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Why 7.1 Surround Sound is Overkill For Most Homes
RX8 writes "Home Theater expert Mark Fleischmann explains why you should not fall for the 7.1 hype and why 5.1 surround sound is adequate for most homes. From the article: 'With the marketing of 6.1 and 7.1 surround, the industry has decisively outwitted itself. It has convinced many consumers to buy new receivers and more speakers. But it has also undermined the 5.1-channel standard, which is more appropriate for the home, slowing the acceptance of surround sound in general.'"
That is the Law. Are we not men?
Most non-tech people i know already have to make an effort to place two stereo speakers correctly in their livingroom,
placing six or eight is often too much trouble.
European Linux user, living in Antwerp
people were jumping over all their speakers just to get frist post
thats how I got it!
stereo for life
With a 6.1/7.1 setup and say you can't tell the difference! 5.1 sounds flat by comparison.
Seriously, the worse screwups are those caused by outsmarting one's self.
Unless you're a real videophile, you're probably better off just buying two really nice speakers instead of 7 average ones. Not to mention the rats nest of cables 7 will result in.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Whatever happened to 3D positional audio? Last I heard, Creative bought out Aureal and now we're stuck with EAX, which is pretty lousy as far as positional 3D audio goes. Aureal had full-on binaural algorithms in development, so that (at least with headphones on) a whisper over your shoulder really sounded like a whisper over your shoulder. Adding more speakers is a pretty hack solution compared to the elegant stuff that was, at least once upon a time, in the works.
A-Bomb
Instead of increasing the number of speakers used we should increase the quality of sound produced by each speaker (besides, if all the speakers die its a lot easier to replace two vs several). Quality vs Quantity -- Quality should always win. Did anyone hear about the sound systems with only two speakers that claim to be like Theatre sound?
This makes me think of shavers: they start with 1 blade, go to 2 blades, then 3 blades, advance to 4 blades and...wow...now we have 5 blades! I wonder if someone will think we need 6 blades for some reason...
Well, movies, music, such stuff where quality matters, if you're a connesseur you may want 5.1 or even 7.1. But 5.1 may mean difference between being alive and dead, and you NEED it in certain case.
Friend's tale. He's the 1337, I'm just a n00b so it doesn't matter in my case. UT deathmatch. He bought his new 5.1 and configured it correctly. Some tunnel deep underground. And then he hears, left-behind, the sound of a Ripper, that deadly spinning disk that upon hitting your neck cuts your head off, granting the opponent an instant frag and counting as headshot. "Duck" and the ripper zooms over his head. Fast turn and a rocket into the enemy's face. One frag less for the opponent, one more for him, one 1337 tale more to tell, one more deathmatch won in total... Thanks to 5.1.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
When I was in school, I set up some ambience speakers "left minus right". Very easy, just connect the front two speakers like normal. Then connect a second set of speakers to sides and behind the listening area -- except only connect the positive terminals to the amp, and then bridge the negative terminals between the speakers. I about jumped out of my skin the first time I listened to some old "Dead Can Dance" album and it sounded like the shaman's rattle was right behind me. Hmmmm, maybe I'll set that up again -- except the extra wires are a real drag. Oh, Roger Water's "the pros and cons of hitchhiking" was great on this setup too.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
> HELLO WORLD
> 29340 29340
The rotors in your enigma got stuck, n00b.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
I did like one point: why would you want more rear speakers than front? The center speaker produces the majority of dialogue in a movie, not the rear channels.
I have a 6.1 system, yes. I didn't intentionally do this. I watch non-digital TV with PLIIx decoding, and watch my movies with Dolby Digital EX. Frankly, I can't tell the difference. That "center surround" speaker is more for bragging rights than anything else.
So just to reiterate, I won't call 6.1 and 7.1 totally worthless, but yes, it is overkill. Movie experiences at home won't suddenly be way better. And the complete lack of 6.1 & 7.1 content makes the format rather pointless.
In this day and age having surround sound is a must! The bigger the speaker the bigger the ego when you invite your friends around to listen to your sub-woofer beat the floor up! I've had 5.1 around my couch for a number of years, I'd say i was one of the first with it around my bed too. But not only is it great, even a crappy 5.1 surround sound system can give you a good impression and direction of sound. Personally 7.1 is just too many speakers for me to wire! and try to hide the wires from!
You kids and your 7.1! Back in my day all we had was 0.1, AND WE LIKED IT!
Unless you're a real videophile, you're probably better off just buying two really nice speakers instead of 7 average ones.
The terrorists have already won.
yeah, I loved that deep bass without all these noisy squeakers too.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
This article is dead on. I got into the surround sound game about 6 months ago. I got a Sony HT dream system. It is an all-in-one 5.1 system with DTS, Dolby Digital, Prologic II, SACD, etc. It sounds great, works out of the box with minimal setup and fills up my apartment no problem.
The key point is that, unless you have a huge living room to set up your system in, more speakers just won't do you any good. For most people, even setting up 6 speakers in their room is slightly cramped. Also, consider the fact that usually you will be watching a movie with only a couple of people on the couch. This means the sweet spot for surround doesn't have to be huge like in a movie theater where many speakers are needed to provide most of the audience with a decent surround effect.
Get a light source and a large piece of posterboard. Cut two vertical slits fairly near each other in the posterboard so that a little bit of light can be projected through the slits onto a wall. Now shine the light through the slits. Holy cow! It creates a rippled pattern on the wall!
This is because the light is actually a wave that is propagating towards the wall. When it passes through each slit, the light forms two wave fronts which interfere with each other. This causes some areas of the target (the wall) to receive light photons while other areas receive none. Where there are no photons, the waves have simply cancelled each other out. It's a pretty cool experiment and quite counter-intuitive.
What if you do the same with speakers? Well, sound is a wave. And it's also known that soundwaves will interfere with each other (sometimes called 'beat'). So once you start adding more speakers to a system, you get more interference and less audio quality. Just like the double slit experiment, the results are counter-intuitive!
There's so many ways to make mistakes when setting up sound - and with more stuff, more choices, more tweaking possible, all but the most dedicated sound geeks are simply getting more ways to mess it all up.
The reality is that for most people, setting up two good speakers, or maybe two speakers and a subwoofer in the center, is going to give them the best sound. Add various little satellite speakers and stuff that is really dependent on the room layout, the prescence of sound reflecting and absorbing materials (table surfaces, soft couches etc.), the unpredictability of where people are sitting and chances are they will end up with a soundscape that sounds decidedly worse than they had with a simple 2 speaker or 2+1 speaker setup.
