Gimicky surround may be here to stay

Agreed. I'm not bashing surround, I just have a problem with titles being treated to a new high-rez release that contains a surround mix only. When this occurs, the consumer isn't given the opportunity to enjoy (or at least attempt to in some cases) the original stereo or mono mix on CD in higher resolution. I'm fine with it given a coexistence in equal resolution of both surround and stereo/mono mixes.

 

I don't know about the point 1, Dave, but AFAIK there are a multitude of different multi-channel analog recorders out there right now, so if someone wanted to develop an analog multi-channel playback device for the home it could happen. In the late sixties and early seventies there were several discrete 4-channel open reel tape decks; knew several people that had the Crown model.

I read somewhere that Sony is already in the development stages of a multi-channel SACD player for the car (which means, I guess, that I'll have to get those two rear speakers in my '94 Escort repaired if if want one).

 

A guitar in the front, side AND rear of the listener is not realistic. It ain't even realistic for the singer in most cases!

 

I'm willing to hear what these engineers are going to put out. If I don't like it I can sell it off.

So far, after a year of owning DVDA, I am very happy with most of my Hi-Rez discs. Some of been spectacular to my ears, some so-so.

It's all still being worked out at this point. Hopefully it won't get to gimmicky.

I'll be interested how Neil Young's Harvest and Yes's Fragile turn out.

 

First of all, when the question is asked, "Who believes that all hi-rez media should contain, first and foremost, a proper stereo mix?" I will be the first one to raise my hand! I'm on YOUR side. I WANT a quality, hi-rez, properly handled original stereo mix of my favorite classic albums. Hallelujah Rolling Stones SACD's! I love 'em! I bought 'em all! Give me more!

I'm just as annoyed as everyone else who bought the ELP DVD-A with NO stereo mix. You will hear me crying the loudest over Silverline/Sanctuary's veritable glut of inane "surround" DVD-A's with the complete absence of a stereo track. It drives me INSANE!

However, when the question is asked, "Who here would like to hear a great surround mix (ah heck, even a gimmicky one) of your favorite classic record?" I will be the first to raise my hand again!

I am just seeing too much of this knee-jerk negativism surrounding (no pun intended) surround sound. There is also this chicken-little mentality that surround-sound is some insidious threat against the warm, comfy familiarity of stereo recordings. All I can say is, take a pill, Phil! Everything is going to be alright. Sure, every once in a while something might be released leaving you saying "Gee, I sure wish they had included the stereo mix here" but these instances are the exception and not the rule.

Surround-sound is not some bad-boy monster coming to force itself on your unwilling person. It is simply something different, offering alternatives for people wishing to explore them. I know I'm beating a dead horse, but for the love of god, just don't listen to the dang things if you don't care for them. Really. It IS that simple.

 

I didn't start this thread with the intention of just 'bashing' surround. I started this thread because I find the idea of gimicky surround a TRULY frigtening thing.

At this point, hi-rez audio is not a FACT, it is an experiment, and the current crop of SACDs and DVD-As could easily go the route of Betamax, 8-track, and Digital Compact Cassette. The labels are not going to waste the extra money producing a format that doesn't take off.

Gimicky 5.1 surround may be entertaining, but it is not related to ANY kind of musical experience, unless you saw the ELP Brain Salad Surgery tour, or some Pink Floyd shows. As someone else in this thread noted, music NEVER sounds like this, even if you're on stage PLAYING it. Stereo was at least an attempt to recreate the illusion of what listening to music sounds like. Gimicky 5.1 is an attempt to create something entirely new, that has no relation to anything.

Gimicky 5.1 may sound good, or even great, but this kind of thing has been done before with Quad. Quad did NOT die the quick death it did because it was a lousy format. Some quad mixes sounded pretty good. (Check out Tubular Bells on SACD.) And it didn't die because no one was interested. Everyone I knew at the time had a Quad reciever or decoder and 2 extra speakers. I'm talking middle-class teenagers, not audiophiles.

Quad died BECAUSE it was gimicky. Stuff coming from EVERYWHERE. Once people got over the WOW factor, gimicky mixes were distracting. Most people I knew listened to Quad avidly for 6 to 8 months. Then they sold their extra speakers, junked their decoders, and started listening to MUSIC again. In STEREO. Because quad was entertaining, not musical. And it got boring quickly unless you got REAL stoned. I'm afraid that gimicky 5.1 will meet the same fate in the end. Once the WOW factor is gone, sitting in the middle of 5 speakers and listening to instruments coming from all around will just seem like a big hassle, and even the people who are interested now will lose interest.

