Post by nickc June 15, 2004 (31 of 46)
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Dan Popp said:
Tream,
The "mono vs. stereo" argument only illustrates that there are trade-offs. To take your illustration to the other extreme, 10 speakers of any quality would be better than 6, 100 of the poorest quality would be better than 10 of the best quality, etc.
The trade-off is amount of spatial information (which you are calling "resolution") vs. quality of reproduction (which is what most people call "resolution").
I'm not arguing that you have made the wrong trade-off, just that you are thinking of the problem in the wrong terms.
hi dan
i don't think the 100 versus 10 speaker analogy is quite correct, although i know you were only exaggerating it for the sake of the argument(quite properly!). i think we "crossed the rubicon" when we liberated the music from the confines of just two speakers and the flat, deadening effect stereo reproduction has on real, live sound. if in the future height speakers are added (as propounded by Dabringhaus) or 8.1, 10.2 or whatever (i can hear our wives and girlfriends groaning in horror already!) it is just, in my opinion, really tinkering at the edges of the basic breakthrough, which is a 5 (or indeed 4)channel set-up. that, in my opinion, was the real "circuit breaker", just as stereo was in comparison to mono.
of course no-one would say that MC is "perfect" yet; there are recordings with too many reflections etc. yet we are only in the early stages of MC recording (if i can ignore quad from the 70s). yet, even now, it provides a "space" for music to live and breathe that stereo, by its very nature, never could.
best wishes
nick
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Post by Khorn June 16, 2004 (32 of 46)
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I think each of us are looking for different things in our sound reproduction. I never expect to get anything approaching reality in a home music reproduction system and, since I start from that premise, IMHO there are no "rules" as to what is best.
The closest thing that I have ever heard that approached live sound and, it's funny in a way that I have heard others describe the same phenomenon, is hearing a single voice or instrument (in many cases a piano)reproduced in an adjacent room to where I was. In the cases I am familiar with one that stands out was when I heard spoken voice reproduction through a pair of LS3/5A speakers owned by the people I rented an upstairs flat to in a house I owned a long time ago. I have also experienced this many times when I have been in another room and solo piano was being reproduced on my Klipschorns. In these cases it wouldn't have mattered if there were one or twenty channels in the system. Perhaps under those conditions more channels might have even been worse!
As far as reproducing live music accurately and on a realistic basis it may be somewhat successfully accomplished by reproducing maybe a single accoustic instrument or two and maybe a small combo or group with or without vocals. As far as full scale orchestral works or big bands accurately and equal to live.....forget it. It ain't gonna happen not matter what kind of system or, how many channels you have. Not with today's technology and state of the art anyway.
There are many ways of approaching listening to music. My system has been down since the beginning of the year as I moved and I am having renovations done. For the time being I bought a great AM/FM portable radio to listen to. I enjoy music over this thing even though it doesn't begin to approach my sound system but 'till my system is up and running (a few weeks at most I hope) I can live with it and enjoy music.
Now, many of you are very adamant in your promotion of surround sound and yes it has it's appealing and entertaining qualities and should be accepted and enjoyed in those terms but, don't think for one second that by having multichannel you will be able to reproduce the equivalent to a live performance in your own space 'cause if you do, the only person you will be fooling is yourself.
If we all liked the exact same things we would all have identical systems and music software...a bit absurd don't you think?
Maybe this will throw a little light on my position.
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Post by nickc June 16, 2004 (33 of 46)
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Khorn said:
I think each of us are looking for different things in our sound reproduction. I never expect to get anything approaching reality in a home music reproduction system and, since I start from that premise, IMHO there are no "rules" as to what is best.
The closest thing that I have ever heard that approached live sound and, it's funny in a way that I have heard others describe the same phenomenon, is hearing a single voice or instrument (in many cases a piano)reproduced in an adjacent room to where I was. In the cases I am familiar with one that stands out was when I heard spoken voice reproduction through a pair of LS3/5A speakers owned by the people I rented an upstairs flat to in a house I owned a long time ago. I have also experienced this many times when I have been in another room and solo piano was being reproduced on my Klipschorns. In these cases it wouldn't have mattered if there were one or twenty channels in the system. Perhaps under those conditions more channels might have even been worse!
As far as reproducing live music accurately and on a realistic basis it may be somewhat successfully accomplished by reproducing maybe a single accoustic instrument or two and maybe a small combo or group with or without vocals. As far as full scale orchestral works or big bands accurately and equal to live.....forget it. It ain't gonna happen not matter what kind of system or, how many channels you have. Not with today's technology and state of the art anyway.
There are many ways of approaching listening to music. My system has been down since the beginning of the year as I moved and I am having renovations done. For the time being I bought a great AM/FM portable radio to listen to. I enjoy music over this thing even though it doesn't begin to approach my sound system but 'till my system is up and running (a few weeks at most I hope) I can live with it and enjoy music.
Now, many of you are very adamant in your promotion of surround sound and yes it has it's appealing and entertaining qualities and should be accepted and enjoyed in those terms but, don't think for one second that by having multichannel you will be able to reproduce the equivalent to a live performance in your own space 'cause if you do, the only person you will be fooling is yourself.
If we all liked the exact same things we would all have identical systems and music software...a bit absurd don't you think?