It's like having high-end Öhlins shock absorbers on your bike. For the riders that _are_ (not just think they are) knowledgeable, interested, and ready to spend a week tinkering, they will give superior performance to the factory default shocks. For the rest of us, they're just an expensive invitation to utterly screw up the bike handling beyond all help.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
'kay, headphones beat the speakers in the efficiency of that, but headphones get tiring pretty fast. If your sister behind a thin wall turns on her stereo with Michael Jackson, you NEED a sound barrier. And in the meantime, getting stronger, louder speakers will just result in race of arms and neighbors getting involved for excessive noise. This won't work. You need a subtle solution and 5.1/7.1 comes to the rescue.
Each of the speakers taken separately is pretty weak, and emits sound in one direction. 6 meters away and neither your neighbors nor your sister get affected. But all 5 or even better all 7 crossing their sound tracts over your head give you a small local zone of volume high enough to hide everything, from "Moonwalker" to "Invincible". Screw the quality, you just get a private noise-cancellation (or more like noise-override) zone.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
You can listen to any recording of say the Kronos Quartet, but no matter how well the recording tech is matched to the medium the sound is flat compared to hearing the quartet play live.
I sometimes prefer listening to something from a seminal jazz album like Bitches Brew on a turn table because the vynil has a warmer sound to my ears.
You can add all the speakers and present day tech you want it's still pancaked sound.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
FTA:
/. and you'll see what I mean. Try to exchange money with time if you wish. (Note, it is not only /., our whole society is like this)
All right people, fess up. How many speakers are you using: five, six, or seven? And those of you who "upgraded" from 5.1, do you really feel your system has started sounding significantly better?
Of course 6.1 sounds much better. I spent lots of money on it and don't want to look stupid now, so I'll tell everybody how much better it is.
Read
I invested all my money in a huge 7.1 stereo for the dolby digital introduction on my DVD's.
I am now deaf, and the foundations of my house are in a serious state of dis-repair, but i still have a kick ass stereo!!!!!
I got suckered in to get 6.1 type speakers for my apartment until I realised that I was annoying the neighbors.
I mean, it's great to have these fantastic stereos if you can get away with turning the noise up on them. Not so great for apartment dwellers though....
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
So that's what those guys in the '87 Cutlass on 24" wheels had......
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Those of my advanced years will remember, shortly after the introduction of stereo, the introduction of quad surround sound. Yes folks, buy two more speakers to play records (no CDs back then) that weren't available. It tanked. When the costs exceed the benefits/availability these things don't work.
And now they want me to persuade my wife that we need two more speakers in the living room. It's a non runner.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Since I wear an analog hearing aid, I cannot hear the directions of the sound (not even left and right) because my analog hearing aid only has one microphone (left side of my head). Basically, I hear everything in mono. However, I love bass so give me a big fat subwoofer any day. And it is even better if I turn off/remove my hearing aid to make more bass. [grin]
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Summarized for Your Convenience: "Why 7.1 Surround Sound is Overkill For Most Homes: because seven plus one is eight, which is a lot." Thib ;-)
Maybe the innards of the extra pair of speakers have little value, but you should see the jealous, awestruck little faces of my visitors. I'm giving some thought to making a mock-up 12.1 system, just for the props.
I have a small penis. But these speakers here help to compensate for my lack of manhood.
I personally have a decent 5.1 surround system. It's far from the top end of things, but noticeably better than most of the cheap systems you see for sale at Wal-Mart.
From the variety of movies that I've watched on it, my big complaint lies with the audio encoding of the movies themselves rather than with the equipment it's playing on. I have a few hundred DVDs, and there's only a handful of them where it seems that any real effort was put into the channeling of the audio. The Superbit version of the Fifth Element comes to mind as a movie that simply sounds incredible with the surround. Most of the rest of them fall short, even ones with dts.
I have a suspicion that the dts tracks on some of them were just copies of the Dolby (or even Stereo) tracks that had just been resampled at a higher bitrate. It would be like using a casette to record a song from a radio broadcast and then encoding it into a 128kHz mp3. It's still not going to sound as good as the original (The original CD... not the radio recording).
Anyway, perhaps I'm wrong but, it seems like the shortcomings in my sound system (and many others as well) is not so much the equipment, but the quality of the media being played. Anyone else seen a difference between DVD distributions of movies? Or perhaps have a preferrence in the companies you buy your DVDs from?
"Operating systems suck: you're better off using only the BIOS" --trainsaw.com
For those of you who have either component amplifiers (no decoding builtin) or have an old receiver without DTS, buy an old DTS decoder as long as it was updated to support DVD based DTS (the older firmwares only support laserdisc/CD outputs- think it's something to do with bitstream versus PCM or something). Even the little CD demo of DTS I have blows the pants off of Dolby Digital (which is pretty sweet too, admittedly).
I suppose that the average person who can't tell the difference between 7.1 and 5.1 won't notice the difference between DTS (original, not DTS-ES) and DD 5.1 either. But for anyone else, make sure you have DTS for the handful of titles that support it.
And as an aside to the above, anybody got an updated EEPROM for an ADA DTS-1 that supports DVD based DTS? I'd love a flash image, then I can quit using Dolby Digital and start using discrete audio like my amp and speakers deserve.
Cool, you got my morning chuckle out of the way. Thanks !
I would guess that most people who want surround and have the means (cash, room, willingness of wife etc) already have it. Adding more speakers seems unlikely to make them junk the old 5.1, nor will it entice previously disinterested consumers to jump in the car and go to the nearest big box. I'd be much more interested in a 2 speaker virutal surround solution which works in living rooms.
given the fact I my living room is a 3m x 2m rectangle, with barely enough place for the sofa and the furniture for the TV. Barcelona is an expensive place to live in :(
I find it distracting to hear sounds behind me (any form of surround) when the picture is in a two dimensional field in front of me. Especially when the effects tend to be breaking glass or bullets pinging off things.
I was the first in the neighborhood to get 5.1 and I had a pretty overkill speaker setup on my computer back when SB16 was in. Now I'm using 3.1 computer speakers for my movie projector and monitor speakers for my computer! Headphones do the trick when I'm interested in high quality.
I got tired of all the marketing bullshit from the audio industry so I stopped giving them money. It's not just 5.6.7.8.1 that's driving folks away it's the whole sleezy industry. I prefer to spend my money on technology not on marketing and I just don't have the patience to research audio anymore.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
Say what you will, but my 7.1 system kicks ass and I CAN hear the difference!
Show me packet captures and log entires, or it never happened.
This whole "clipping is a fact of life except in expensive systems". No, not so much actually. I'd be really supprised if most good reciever/speaker combos ever clipped. It's not hard to build an amp that has plenty of power for home theatre, espically when you are talking the distances at which the speakers will be placed. Generally people aren't going to be running them at a whole lot more than a couple watts RMS.