Which could KILL hi-rez, because I don't think the average listener cares. Most people think CD is good enough. There is no huge incentive to remaster everything in stereo hi-rez, and if the labels (except for Sony) can't sell 5.1, they will probably decide to stick with CD. And I think 5.1 has GREAT potential for audiophiles. After hearing part of Miles Davis KIND OF BLUE on 5.1 SACD I was AMAZED at how much better the 5.1 mix was. It SOUNDED like STEREO that filled the whole room. I didn't even know I was listening to 5.1 until the salesman told me. (It was my first listen to SACD, and I just thought it was the SACD sound.) Now that I know how 5.1 CAN sound, I'm particularly offended with the gimicky mixing style, because it means a great 5.1 mix won't be available any time soon, if ever.

Anyway, I won't be buying too many 5.1 discs any time soon. I've heard this kind of thing before, and I DON'T like it. And the best advice I can offer all you gimicky mix fans is to NOT spend a lot of money on expensive extra equipment for 5.1 until you've lived with it awhile. You may find that as time goes by, you don't like it much either. In my experience, it DOESN'T grow on you - it just starts to wear thin after awhile.

 

Great post, dwmann, but in point of fact Quad DID die because there was no lasting interest among the majority of consumers, even though there were a number of people who were impressed by the gimmicks.

In today's world things are quite different though. Most of the local shops that used to be audio are now video, and the more expensive their home thee-yay-dur system is (that's the way it's pronounced locally) the happier they seem to be.

I have a friend with two multi-channel receivers, 10 speakers and two subwoofers in his family room. He found that if he mixed the speakers and channels up the sound was even more "spectacular." He has Y adaptors connected to his SACD player so that it can be connected to both receivers at the same time. On the MC JT Hourglass he probed for my agreement that it was like hearing 3 James Taylors at one time all over the place. Of course, I agreed that it DID, in fact, sound like there were 3 James Taylors all over the place and I wasn't lying.

Many new home buyers around here are having the architects design rooms for HT/surround sound, so the installation crews at the video stores are far larger than the sales departments. They're out there putting the wiring in the walls before the sheet rock goes up. Then they come back when the house is finished to install the equipment and speakers.

So, don't be surprised if MC does take off. Anything's possible.

 

Quad did NOT die because the mixes were gimmicky (which is not to say that there weren't any gimmicky mixes). Quad died because:

1. For the average consumer, the primary playback media (vinyl LP records) could not adequately reproduce four audio channels.
2. There were too many competing formats leading to confusion in the marketplace.
3. The cost of the extra equipment was prohibitive.

In today's marketplace, issue number 1 has been eliminated. With the advent of digitial technologies, multiple audio channels on the primary playback media are no longer a challenge. Issue number 2 exists today, but not to the extent that it did in the 70's. Issue number 3 is as true today as it was in the 70's, but also to a lesser degree.

Basically, quad died because, technologically, it was ahead of its time as a mass-market product.

Anyway, I hear you saying that you are against gimmicky surround-sound, but reading between the lines, it seems you believe that all surround-sound is gimmicky. That's fine, but your seeming authoritative take on the matter excludes those whose opinion differs. It's the usual nose-in-the-air brush-off of anyone who doesn't subscribe to the "stereo is the only way" mentality. If that's not "bashing" then I don't know what is.

 

I'm Tempted to say,

It's a "Ball of Confusion"

 

I really like the new Hotel California surround mix.

The DVD-A disk gives you a choice of which mix you want to hear. What's not to like?

A further thought: Engineers mixing down to two-channel stereo routinely check to make sure that their mixes also sound good in mono, since they'll be heard that way on a lot of radios. I'm quite sure that engineers doing surround mix will also check to see that their mixes sound decent in two-channel stereo, and probably mono as well, for similar reasons. I know that the surround mix of Hotel California sounds just fine in two-channel stereo -- no, it's not the same as the album mix, but if you didn't have that as a reference I'd bet you'd be OK with it.