Maybe this will throw a little light on my position.
dear khorn
i agree with some of what you say and disagree with some. i am currently studying for exams and in my bedroom i have a crappy little clock radio. i can quite happily listen to music on that and enjoy it just like you!
in regards to your second point of course one is never going to really be able to reproduce a live performance, otherwise i would be in amsterdam at the concertgebouw every night!(i wish...)
what i am saying is that in my opinion we have a much better chance of getting closer to what a real live performance sounds like with MC, rather than stereo. i go to concerts down here off the edge of the world at the melbourne concert hall. all those concerts are in "mc" as the sound lives and breathes throughout the hall.
can MC ever totally accurately reproduce the exact conditions and sound of a recorded performance? of course not. not now and almost certainly never!
can it give you a much more realistic "approximation" than a stereo reproduction could? you only have to listen for about 30 seconds to realise that is much closer to "real" sound and hear what you have been missing out on listening to stereo all those years.
anyone khorn if you are happy with your stereo set-up i am happy as well. the only thing that annoys me is people who have never heard mc saying it is rubbish. if someone is happy with stereo i say happy listening!
cheers
nick
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Post by LC June 19, 2004 (34 of 46)
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nickc said:
if in the future height speakers are added (as propounded by Dabringhaus) or 8.1, 10.2 or whatever (i can hear our wives and girlfriends groaning in horror already!)
That's nothing. Read anything about UHDV (Ultra High Definition Video, the successor to HDTV, in prototype in Japan)?
22.2 audio channels: 10 speakers at ear level; 9 above and 3 below ear level; 2 for low frequency effects
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Post by nickc June 19, 2004 (35 of 46)
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LC said:
That's nothing. Read anything about UHDV (Ultra High Definition Video, the successor to HDTV, in prototype in Japan)?
22.2 audio channels: 10 speakers at ear level; 9 above and 3 below ear level; 2 for low frequency effects
i'm in! (once i speak to my bank manager...)
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Dan Popp said:
But CD players do wear out. That's what happened to me: when my cheap CD player died, I decided to check into this SACD thing I'd been reading about.
Dan - I read your comments and certainly agree. That is the beauty of the hybrid SACD. You can buy one today for your old cheap CD player and hear high quality on the redbook layer -- when your CD player wears out and you buy a new SACD or Universal player, that same disc suddenly sounds even better for no charge! I can't think of any previous consumer product that parallels that long-term enhancement. Surround sound might even be one more extra the buyer didn't expect, but gets later when he upgrades the player (or accidentally puts the audio disc in his DVD player). Pretty good stuff. - Best Regards, David Elias
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Post by tream July 5, 2004 (37 of 46)
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It turns out that this letter did make the July-August issue of Fanfare. While I've not yet received my copy (it shows up a few days later on the West Coast) I have received several emails from readers supporting my points (although one wished I had not made them so forcefully), so clearly the editor printed it. I don't know yet if Mr. Anderson replied; we'll see.
As I have mentioned before, I recommend Fanfare to serious listeners of classical music (there is also a great jazz column, but that is not enough by itself to suscribe, just a bonus). Many of the reviewers are starting to get hi-resolution audio (tilted towards SACD, mostly because that's what we're seeing in the market), the magazine covers a wide range of recordings in depth, and there are also many fine articles, not to mention the terrific letters to the editor :-).
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Post by vonwegen July 9, 2004 (38 of 46)
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nickc said:
most people would find it hard to tell the difference between a well recorded cd and sacd in stereo
Huh?
SA-CD makes CD format sound like a transistor radio! If your average Joe can't tell the difference in sound, then all the major labels should bend over & kiss their collective heinies good-bye...
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Post by LC July 9, 2004 (39 of 46)
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vonwegen said:
SA-CD makes CD format sound like a transistor radio! If your average Joe can't tell the difference in sound, then all the major labels should bend over & kiss their collective heinies good-bye...
The question isn't whether the Average Joe *can* tell the difference (i.e. in a controlled hearing test)- it's whether he *will* tell the difference (i.e. in his living room). People who care about the the kind of improvements stereo SACD can offer over the *best* CDs are not average, even among music listeners. Multichannel, on the other hand, is exactly what will sell the format to the Average Joe. I doubt that SACD would have made it this far, or would constitute any sort of life ring for drowning labels, if it were not for interest in the possibilities afforded by multichannel. (This comment, by the way, is not meant to dismiss the many multichannel enthusiasts here as mere Average Joes!)
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Post by Khorn July 10, 2004 (40 of 46)
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LC said:
The question isn't whether the Average Joe *can* tell the difference (i.e. in a controlled hearing test)- it's whether he *will* tell the difference (i.e. in his living room). People who care about the the kind of improvements stereo SACD can offer over the *best* CDs are not average, even among music listeners. Multichannel, on the other hand, is exactly what will sell the format to the Average Joe. I doubt that SACD would have made it this far, or would constitute any sort of life ring for drowning labels, if it were not for interest in the possibilities afforded by multichannel. (This comment, by the way, is not meant to dismiss the many multichannel enthusiasts here as mere Average Joes!)
Yes, what you say may be true but, if we are talking about the Average Joe here then forget about High Resolution altogether....period. An inexpensive DVD player that only decodes Dolby surround and a low end "theater in a box" is probably what 99.9% of these people have. They are quite content and (on their systems) couldn't hear the difference anyway as far as SOUND QUALITY goes.
I would rather listen to Hi Resolution two channel than Low Resolution surround.
This group is about High Resolution sound be it two or multi channel so don't bring the Average Joe into it 'cause it defeats any argument from both the stereo and multi-channel viewpoint.
Most people with high end equipment and interest are educated enough(on this topic) to understand the differences and decide for themselves.
The "Average Joe" couldn't give a "Flyin' Fidoo" or is even aware of "High Resolution" so yes they will be impressed with multi-channel but not in the sense that anyone here understands it.
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