The thing is that recievers are all transistor amps, and clipping is really noticable on transistors. Transistors are essentally completely linear up to a point, then they just stop hard and don't put out any more power. It isn't quite as harsh as digital clipping, but close. It's not smooth like tube clipping where the tube slowly enters a non-linear zone.
Also, more channels wouldn't give a reciever any more reason to clip. Each channel is a seperate amp. What matters in regards to clipping is the amount of power going in to a single channel. If it's more than the channel can handle, you clip, if not, you don't. What's happening on the other channels isn't relivant.
He's also wrong that there's no reason to want more speakers just because there's no seperate encoding for them. If that were the case, why the hell do theatres have more than 5 speakers? Well, because the sound would suck. You have people all spread out, you need surround speakers all along the walls to get a good, diffuse surround field that's pleasant for all of them.
It's actually the same reason behind a centre channel. In theory on a good setup, such a thing sould be unnecessary. Indeed you find this is the case, if you have two quality speakers that are focused on a listener, they can generate a perfectly centred sound by playing in unison. No need for a speaker there. However, that relies on a very small sweet spot. If people are spread out, the illusion breaks. So, we just put a speaker in the dead centre, and send the sound there. It makes the sound seem to come from the middle of the screen, regardless of your angle to it.
The real reason not to get 7.1 in most cases is you are wasting money because your listening area is too small to really benefit from more speakers. However, it's not going to make your reciever clip or anything, unless you've got a seriously screwed up reciever.
in soviet russia, surround or not sufficiently high volume overkills every home.
I had the same problem and then I figured out the solution... don't realize you're annoying the neighbors. Problem solved ;)
And here's why.
I had a TV with built in 5.1 surround (including some lousy satellite speakers but no sub), but it didn't support DTS, and without a receiver of some sort I couldn't add additional inputs.
So I decided to buy a 5.1 receiver and speakers.
At the store, they had a 7.1 receiver which I'd read reviews of, and they said sounds like it cost well over £1000 but was only £300. They had it reduced to £250.
So I bought it. And a set of 7.1 speakers (the same price as an inferior 5.1 set) in which the rear 4 can be spliced together as pairs - reducing it to 5.1).
Since I have a small room, and no 7.1 source, I've left it as a 5.1 system, but it's nice to know if I ever get a larger room I can split up the rear speakers and properly fill in the rear channels.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly that I'd not swap a 5.1 for a 7.1 system, if it cost more. I went from a sort of 5.1 to a real 5.1 for a sum I was happy to pay - and can now upgrade to 7.1 should it prove useful for the cost of two speaker stands.
Mark
Liked this comment? Why not buy me something nice
The first question to ask yourself before going in for any "x.1" system is about your usage pattern. Specifically, how often will you listen to music and how often will you watch movies on your system(assuming of course that you do not have two separate systems of course)?
If like me, and most other people in the world you listen to more of music than movies, then the entire "x.1" debate is, imho, DOA. Simply because a good stereo amp and quality stereo speakers blow the hell out of any(equally priced) "x.1" surround sound system. Heck, a good pair of floorstanders even obviate the need for sub-woofers!
Hmm I can't see how you would even get a signal through the rear set of speakers, (let alone any of them?) if they're only reaciving the positive from the amp. In affect all you're doing is shorting the positive of the left and right channels.
Now if you connected the rear speakers in series between negative of the left and positive of the right channel it might work. But you're probably be bridging an amplifier that wasn't designed to be bridged and and presenting it with some strange loads.
Either way I don't see any potential benefits from this setup, it would seriously screw up the soundstage. If you want the music to sound like its coming from behind you just place the original two speakers behind your head, or turn around...
These movies and more specifically todays 5.1 DD games support PROPER sorround sound.
That means that in some movies you hear things all around you.
You only need to pop in LOTR, Matrix or Saving Private Ryan to see the difference.
What IS dopey is to buy a 5.1 cheap nasty 300$ system, if you can't afford something half decent don't buy a cheap version.
Start with a good basic receiver (400$ US for a DD receiver with some half decent power and 5.1 support) - then use your crappy spare speakers and slowly build from there.
Me, I live in an apartment, I have 4.0 sound, 4 fairly good speakers, no subwoofer, no centre.
A good receiver "phantoms" the centre (hell a cheap receiver does it) by simply playing centre channel evenly through the front 2 speakers - I also don't want a sub cause frankly I don't like excessively loud bass but I do like quality midrange.
Try playing Halo (or any other Xbox game) with true DD / 5.1 support, the monsters are distinctively right behind you, this is an advantage, it's immersive and it's fun.
I do agree with the actual article post, 7.1 is total overkill for most setups unless you have a monster sized loungeroom, (20' x 15' or more?) and a monster budget.
None the less this "2.0 is fine if it's good quality" stuff, rubbish, total rubbish - maybe for CD's but not 5.1 DVD's and games.
Don't worry, you're not missing much.
For movie soundtracks, multiple speaker systems make some sort of sense, but for music, particularly popular music, mono is usually a better solution. For your typical pop/rock band there isn't a stereo sound picture to reproduce, so why bother creating one?
Maybe we should have surround pictures next. You know, I think my peripheral vision is being sorely neglected.
Yeah but there are a lot of idiots that hook up a $100 Panasonic receiver to 15" Cerwin Vega speakers and try to crank it at full blast for an hour. Certainly clipping isn't going to be an issue for someone by rotel/marantz/hk receivers and hooking it up to, oh say, monitor audio speakers.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Even 7.1 may have some passing benefit. But my case in point is power leads , being rated by What HiFi as 5 stars. These are £50 per cord. I don't have a link to their magazine, but the blurb says about these Kords"you will notice more melliflous treble and more composure in the bass"
To my mind if your stereo receiver needs a special cord to improve its bass or treble, then it is a fault of the receiver.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
"Also, more channels wouldn't give a reciever any more reason to clip. Each channel is a seperate amp. What matters in regards to clipping is the amount of power going in to a single channel. If it's more than the channel can handle, you clip, if not, you don't. What's happening on the other channels isn't relivant."
All those channels share the same power supply! You'll easily get clipping on the best silicon if your p.s. is crap, as most are.
"It's actually the same reason behind a centre channel. In theory on a good setup, such a thing sould be unnecessary. "
Um, yeah, but not everyone in the movie room is always positioned in center of the screen. The center channel solves this quite well.
"Um, yeah, but not everyone in the movie room is always positioned in center of the screen. The center channel solves this quite well."
Um, yeah, that's what I said three sentences later. The point I was making is that more speakers allow for better sound for a spread out group of listeners.