One more little point: "stereo" does not necessarily mean two-channel. IIRC the term comes from a greek word meaning "solid", and was coined to indicate the sense of space you hear from a good, "three-dimensional-sounding" stereo recording. It can just as easily be applied to multi-channel. But of course you'll catch me using it to mean two-channel as well. Old habits die hard. (Is it cliche night?)

 

Gee, vex, with DTS, THX, Dolby Digital, DVD-A, SACD available today, how could it be that there are fewer competing MC formats today? Back in the 70's there was SQ and something else on records, but there was a 4 channel open reel tape format too. Thats three for the 70's against five today.

As for point # 3, I think you're right on a real cost basis. I have friends who've bought speakers at radio shack for $10 each, which in 1970's dollars would have been about $2.00, and I confess I don't know of any speakers that sold for that little back then. Since average household incomes in the early Seventies was probably around $6K a year, those $150 SQ Sansui receivers took a big chunk out of a family's disposable income.

As I noted above, most of my non-audiophile acquaintances are very interested in Surround Sound. One guy I know recently signed a deal for an $80K home theater system for the new home he & his wife are building. The speakers will be in the ceiling, though, as his wife doesn't want them cluttering up the place. Ain't that special?

 

Audiophile labels using 5.1 attempt to recreate the illusion of listening to live music in a real acoustic space to a greater degree than is possible with two channels.

Sgt. Pepper, whether in stereo or mono, was an attempt to create something entirely new.

Most non-concert popular music recordings make very little attempt to reproduce the sound of live music in a real environment.

 

Reference? But it's a 25-year-old recording! The way the album sounds is etched upon my mind, everyone who was old enough to remember it has a two-track playing in their heads! If the new stereo mix-down isn't the same, people WILL notice!

Sorry for the two song references! They just came into my head.

 

Grant, what I was trying to say was that if the only two-channel mix of Hotel California you'd *ever* heard was the surround mix folded down to two channels, I think you'd be able to live with it. It's not horrible. It's quite good.

 

I feel a lot of love on this thread.

 

Pardon me for jumping in, but in the '70s there were "records" encoded as SQ, QS, DynaQuad, EV-Quad, Matrix-H, CD-4, UD-4 and probably some others I've forgotten. Some of these systems were more or less compatible with others, some were not, and most consumers didn't know the difference. In addition, the quad that most consumers were actually able to hear simply did not work well. Those are the primary reasons for Quad's demise.

 

And the world will be a better place!

 

For you AND me...just wait and see!

 

All together now,
Put a little love in your heart!

 

THX is not a surround-sound format.

If you want to get picky, here are the competing quad formats from the 70's:

1. SQ LP
2. QS LP
3. CD-4 LP
4. UD-4 LP
5. EV-4 LP
6. Dynaco LP
7. Q8 (quadraphonic 8-track)
8. Q4 (quadraphonic reel)

So, you have eight formats on three media. Today we have four formats on four media (CD, DVD, DVD-A, SACD) or you can call them all digital discs and be done with it.. But for all intents and purposes, you can boil these down to DVD-A and SACD as the current marketable formats. Also, there is a higher degree of compatibility amongst today's formats, much better hardware support for multiple formats, etc. So, I still assert that there is less confusion than there was in the 70's. Today, it is much easier for a consumer to buy a disc and be able to decode it correctly than it was in the 70's. However, the confusion certainly still exists and may (again) spell the demise for surround (is that waves of applause I hear?)

Typical below-the-belt punch...

 

Oh come on!! We live at least 300 miles apart! Do you expect me to believe that you could hear me applauding all the way from there? Actually, I find surround absolutely great for movies and if you enjoy it for audio...that's cool too.

 

I am of the opinion that if so many folks had not previously purchased surround systems for their movie viewing that it would never have been taken seriously in the audio realm today.

 

Interesting thought. I think the audio industry definitely identified DVD-A as a complimentary product to home theater.

 

Actually, I think 5.1 mixed properly with the surrounds used for greater ambience sounds a LOT better than stereo/2 channel, and comes closer to sounding like something REAL than the best stereo ever COULD. However, the only people mixing this way at this time seem to be small audiophile labels. If I want to buy mainstream rock in 5.1, it seems most of what is out there uses gimicky mixing techniques. My point is that I think gimicky 5.1 will endanger the format.


