Stereo Vs. 5.1?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by AnotherEargazm, Nov 23, 2014.

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  1. Helmut

    Helmut Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Germany
    I like the idea of surround but it doesn't fit with my habbits. It's a nightmare to start a surround recording with all the different formats and menus.
    And I'm not the kind of guy who just sits in a chair for 50 minutes holding my head in the perfect listening position. So...I have that stuff, but I rarely use it.
     
  2. Seagull

    Seagull Seabird flavour member

    Location:
    Dorset,England
    I have only heard top flight 5.1 at dealer demos.

    Apart from the cost of the extra kit, speaker placement would be a major nightmare in most UK rooms. The contest beween getting the best sound vs WAF only has one winner.

    I am fortunate enough to have my own listening room and speaker placement in there is to my requirements but they are borderline on the recommended distances from rear/side walls.
     
  3. dpv2008

    dpv2008 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ukraine
    I like both.
     
  4. I like my Blu-ray Concert discs in 5.1, but for SACD I prefer 2.0
     
  5. Jim T

    Jim T Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mars
    ------------------
    You are always better to have 2 great speakers than 5 good ones. Music through HT can be fun and I enjoy my MC sacds and my music DVDs.
     
    scobb likes this.
  6. KeithH

    KeithH Success With Honor...then and now

    Location:
    Beaver Stadium
    Obviously many people still enjoy listening in stereo.

    I prefer listening in stereo to surround. Many surround mixes are gimmicky. They're nice for a change of pace, but I find stereo more enjoyable.
     
  7. lennonfan1

    lennonfan1 Senior Member

    Location:
    baltimore maryland
    I've been into surround since 1972 and I prefer it in most cases. I even fold back stereo information into my rear speakers. It sounds fuller to me.
     
    bherbert, fredblue and rd1 like this.
  8. pablorkcz

    pablorkcz ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️

    That's just not true. Ever since someone discovered they could edit out mistakes, recording music has been straying from that ideal. Recording music is about creating a a piece of art that stands on its own, apart from the simple "reproduction of a live performance".
     
    T'mershi Duween likes this.
  9. pinktree1

    pinktree1 Forum Resident

    Of course it's gimmicky, but I love it. If you can stand 2 and a half minute with Pink Floyd, listen from 16:00-18:30 with headphones.

     
  10. Why not just tell us what he said, since you're so keen on having us know.

    I do about 95% of my listening through headphones, so 5.1 doesn't do me much good.

    But Steven Wilson's 5.1 mix of Thick As A Brick does sound pretty great.
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2014
  11. tootull

    tootull Looking through a glass onion

    Location:
    Canada
    :righton:
     
  12. Tristero

    Tristero In possession of the future tense

    Location:
    MI
    Some music cries out for more of a widescreen cinematic approach, particularly more complicated stuff with dense arrangements. Steven Wilson has worked wonders with the likes of King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Yes and Gentle Giant. 5.1 offers this sometimes convoluted material more room to breathe, so listeners can pick out the different parts more easily (though Wilson typically does this in a fairly natural sounding way, not as "gimmicky" as some of the 5.1 mixes I've heard). In the past, I had trouble getting into an album like KC's Lizard, where the arrangements get to be difficult to penetrate and almost claustrophobic at times, but the surround mix really opened it up for me.

    I love stereo and mono too, but a really well done 5.1 mix can be a revelation.
     
  13. Humbuster

    Humbuster Staff Emeritus

    Traditional 2 channel stereo.
     
    Joshua277456 likes this.
  14. detroit muscle

    detroit muscle MIA

    Location:
    UK
    all of the music I have in 5.1 I also have in stereo. Sometimes I prefer one, sometimes the other. Sometimes I go and eat a sandwich.
     