Ok but that's a problem of overpowering the system as a whole and I don't think more speakers are more likley to make that happen. If you are driving the system too hard with 7 speakers because it's not loud enough, I don't think that's going to change moving to less, the system still won't be loud enough. The recievers I've looked at (like the Yamaha HTR series) ahve plenty adiquate power supplies for their needs.
More likely, if you are getting distortion, it's from your speakers. Speaker distortion increases with volume and in most cases their specs as quoted on their sheets are at one watt of power. Past that, the quoted distotion figure is out the window.
This approach to generating rear ambience from recordings is generally credited to amplifier designer David Hafler, who popularized it in the 70's. For a clear diagram of how to wire this up that may be easier to understand than the text here see http://sound.westhost.com/project18.htm It's also possible to insert a fixed or variable resistor to adjust the volume of the rear speakers relative to the front; see the "Can I play binaural recordings through loudspeakers?" section of http://www.headwize.com/faqs.htm for a sample there. Finally, you can even derive a passive center channel if you're really hardcore; I don't really like the look of the diagrams at http://kantack.com/surround/surround2.html but it covers all these approaches.
Dynaco sold a little box called the QD-1 that simplified the wiring of these during the original Quad craze. They re-introduced a series 2 version as a cheap Dolby Pro-Logic decoder during the beginning of the home theater craze. The newer version is reviewed at http://kantack.com/surround/surround4.html , which is a pretty spot on commentary about the limitations of this type of decoding. Both models are floating around ebay for not much money.
However, note that the effectiveness of this circuit presumes that your amplifier has a shared ground between the left and right channel circuits. While this is generally true, there are amplifiers (like any balanced design) where the ground of the left channel and that of the right are unrelated. Hooking up this circuit to such an amplifier will either a) shut it down, b) trip a fuse, or c) blow the output transistors, depending on the robustness of the design. Be very careful you know what you're playing with here. If you don't know enough about electronics to check if your amplifier channels have a common ground or not, you probably shouldn't be playing around with this circuit.
Dead Can Dance is close to a best case for this approach; really well produced studio work with lots of hard panned instruments sitting in one channel or the other pop into surround this way, and minimal vocals in the center. The best demo I ever found for how effective this circuit could be was the instrumental title track to the Alan Parsons Project "I Robot", which was downright freaky in pseudo-surround.
Actually the center channel has a specific and unique use. The majority (like 90%) of the dialogue comes from the center channel. This means two things; first your center channel speaker must be the best speaker in your setup so that you can hear the dialogue clearly, and second, this allows you to isolate the dialogue and alter the volume for it separately from the rest of the content.
If you have ever played a surround sound DVD on a stereo setup, you would know what I am talking about almost immediately. The dialogue has been mixed with the other sounds and forced out of two speakers, and the dialogue has to compete with all of the other sounds being generated. This makes for unclear dialogue, or dialogue that changes from being too soft or too loud in comparison with the rest of the movie soundtrack. With a multi-speaker setup, you can increase the output of the center channel for added dialogue clarity without increasing the overall volume of the performance.
For fun, next time you go to an audio-visual store, turn off the center channel and watch everyone wonder in amazement how they can hear all of the sound effects of the movie, but no sound comes out when people move their lips. This is especially fun in places like Best Buy where the "audio experts" only comprehension of audio systems is that they are not paid on commission.
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
The question whether 5.1 is inferior to 6.1/7.1 cannot be answered in general. It depends on factors like
(1) quality of all components in the equipment chain
(2) proper placement of the speakers
(3) proper setup of distance/delay for each channel/speaker
(4) proper setup of volume level for each channel/speaker
(5) interaction of the system with the listening environment
(6) quality of the source material
This makes it very hard to generalize. Under some circumstances a quality-wise inferior 5.1 system, which is properly set up, can sound a lot better than a much more expensive 7.1 system where the setup is wrong.
My friend and i constantly tell other friends that 7 and 6 channel surround sound has no real difference. theyre simply duplications of certian channels, there is no DVD or music i have ever seen with full 6.1 or 7.1 surround sound. On the other hand, 5.2 is very nice :P can never have enough bass!
I wonder why the transition from DD or DTS 5.1 to 7.1 adds additional surround channels, and not additional front channels, like SDDS does (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDDS).
I have a 6.1 system right now, and AFAICT the difference between 5.1 and 6.1 is quite small. However, I started with 4 speakers, then added a center, and loved the difference that the center made. Maybe that's just because my current screen is so small. My problem is: when I buy a projector and use a 2.4m (8ft) wide screen, I fear that the center may feel odd, because of the disparate locations of the center speaker and the characters on the screen. If a character is on the left side on the screen, the center may be too far right from the character on the screen. Then having all dialog on the center may hut the positioning.
Also, more channels wouldn't give a reciever any more reason to clip. Each channel is a seperate amp.
That's not completely true. TFA doesn't really explain the point he's trying to make in this area. Your typical home theater receiver has a power rating for each channel that's usually based on the transistors used. There's also a maximum power rating that comes from how much current the power supply can produce. If you have something with multiple channels being driven at once, there are plenty of receivers where the maximum power you can get is far below the rated power per channel because of the power supply bottleneck.
The much more useful specification then is the maximum power with all channels driven, which some receivers don't even mention because it would show the limitations of their design in an embarrassing light. Obviously a 7.1 receiver is going to be handicapped in that spec when compared to a similar 5.1 receiver because it has more channels to drive.
Regardless, your original point that a typical home theater is usually only blowing out a watt or ten of power under typical operating conditions is still correct.
Just imagine you are wearing some weird glasses that severally block your field of view and cover up one eye. Sound still comes from around you, just like on TV.
:)
I don't know, I'd be hard pressed to give up the sound of bullet ricochets being me during the Matrix lobby scene.
Andrew
0.1!! You lucky bastard!
All we had was an onboard pc speaker with three base frequencies and a white noise generator. If we wanted sound we had to program the fourier components ourselves! And we liked it!!
May the Maths Be with you!
Also, more channels wouldn't give a reciever any more reason to clip. Each channel is a seperate amp. What matters in regards to clipping is the amount of power going in to a single channel. If it's more than the channel can handle, you clip, if not, you don't. What's happening on the other channels isn't relivant.
It totally matters if you're using a cheap amp that uses a single power supply for all channels. Your typical cheap amp will claim 100W per channel but the supply can't actually deliver enough juice if all channels are being driven simultaneously. Unscrupulous manufacturers cheat by not telling you they're only driving 1 speaker to get their measurement.
I have an old 5.1 amp (a Yamaha DSP-A1) which weighs about 54 pounds, much of which is taken up by the (relatively) large transformer. It's never clipped and I think I'd blow my eardrums before it came close.
