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Re: [ARSCLIST] Surround releases (was OK - Does Anyone Know More About This?)



I get a pretty good sound field from Magnepan 2.6R, which are dipole ribbon tweeters, with planar -magnetic woofers.. They approximate the diffuse sound field you get in a real life auditorium. Not at all accurate if they are too close to an untreated wall (no diffusors, or records or...) since you get pretty bad comb filtering. When you get them far enough from the walls and/or have the walls treated, the sound is remarkably like that of a concert hall. The only place I've heard surround sound, like the surround sound most producers want to put on record, was in band/orchestra/choir. I always sit in the 2nd/3rd balcony when I go to a concert and the only surround sound is coughing, cell phones ringing, etc.... How about getting big speakers in a big room with big amps? If you turn it up loud enough, the reflected sound will get louder too--just a thought.
Phillip



Tom Fine wrote:
I'd love to see something like these Monster DVD's as reissues of all the old quad mixes of early 70's rock albums. If the 4-track quad master tape still exists, it would not be a huge technical feat to encode the quad as Dolby AC3+ADs- I'd just keep it 4-channel but you could slice out the subwoofer frequencies and make a center channel out of the common lef/right content minus 3dB. Of course, this could just as easily be done as discrete 4-channel DVD-Audio at 96/24. I'm pretty sure but not positive that most of the installed base of DVD players do DVD-Audio and most players made over the past 3-5 years have 5.1 analog outputs.

One thing that might have killed SACD is that record labels invested a lot of money in the format by remixing classic albums from scratch instead of dusting off the quad mix to see how the format would fly and thus being able to invest more in marketing. But SACD had problems from the get-go. When it came down the pike, the DVD group made all sorts of announcements about DVD-Audio as a competing format, making sure to point out that most or all DVD players can do DVD audio as part of the standard format. Sony and Philips first pushed SACD as the be-all-and-end-all 2-channel format, supposed to replace the CD. Then at the AES show 4 years ago, I noticed the DVD-Audio group just had a table and was handing out brochures but Philips and Sony had relaunched SACD as a multi-channel format and had a huge demo room with lines forming for each hour-long demo. That was probably the high water mark of interest in SACD, but the public at large never bothered with it. Most +ACI-civilians+ACI- I know -- people who aren't in the audio business nor are audiophiles, but many of whom love music and listen to it all the time -- have never heard of SACD. Bad marketing or just a total lack of interest in formats beyond the CD and now the iPod?

My own take on surround audio is that it's a neat/fun gimmick but it's not necessary to enjoy high-fidelity music recordings. Very few people I know are willing to sit in a sweet spot -- and most of their wives will have nothing to do with 5 large speakers and a subwoofer in the listening room -- for an album-length amount of time just to enjoy a musical experience. Especially since some would argue that the headphone/earbud experience is psychologically all-encompassing even more than 5 speakers. So I think we fans of surround-sound music releases and owners of surround-sound systems are +ACI-doomed+ACI- to a permanent if enthusiastic fringe.

-- Tom Fine


----- Original Message ----- From: +ACI-DAVID KEKONE+ACI- +ADw-DKEKONE+AEA-CANTOFIVE.COM+AD4-
To: +ADw-ARSCLIST+AEA-LISTSERV.LOC.GOV+AD4-
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 6:14 PM
Subject: Re: +AFs-ARSCLIST+AF0- OK - Does Anyone Know More About This?



+AD4- Monster Cable has a new partnership with Concord Records that has been
+AD4- releasing titles in 5.1 on DVD, great stuff.
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+AD4- http://www.monstermusic.com/
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+AD4-
+AD4- DAVID KEKONE
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+AD4- DKEKONE+AEA-CANTOFIVE.COM
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+AD4- 080-6572-0480 Tokyo +AHw- 213-422-1121 LA
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