  15. lennonfan1

    lennonfan1 Senior Member

    Location:
    baltimore maryland
    I'd also like to add that I see mono, stereo and 5.1 as alternatives and rather loathe all these at war 'Vs.' threads. To me there's no war. It's all good:)
    Each has its own 'thing' which makes them special. Mono has that 'in your face' punch with a singular aural focus, stereo offers left to right as well as front to back separation to open up space, 5.1 expands the space from solely in front to all around. I like the mix differences between formats as well, when done well of course. Having gone from horrible matrix quad lps and quad 8-tracks to the splendor of multi channel in the digital age has also been most welcome. Bring on more titles!
     
    fredblue, jsayers, rd1 and 2 others like this.
  16. chumlie

    chumlie Forum Resident

    All depends on what the music was designed for IMO. I enjoy them both.
     
  17. micksmuse

    micksmuse Forum Resident

    Location:
    san diego
    newsflash: this morning i heard a knock on the door and three well dressed people with books in their hand spent 5.1 minutes trying to talk me into giving up stereo and going to surround.
    they were extremely nice people and very passionate about it and said "it's the only way to musical heaven"
    and it WAS the first time any "surrounder" (a new cult i imagine) has tried to force their opinion on me.
    if you are insecure with your mono or stereo proclivities please, by all means don't answer the door. they are out there.
     
    Steel Horse likes this.
  18. tootull

    tootull Looking through a glass onion

    Location:
    Canada
    Surround sound is a religion, just keep your hands off that church echo button. ;)
     
  19. wolfram

    wolfram Slave to the rhythm

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    Says who? How do you explain Bowie singing with two voices on "Space Oddity"? It can't be done live, unless he clones himself.

    A studio recording is not a live concert and it's not bound to the same limitations.
     
  20. edbert

    edbert Forum Resident

    Location:
    PA USA
    Nice guest editorial by Allen Clapp (The Orange Peels) in Magnet Magazine last year...

    "Why is it so hard to buy a good stereo these days? Over the past decade or so, a number of my friends and I have found ourselves in the position of needing to replace our stereo systems.

    In the olden days, the remedy for this situation was to go to Radio Shack, the Good Guys or just about any department store or hi-fi shop and buy a replacement. No problem.

    Over the past few years, it’s become nearly impossible to find a good stereo. The places that used to carry stereos now sell things that look a lot like good stereos on the surface. But what they’re really selling in these places are digitally processed, multi-channel home-theater systems.

    This is not a stereo.

    Don’t be fooled when the sales person describes how easy it is to achieve spectacular digital reproduction of your favorite music on this system. It is a lie, and really the thing they’re selling you is not designed to reproduce what we think of as music.

    OK. That sounds pretty ridiculous, and some of it may not be completely true. However, the part that is true is that most big-box outlets, electronics stores and home-entertainment retailers won’t be able to sell you a simple, good sounding two-channel sound system.

    The things they sell are designed to reproduce more than two channels of audio. They’re designed to play back sounds encoded into DVD and Blu-ray discs to recreate the sense of being in a movie theater, where there are speakers in front, to the sides and to the back of the viewer.

    So, if your first order of business is to reproduce movie sound, you probably actually do want to buy one of these monstrosities, and hook up the required number of speakers (at least five) and be prepared to organize your entire living room around the placement of said speakers.

    But if what you really long for is a way to listen to music and have it sound musical, a simpler approach must prevail.

    Salespeople, technology magazines and the home-entertainment industry want to convince you, the listener, that you’re somehow not getting the whole experience of music unless you listen to it in surround sound. This is not true, for a billion reasons, some of which I’ll go into in a bit.

    The first and most important reason is that this music was never recorded with the idea that it would be listened to in this way. Unless the disc you have is a DVD-audio disc mixed specially for multi-channel delivery, it wasn’t designed to come out of five speakers.

    From the mid 1960s until now, almost all music has been mixed and mastered for two-channel audio for one simple reason: Most people have two functioning ears.