Actually this cunning gentleman appears to repeat every block of five numbers twice. This is apparently to mimic "numbers stations", but I seriously doubt it's being used for actual espionage! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_trolling_phe nomena#HELLO_WORLD for more information
... I find it hard to conceentrate on the TV while moving my head all around the room.
I will settle for no less than infinity.1. In this system, an infinite range of speakers is combined into a 5 foot radius halo that is suspended around your head. And what about the ".1" you ask? My living room is a subwoofer.
I use an old Pioneer receiver from the 70's and some big Advent speakers. Man that sounds good. Ya'll can keep all that surround sound crap. The old Pioneers paired up with Advents don't clip. The SX939 is 70W per channel and they MEAN 70W. Yessir. That beautiful blue dial and my lavalamp glowing beside it looks swank. Yeah, keep your jakey surround sound stuff. I'll give the old stuff a home.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Don't write it off just yet, if you're willing to buy an Amp that goes all the way up to 11 then 7.1 surround sound is definitely for you...
What really erks me about Hollywood is the fact they could quite easily support any number of speakers by using 4 channel encoding - more efficient, and vastly superior results. Of course this doesn't really make commercial sense for them though - they can't move the goalposts every 6 months!
The decoder would change depending on the number of speakers, but you could support any system this way, in any positions - ie 8 speakers could create a spherical sound stage, 3 or 4 to create conventional 360 degree surround.
See http://www.ambisonic.net/ for details
Wouldn't that be 1.0 not 0.1 ?
I got two good speakers, but I moved 8 months ago and I didn't even care to plug them ! My very old tv set's speakers just play the music I listen to and it's just fine.
Oh well, I must be the minority here.
Surround is sometimes used for effects of things happening behind you but that is not its primary purpose. Surround is for ambient effects. What's why dipole speakers are often used. The direct sound component is cancelled by the two out-of-phase sources and you get mostly the non-directional reflections.
Ambient effects are important for the overall impact of the movie. Really good sound is not something you notice consciously - it sets the atmosphere and emotional tone without being conspicuous.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
If you really want affordable quality sound, buy a decent set of studio monitors instead of gimmicky consumer crap (bose would be in the gimmicky category). A very decent set of studio monitors can be had for around $500. Instead of shopping at Best Buy for your speakers shop online at music supply sites for monitors - some sites are: musiciansfriend.com, zzounds.com, music123.com.
Clarity is what counts in sound reproduction. You can always add more monitors later for 5.1 or 7.1 if you really feel the need. For you ipod junkies, your tunes will sound much better through a pair of powered Event monitors than it will ever sound through anything at Best Buy.
the various decoders make a real mess of accidentally-o-o-p recordings, like nth gen dead tapes;-}
I found it ironic that the first sponsored link in the article I hovered my mouse over was for a 7.1 receiver.. YMMV
I know the traditional setup and design of music production follows the concert setting, (the entire band in front of you) but have you ever heard a good recording where the band surrounds you?
It is incredibly enjoyable. I will use AC/DC Back in Black to illustrate.
Lead vocals - front center
Drums rear left
Lead Guitar - front left (untill Angus starts moving around)
Bass front right
So if you close your eyes it feels like the band is all around you. It is very unfortunate that very few records are recorded like this, it gives any song an incredible amount of depth.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
yup, the absolute best sound i ever experienced was my roomate's mono klipsch corner speaker, circa 1969, blasting out led zep, totally awash in sound;-)8-0;-)
2nd best was a consumer-grade stereo, with speakers on piano benches ~5ft from the sides & back of a large livingroom, me sitting on the floor right @ the focalpoint, totally immersed in the rain on mickey hart's rolling thunder main ten intro8-)8-0;-)
and the chase!!!
I have a 6.1 system and the 6th speaker has never come on one single time.
There is absolutely no content that uses it.
.. if only Gillette would understand the same philosophy.
My Yamaha HTR-5650 is plenty for my living room's needs and drives a 5.1 system beautifully. Most notably, I don't have a subwoofer, so my receiver is powering the bass effects through my main speakers (only the full-sized floor-standing ones). The effects in the Lord of the Rings where large 'thuds' cause rumbles that can be easily heard at the sidewalk are evidence that no more power is required for my situation. And as a more important factor, at about -23 (where I listen to the LotR), there is no audible distortion.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Maybe it's just the homes I visit, but the vast majority of (American) homes I've been in in the last few years either have:
:-) Still, I get a lot of satisfaction when I do set them up correctly and they realise what they've been missing.
a) An older set that can do mono only, or at best stereo (and it's a CRT)
b) A "big screen" TV that's set up incorrectly.
Of the big screen owners, PRACTICALLY ALL OF THEM are running the ancient coaxial cable from their cable/satellite receiver into the TV, tuning into channel 3 and watching a fuzzy picture with monural sound. In standard definition.
The cable companies are partly to blame, they are simply not pushing HDTV enough and in my companies case, shoving the HDTV channels into some ridiculous 4 digit code that no ordinary user can remember whilst keeping the old SD channels in the usual place (seems backwards to me, and it's a running abttle with my own family to get them to tune into the "correct" channel so that weird geeky Brit doesn't complain about his "funky widescreen addiction").
Next we go to those who actually went out and bought a surround sound system. Most of those have all of the speakers clustered haphazardly on top of their entertainment center then wonder why they can't hear it in surround.
Maybe I just know a lot of really idiotic people?
Heck, as long as we keep upping the number of speakers, why not go to 8.1? Then you'd have speakers in all four cardinal directions, and the four points in between!
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Then I pointed out the number of rooms that I had seen in people's homes or apartments with a stereo only system with one speaker sitting on a bookshelf, and the other sitting under an end table or some other bizarre location. Stereo imaging be damned! So many people think that more speakers are better without the knowledge or experience of proper imaging. Most music listeners these days don't listen to music as such as just create soundtracks to their lives.
My ultimate point was that just like any other time when an album is created the goal should be the highest quality possible for what the composer/artist desires. No matter what format it is released in you can be guaranteed that only a small portion of your audience is really going to listen to it in the first place, and only a small group of those will have their systems configured properly.
Shawn's Tech Articles
The author of this article needs to get his head checked. 6.1 and 7.1 surround sound wasn't created and isn't intended for most of the content out today. There are a few that do use matrix to use the rear channels it's not what it's intended for.
What it is intended for is Blu-Ray and HD-DVD where there will be 7 discrete tracks and audio engineers will be properly mixing soundtracks for such setups. That's why you buy a good 7.1 setup today, so you don't have to replace your receiver next year.
He says clipping is a fact of life in all but the most lavish home theater systems. I've got news for him, it's not.