You get TIRED of hearing James Taylors coming from all over the place after a while, no matter how entertaining it is at first. I'm not bashing 5.1 - if I'm bashing anything, it's gimicky 5.1 mixes, especially when they DON'T at least include a hi-rez stereo version. I know some people like this stuff, and that's fine, but every release mixed in gimicky surround is just one more title we won't be seeing a "musical" 5.1 mix of any time soon (or a hi-rez stereo version if it's not there already). And long after people tire of these gimicky mixes (and MANY will) these discs will STILL be the only 5.1 versions available. That's scary. The problem isn't surround. It's the way it's being mixed. And I predict that for MOST music, ten years from now people will look back on gimicky surround mixes in the same way people look at the "electronically rechanneled to simulate stereo" mixes of the 60s. As something that was TRULY a dumb idea.

There was no lasting interest on the part of consumers because they stopped being impressed by the gimmicks, and Quad (for the most part) offered little else because of the mixes. At least, that's what happened in MY neck of the woods. I was in LOVE with quad at first. Everyone I knew was. We wished EVERYTHING was in Quad. (I still have a bunch of old Quad LPs.) But we got SICK of it after awhile, once the newness wore off. And all those decoders ended up in the garbage.

I would very much like to see 5.1 succeed. I just don't think it WILL succeed as a gimicky format with instruments coming from everywhere. Gimicky mixes are a novelty. They come with a garanteed WOW factor. But few novelties survive long, no matter HOW popular they are. Like pet rocks or Rubrick's cubes. Once you've showed it to all your friends and played with it a while, it gets boring. Because it's just a toy. People get tired of toys, even expensive ones. I could be wrong, and gimicky surround mixes could be the wave of the future, but I doubt it. However, I think MUSICAL 5.1 mixes might start people listening to MUSIC again, instead of it just being something that happens in the background. And I can't see that happening with mixes that stick you in the middle of a bunch of instruments coming from all corners. And if the general public doesn't buy in to this stuff, eventually our SACDs and DVD-As might be useful as coasters, but you won't be able to buy anything that will play them, and the only thing we'll be listening to through our surrounds will be movie soundtracks. In the meantime, every gimicky 5.1 mix that comes out is just one more MUSICAL mix I won't be seeing anytime soon.

 

Earlier in this thread Drew mentioned not taking back ELP's "Brain Salad Surgury" with the mislabled *stereo* which is actually the folded down surround mix; well, I actually DID return mine. Then I posted a response to the reviewer who had inspired my purchase of this DVD-A, but failed to address this fact in his review; in turn the reviewer forwarded my quiry to the recording engineer who responded at the review site, apologizing for the mislabeling while confirming my criticism of his fold-down and excusing the decision as a time related matter. Fortunately, by this time, BEST BUY had refunded my money even though their policy toward opened music is "replacement for defect" only.

As a result of less-than-satisfying listening experiences I've also ceased buying DVD-A releases, even those with legitimate alternative stereo mixes, because I've noticed that all of those I've purchased seem inferior to their CD counterparts in one crucial area which hasn't been adequately addressed, the SOUNDSTAGE! I can't fathom why this is the case, (i.e., perhaps mid-level DVD-A gear such as my Panasonic RP-91 just can't reproduce the quality of soundstage from a DVD-A that my higher-end Parasound CD player can on comparable CD releases), but if that's the case, then why can an el cheapo SACD player, like the unmoded entry level SONY SCD-CE775 carosel I recently purchased, reproduce a believable soundstage on the recent Rolling Stone's hybrids that comes close to matching my Parasound belt-drive player on the CD layer?

My point, not to stray too far from several serious issues raised in this thread, is that listeners should ALWAYS have the option of the original stereo mixes provided in the same hi-rez formats as the surround mixes. To do anything else, with all due respect to those who like surround mixes as well as those musicians who've hopped aboard the high-rez remix/remaster express, is depriving the listener of the joy of hearing original musical experience (i.e., with all it's wonderful F/B soundstage depth). FTR, I've just about reached the conclusion that ALL surround is gimmicky. That doesn't mean I don't find surround effects in movies and *some* music appealing, provided the source material was originally recorded with surround in mind, but not being a musician myself, I personally prefer an audience perspective. Note: That way, if I need to get up and go to the restroom I won't feel like I should excuse myself and apologize to the musicians seated around me!

Cat