part of the old Pro_logic method." It is a part of just about every matrix encode/decoder out there. That L-R is heard as diffuse ambiance in a recording played back in two channel is basic principal of all of them and they expand upon that from there in various ways. Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Klappenberger Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 Parrot, Yep, that's what I thought! A discrete 3 channel recording played on a real 3 channel system should really sound super. These days recordings are made with mikes all over the place and a bunch of channels mixed down to two. That totally meses up the phantome L+R to center phase relationships the schemes we have been talking about here. Back when just two mikes were used deriving a center channel worked better! These days all it can be counted on to do is fill the hole in the middle! BTW: I would lover to get the La Scala production of 'Lucia di Lammermoor' recording they mentioned in 3 channel! That's one of my favorites. Don't tell anybody I'm and Opera fan though! All these rock and rollers around here wouldn't understand!Al K. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 Al, "I have never seen a discrete 3 channel playback system." Catch up with the times man. Discrete multichannel has been available at the consumer level for around 10 years now. And available in lossless formats for 4 or 5 years. A $200ish (or less) player can playback pretty much all of these various formats. You will need at least a 3 channel pre-amp to really be able to easily use it though. More advanced center channel extraction methods can take a two channel source and output three (or more) channels of information that are not simple passive sums. Center channels using this method sound far more like 3 channel discrete recordings then just a passive sum played back at a lower level. Unfortunatly you aren't that close to me.... if you were I'd be glad to lend you the equipment to spend some time with all of the above. You might be shocked at what some of this can accomplish. Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 Parrot, "Discrete three-channel recordings played through three speakers are vastly superior to playing two-channel recordings with a fake center speaker. Making a comparison would be laughable. Just thinking of it makes me LOL!" Depends upon how the center is derived. Some three channel recordings make excellent use of the center (some of the Living Stereo tracks for example) and it is hard to match that with deriving a center speaker. On other multi-channel recordings the center is barely used at all. In those situations a good center channel extraction from a 2 channel mix can sound better. Compared back to back it can be shocking how good some ambiance extraction processes work when compared to discrete multi-channel. It is also possible to steer out a center channel from a discrete multi-channel sources that don't make effective use of the center. This too can work very well and helps to overcome the short coming of how the mix was made. Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Klappenberger Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 Shawn, Your forgetting that I live in Smallsbury in Wicomecal county! We are luckey to have a Wall * Mart in town! Al K. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edwinr Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 Every center derivation technique that has been described here is a L+R sumation. Look carefully at the scheme I posted... Nice post, Al. Despite my non technical background, I am starting to make sense of your argument - kind of. Paul, I agree there is no way a psuedo 3 channel system utlising a derived centre channel could possibly be compared with a truely discrete 3 channel recording played on matching equipment. I built a pro logic style decoder some years ago, with a derived centre channel. I tried this decoder with my Klipschorns using a compatible centre speaker. I found the results to be uninspiring. This could come down to my decoder's design. Plus I didn't really have an issue with my then Klipschorns being too far apart. In comparison when I switched to a multi channel, playing SACD discs that were essentially 3 channel produced very impressive results. The sound was cohesive and very natural. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 "This could come down to my decoder's design. " It does. Dolby Pro-Logic is well know for sounding lousy on un-encoded music. The steering ends up being too aggressive and it tends to collapse the soundstage into the center. The rears being mono is un-natural as in an actual hall correlated surround information is basically impossible to have. Dolby Pro-Logic II (designed by Jim Fosgate) is dramatically better then DPL on music. Logic 7 can be exceptional as well. Trifield also has many fans too... it doesn't use steering so it sounds different then a steered system like PLII or L7 but it can be very nice too. Those are the 'big three' of methods now. "In comparison when I switched to a multi channel, playing SACD discs that were essentially 3 channel produced very impressive results. The sound was cohesive and very natural." Good center channel extraction can sound that way too. Don't write them all off based on a lousy example of one. Everyone has heard lousy horns... doesn't mean they all are. Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dzapper Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 I didn't like Quadraphonic.[:$] Rick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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