I've never had my amplifier up much above 2 watts on a transient. Granted I've got decently efficient speakers (which despite not being Klipsch sound great). I'd have to go to speakers that were 85 dB @ 1 watt @ 1 meter to hit the limits on a transient. The speakers that come to mind that are that inefficient cost 5k per pair. That's not average home theater setup. If you spend 5k on your front speakers alone you're not going to buy a low-mid range receiver that's only "actually" 35 watts/channel. You're going to buy something with a good amplifier or separates.
When I bought my home theater system I went 7.1. The reason? It added less than 5% to the cost of the audio equipment to add two more surround speakers. Do I use them much now? Nope, but when discrete 7.1 audio tracks are more common in the next year I've got surround speakers that are matched up and ready to go.
Where has the market really outwitted itself? In the electronics stores. By not requiring that the stores have sales staffs that know what they are talking about too many people are buying bad equipment that ultimately they aren't getting value out of. The equipment isn't big enough for the space, the mains and surrounds aren't capable of matching up with each other at all, the customer doesn't know what they need to do to set it up right, etc. Bad sales hurts the industry more than anything else. The electronics stores have been paying less and less attention to their sales staffs over the years and it shows. If the industry wants people to keep buying new audio equipment they need to make sure that people are getting the "wow" factor every time they buy gear.
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
Shawn's Tech Articles
I bought a pair of LTB 5.1 headphones and they actually work pretty well. They really do give you a sense of things being behind or next to you. Clarity-wise they are very good as far as my non-audiophile ears can tell. They are really comfortable which is rare for headphones. The only knocks I can give them is that they use that very damage prone thin cabling that seems to be norm nowadays, they also use a USB port for power which creates a lot of noise unless you purchase an adaptor that allows you to power them directly from the wall.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
twist your speakers a bit, possibly shift furniture around a bit, and you can work around the most horrible rooms usually. The anechoic qualities of a loaded bookshelf are hard to beat
...upgraded cables...
Do you know this one saying about money and sense and one being more than the other? Yeah. It applies to people who buy Monster Cables.
On a related note, may I suggest you buy a CD Demagnetizer? Once I played a demagnetized CD to a friend and
Gosh, folks need to figure out that one size doesn't fit all.
u ctId=2103668) to balance your speakers. (Some new fangled receivers do this for you.)
If you want to listen to music, you'll get a much better experience spending a reasonable budget on a stereo rig vs. a surround rig:
1. Until you get into the "golden ear" exotic price range, there's a HUGE difference in sound quality as the speaker price goes up. )
2. Subwoofers are great for movies, but not so great for classical music. There just isn't that much content in *most* music in the lower registers - and most folks don't have any idea how to set up a 2.1 (left, right, sub) system so that it sounds right.
3. Music just isn't mixed for surround. And, yes, I know about DVD Audio disks. The basic problem is that nobody knows what's right for music reproduction. Do you want to feel like you're in the middle of the orchestra? Do you really want to hear crowd noise? Exactly why do you need to reproduce the sounds bouncing off the rear wall of a concert venue? There are obvious exceptions - the Blue Man Group's DVD Audio disk is a lot of fun. But it ain't worth the money for the two or three surround disks that properly use multiple speakers.
4. You can get fantastic deals on stereo receivers on Ebay these days.
If you're into movies or TV, definitely get a surround system. It's an immersive environment, and just a heck of a lot of fun. The same things that worked against you for music work for you in movies or TV:
1. A subwoofer is your best friend. Not only does it give you the visceral feeling when helicopters fly overhead, etc., it also offloads much of the hard work from your amps. A properly configured sub removes almost all the heavy work from the rest of your system - everything will sound a lot better.
2. Previous comments about center speakers are exactly right. They're a big help when you have multiple listening positions in your room.
3. Make sure you "treat" your room. There's a lot more to this, but 90% of the battle can be won by making sure there's a carpet on the floor between you and the screen (deadening reflections coming off the floor), bookshelves or other "complicated" things to your left and right (scattering reflections off the side front walls), and lots of deadening materials behind you. Get a calibration disk (e.g. the Avia guide to home theater) and a Radio Shack meter (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?prod
And to directly address the topic at hand, 6.1 and 7.1 systems can be better than 5.1 systems, but by the point where they make sense, you've spent a LOT of money already on your system. Unless you plan on breaking through the $5K barrier for receivers and speakers, don't even think about it.
A 7.1 system, for example, makes sense in a large room with a projection screen. You do need room behind the last row of seats, however. The main reason for 7.1 over 6.1, by the way, is for exactly this setup - you're trying to eliminate sound from directly behind the listener (the 6.1's rear speaker) bouncing off the screen.
Anyway, hopefully you see that there's a lot more to this. Bottom line: it depends on what you plan on doing with your system, your room and your budget. And make sure you spend the right amount of attention and money on room treatment!
I seem to remember the same arguement about Mono vs Stereo, but I think this guy's argument is similar to the "who would need a computer in their home?" and "we only will ever need 640K of memory" arguments made in the computer industry.
Do I get 3 credits for reading your article? *grin*
I am a very novice "audiophile"- I have not gone to such great lengths as to upgrade the capacitors in my poweramp or elevate my 8 gauge speaker cable with bullshit oak lifts to reduce vibrations from the floor. That being said, I started many years ago with a 2.1 setup and over the years have slowly upgraded to a 7.1 NHT setup. Optimal sound of course come from proper positioning. I recall an article from I think Thomasson of THX fame who reported that the optimal sound setup for home theater was a crazy 10.4 setup- with a dizzying diagram of intricately placed speakers. I do have a house with modest sized living room/home theater room. The addition of the two additional rear channels certainly added a bit of liveliness to the moviewatching experience(especially when coupled with my thunderdous PC11 5.5 foot tall cylinder sub). That being said, I cannot stress the importance of quality components, especially the 2 front speakers and the center channel. If you do not watch movies- then this whole issue is moot anyway- a 2 speaker setup is more than sufficient (albeit required for music aficionados). The primary vocalizations from people on screen comes through the center channel which means a solid center channel is a must, complemented by the the fronts. Some would argue that 2 subs should be paired to complement the fronts, but a single sub placed in the correct corner of a room should fill it quite nicely to get the lows. As the article stated, most DVD/SACDs, etc. do not capitalize on the extra rear channels (most high-end receivers do a nice fake duplication for the 6-9 channels), and very little information is sent there anyway other than the low acoustic quality surround effects. But I have noticed that those extra channels do create the illusion of immersion if you have even a medium sized room to work with.
The Article is right. Average people dont want o have their whole living room filled with speakers all over the place. Specially if you like to have your living room with a good design and look.
For most people, 5.1 is more than enough to enjoy watching movies at home and still they can place their speakers correctly and have a nice design in their living rooms.
6.1, 7.1 is for a very restricted group of people who demand much more than the avergae would.
2 speakers develop a sound stage (this is called stereo),
2 additional speakers in the back add 3 more sound stages - one to your left, one your right, and one behind you.
So 4 speakers are enough for exact signal positioning all around you.
I know people have subwoofers for a "bass" effect, but what are the other 3 for?
That actually allow you to use 5.1 on a 7.1 card. and patch the voice in/out to the leftover plug. While SB LIVE 24 allows the mic for the leftover, there is no option to use it as a separate voice device in/out :(
....
:)
On the 7.1 issue : my AMP is a 5.1 and I am actually unable to put speakers on the side because of the shape of the room
If I could ?
Hmm, as I am swithing over my movie watching and gaming to the PC, actually I would be able to decode that much of channels, and I would put an other 2 satellites up. Why not
I purchased a mid-high end 5.1 receiver about 6 years ago. Yamaha model. Pretty expensive speakers as well. B&Ms. I have since purchased newer receivers and setup 7.1s in my house and others houses and none have come out sounding any better or even as good as the 5.1 i still use. I am the type of person who likes to buy the best thing now/first. But the fact that 5.1 is all that is needed at this point has kept me from actually keeping any new 7.1 surround setup i have purchased. They have all been returned because the price/upgrade hasnt been justified over the quality of my current 5.1 setup.
Yep, same boat for me and my 5860. Highest I've ever turned it up was to -10. That is with a choral DVD-A that has a low average level but does reach a peak in every song. No distortion I could hear, and the amps clearly had plenty of power left to go. Given that the 5860 is one of the higher end models in the lineup and still come in at under $400, I'm calling them not expensive either.
The quality of most movie sound is atrocious. Sometime, turn off the TV and just listen to the sound. You will be shocked at how badly the voices are recorded and how discordant the panning and background effects are.
I was under the impression that 5.1 surround sound had the rear two channels producing ambient non-directional sound. Not stereo. But when you move to 6.1, you get left and right rear channels and the center speaker for ambient noise. I had a 5.1 system, and ran the testing dvd's to insure the sound came out correctly. My rear channels did indeed provide no left-right specific sound. It was mono. I now have a 6.1 system, and the left and right channels actually play left and right, and the center plays just center. The downside is finding any movie recorded in anything greater than 5.1.
No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.
The biggest problem that I know of is the lack of 6.1 content. i know of just a handful of titles that are 6.1 :star wars episodes 1-2-3 and top gun are about the only thing explicitly labelled 6.1. More DTS encodings might be 6.1 but they usually never "light" the center back speaker on the receiver like the aforementioned tracks do. most dramas and comedies barely make use of 5.1, if at all. A
Action adventure/sci fi do make use of them to great effect but those sound tracks eat space like crazy even on a dual layer dvd - a DTS stream is typically 6-800 mb. This goes away with bluray or hddvd but i dont see the studios doing much to add to selection of soundtrack encodings. if they do, it will be nice and I wont say as many bad things about the studios.
And Ironic timing since I just said how 7.1 was more then enough for HD-DVD/Blu-Ray. I've got 7.1 speakers in my dorm (Creative S750; not an audiophile's choice, but they do have good sound for the money, with good treble which is hard to find for multimedia speakers). I've got them hooked up as 5.1 right now since I have no place to put the other two speakers. Do I miss them? Not really. I enjoy having less cords spread throughout the room though. If I didn't find them so cheap, I would have gotten 5.1. Speakers can of course be internal fixtures or have small "ducts" on the wall to hide the wires, but Unless you have a dedicated room, the 7.1 arrangment can be rather hard to arrange. This isn't even taking into account that many people place their sofas against a wall, leaving no place to put a third (rear, or where rear would be with side speakers added) set of speakers.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
When you have heard a DTS:ES movie with all full range discrete channels going, then you'll know why people want 7 channels.
Now, for Dolby Digital then yeah, 5.1 is probably fine with it's matrixed and limited range surround channels.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
The moment I heard American Beauty in DD and then in DTS (to let a friend decide which he preferred), I proved you wrong. The original mixmaster did not intend for poorly balanced CENTER and surrounds between loud scenes and speaking scenes (usually evident in action flicks), and also in the case of American Beauty, a slow high-hat roll sounding like a costant buzz in DD, but in DTS you could hear the intended slow rat-tat-tat-tat independent hits of the high-hat roll.
I love DTS because it has proven itself time and again, in the DEPTH category, not the gain control (though it has benefits there as well). Titan-AE is my 'demo' DVD for those living in a crappy 2-speaker setup (crappy speakers, not crappy because it's 2 speakers) who wil lbe introduced to 5.1 DTS.
"The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly" - Touchstone,Shakespeare's "As You Like It"
Except that DVD's and HDTV are recorded in six discreet channels! MY DVDs are recorded in six vociferous channels!! (discreet != discrete)
I thought I knew what a professional (jazz) saxophone sounded like... until I heard Sam Falzone play a local gig where he refused to use amplification. The sound was unlike anything I ever heard through a microphone.
I hate when performers use microphones, especially in small halls.
But anyway, go to live performances and hear what professional played instruments REALLY sound like!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I've spent some time with my setup, carefully selecting components and placing them appropriately. However, i have yet to find a 5.1 movie soundtrack that makes me remember I have a 5.1 system.
The center channel should be a cluster of around 3 speakers in a sligt arc, allowing a wider listening area for the center audio, and in turn, spatially, give you less of that seperation on a large screen and characters on extreme lefts or rights. You always may need to move the distance of the center channel back to allow it to spread enough before reaching the listening area... but usually, distance will be fine when you match optimal viewing distance.
"The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly" - Touchstone,Shakespeare's "As You Like It"
Interesting that he didn't mention that the difference between 6.1 and 7.1 is the extra rear channel is simply a mirror of the first. That is there are only 6.1 discrete channels. With 7.1 you're just adding a second speaker in back reproducing the same sound.
7.1 is only useful if you have a really large room.
I have 5.1 right now, but my Denon receiver does support 6.1, and I have contemplated adding another speaker in back, but my room is small so what's the point. I'd be better off with a subwoofer first me thinks.
Phhht, 7.1 is so last month. With my 360.1 surround system, the speaker is the room ( floor is the sub ). In fact, there is no room for the TV.
The whole trick about 5.1 (or 7.1 for that matter) is that movie editors have a reference standard they use when mixing the sound. They have direct control over what goes to which speaker, and will make sure that voices that are on the left part of the screen are mixed between the left and center speakers appropriately, etc.
For analog sources run through systems like Dolby Pro-Logic (and its predecessor, Dolby Surround), the processor in your receiver does the mapping. But in no case will it put a signal that is supposed to be on one side of the screen or another *totally* on to the center speaker.
Yeah, more than one speaker is nice. But in practice there's more of a problem with speaker height. That's why you'll see people use micro-perf screens -- and put the center speaker(s) behind them. Of course, you'll have to get an equalizer to pump up the highs that the screen (slightly) muffles.
Bottom line: get a decent system (see my other post in this thread), set it up right, and stop worrying!
You only have 2 ears.
-makoffee
DTS will almost always win hands down when compared to DD. DD uses variable compression to control the space of the audio track where DTS uses less compression and at a set ratio.
So, you can look at it as the more content (extras, deleted scenes, commentary, etc) the smaller the space for the audio track. Thus, higher compression is used resulting in less clarity in the audio. DVDs with DTS audio usually have less content (see Superbit titles {granted those include higher bitrate video as well as audio}) than their DD counterparts (although movies are generally shipped with one or both nowadays versus having two separate presses).
--Chemguru
Butt, I mean, but, we also have a few more openings... one, under the butt, is addressed by the subWOOFer. It's meant to descale your intestines from all that popcorn and soda you consume in your home theater...
... oh hell, why not Gel-Maker 9.5? This baby will reduce your living ass to a living pile of goo right in your sofa. Stand by for REAL Audio Compression.. We'll RAC your real-rac'in good...
We have backs, too, so why not
(Please sign the disclaimer after your purchase...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
If you have a real SACD player with real 5.1 component outputs, try the Dark Side of the Moon 30th Aniversary Edition, by Pink Floyd. The following is an excerpt from a talk given by James Guthrie at the press launch for The Dark Side Of The Moon 5.1 SACD. Hayden Planetarium, New York, March 24th, 2003 (Stolen from Pinkfloyd.co.uk, but it was a flash page so I couldn't link).
We were approaching the 30th anniversary of the release of an archetype, and I had written a proposal to EMI. We couldn't just re-master the album yet again, I suggested. The fans might, quite understandably, beat us to death with sticks. Or at the very least, not bother to make an appearance at their local record shops. Doug Sax and I had, after all, already re-mastered the album three or four times for previous re-releases. It was time to do something a bit special. I suggested the release of a hybrid SACD.
With the SACD we could provide a disc that would contain a standard "red-book" layer, allowing it to play in all conventional CD players, and a high-resolution layer with room for both the original stereo mix, and a multichannel 'surround' version. Pricing the disc competitively with normal CDs meant that the record company could really give something back to the fans. Jody Klein had just done the same thing with his Rolling Stones catalogue, and I felt that the idea was inspired. EMI approved the plan and the process of locating the tapes began.
As librarian for Abbey Road's extensive tape vaults, Ian Pickavance's archeological skills were about to be tested. The brief from EMI had been clear. Find all of the original component parts of 'The Dark Side Of The Moon', make safety copies, and send the originals to me in northern California.
By the time Ian arrived with the tapes at my studio in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the November skies were already quietly discussing how many winter storms they could fit in between now and the end of the mix.
DEADLINES
Storm (Thorgerson) had come up with a cunning plan to release the disc on 03/03/03. 3 times 30 backwards. The 30th anniversary, and a whole page full of numerology relating to the album, the band, and the number 3.
This meant a work schedule for Joel (my assistant engineer) and I that was probably reminiscent of the actual building of those 3-sided Pyramids that Storm had photographed 30 years ago for the original album cover.
Incidentally, 3 times 3 is 9 which, Storm reliably informs me, is the number of letters in Pink Floyd. Coincidently, 9 was also looking like the number of lifetimes it may take to complete the mix, with what we had in mind.
TECHNICAL RAMBLING
David Gilmour had told me that earlier generation multitrack tapes existed for each song. That was all I needed to hear. Whatever it took, I wanted to use those tapes. When recording the album, the band had used a similar technique to that used by The Beatles during the Sgt. Pepper sessions. Apparently The Beatles would fill a 4-track tape and then combine, or pre-mix those elements to one or two tracks of a second 4-track machine, giving themselves more free tracks to work on.
The technique was applied to Dark Side but with two 16-track tapes. The original, non-Dolby, recordings were made and then the drums were pre-mixed to a stereo pair, keyboards were combined, and vocals were bounced together to a new Dolby "A" tape.
The original stereo mix of the album came from this "dub" reel, which contained a combination of first, second and third-generation elements. The drawback was that the album was recorded before the days of time code and multiple tape machine lock-ups. Additionally, the multitrack machines used in those days were notorious for running a different speed from one end of the reel to the other. Consequently, the original tapes were never intended to be used for the mix because they wouldn't sync up. The combined speed error after copying a song was pretty dramatic.
I know many people whose answer to this dilemma would have
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Quibble: Why do most modern receiver makers insist on assigning negative values to volume controls? Why is that the new standard?
I think I've had my receiver up to a positive number a few times in the year that I've had it.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
As a side note, I built my amplifier from a great kit. It's a tube amplifier, and sounds better than anything I've heard anywhere near it's price range ($140). Of course the downside is no remote control (for now), but it does glow! To get any kind of serious sound out of a PC you MUST have an external DAC. I'm running the lossless digital sound out of a Turtle Beach USB sound card (around $30) straight from the PC to an external DAC (California Audio Sigma II, $750 new, bought for $400 used). The DAC outputs straight to the integrated amplifier, and I couldn't be happier. I hate having tons of CDs lying around, so I FLACed the collection...
The problem is not that 7.1 or 6.1 is poor technology and inappropriate for the home. You could have a microsystem of 100.1 that technologically creates a very real 3d soundfield; however, if you don't have the sound engineers with the vision and capability to produce good tracks, you might as well forget it. Even the old stereo recordings of the 70's that are played on the classic rock stations are better engineered than today's canned poo (and I'm not a classic rock fan...just an audiophile). When we talk about technology being overkill, we're actually talking about sound engineering being underwhelming, uninspired, and unimaginative.
The guy's just jealous that's all, he probly doesn't have the cash or the space to put a 7.1 (or more) in his poxy flat.
7.1 isn't meant for everyone, it's meant for the enthusiasts with larger rooms than 5.1 can comfortably fill.
It's also not the technologies fault that the studios and/or distributers can't be arsed to use it properly.
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
The values are supposed to represent 'below reference' volumes.
That is, at '0' dB, you should be listening to the reference volume for the material in question. My receiver's 0 reference changes with room size, for example, but can't compensate for speaker sensitivity.
For what its worth.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Very interesting. Thank you!
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.