    Now what about features that purport to deliver the sense of the music being performed in a real acoustic space—the rear channels certainly would help the listener feel like they were right there on stage with the band, right? This is B.S.

    Unless you listen to music in an anechoic chamber, the room your speakers inhabit has an acoustic signature of its own. Speakers interact with the acoustics of the room. Some of the sound reaches the listener’s ears directly. Some of the sound the sound emanating from the speaker bounces off the ceiling, walls and floor before it reaches the listener’s ears.

    That sound that bounces around in the room arrives at the listener’s ears after the direct sound. Recording engineers and acoustic experts call this “reflected” sound. If you were to listen to speakers in a room with no acoustic reverberance whatsoever, you would only experience the direct sound from the speaker. But because very few people have such a room (and because few people could tolerate being in such an isolated acoustic environment for very long without feeling extremely claustrophobic), most music interacts with the room acoustics to some extent.

    This means your ears are actually getting sound from the front, back and sides of the room when you listen to just two speakers. It happens if you only listen to one speaker as well (back to mono!). The difference between this natural, reflected sound and the “Dolby Digital” five-channel sound of modern home-entertainment systems is that those reflections are created digitally. They’re phony.

    Sure a lot of music is recorded in studios that use digital effects to create a sense of space in a mix, but at least those sounds are intentional elements of the recording process. Since the 1950s, “fake” means of creating reverb have been employed in recorded music—from spring and plate reverbs to tape echo and isolated reverb chambers. But when additional effects are added at the listening stage, you get further and further from what the music actually sounds like.

    Now I realize most home entertainment systems have a mode to bypass all that digital five-channel crap and just give you the stereo signal, but I have to say I’ve been completely underwhelmed by their ability to do a good job of it. Whenever I have to listen to music on one of these things, it rarely sounds like the music is being fairly represented, and it never sounds fun.

    Maybe the reason for this is that the system isn’t really designed to do a good job of it. Most of these systems have a lot of EQ going on to optimize the sound of the center channel, subwoofer and rear channel sound for movies. If you want to hear a really impressive explosion, definitely invest in a home-theater system!

    But if you listen to the Kinks or Miles Davis or Ralph Vaughan Williams, chances are you’re gonna want to hear it in the way it was designed to be heard: in stereo (unless you have an early pressing, in which case, you want to hear it in mono).

    So where do you turn these days to get a good stereo?

    You’re probably going to have to find a hi-fi shop locally or go online. But here’s the good news. There are some great sounding stereos out there right now, and they’re not that expensive.

    I recommend getting what’s called an integrated amplifier. It’s different than your parents’ old “receiver” because it doesn’t have an AM/’FM tuner built in. Simply put, it’s an amplifier for your speakers and headphones that has a number of inputs for things like a turntable, mp3 player, satellite TV or whatever you decide to hook up to it.

    Manufacturers such as Rotel, Marantz, NAD and a host of others have made these things since the 1970s, and they’ve continued to improve them ever since. There are newcomers in the market that offer hi-fi options for a little more dough, and you might want to look into manufacturers who make integrated amps that feature built-in digital-to-analog converters to interface more gracefully with your digital gear (many current model TVs for instance, only have an optical digital output). Or you could purchase a stand-alone digital-to-analog converter (most people call them a DAC).

    I’ll just say that one of the reasons people seem to prefer analog sound sources to digital is because cruddy converters on the listening end usually end up making things like mp3s and CDs sound worse than they should (there are converters built into iPods, iPhones, CD players, Home Entertainment Systems … you name it—if the source is digital, it has to be converted to analog in order to be heard).

    Build your system around one of these and you won’t be disappointed. Of course, you’ll need some nice speakers, too! I love speakers and own many, many pairs. They’re really cool, and basically haven’t changed much since their invention in the early 20th century. (See earlier post about Altec 604Bs.)

    For now, just try to remember that music should be fun! Let’s try and keep it that way."
     
  21. AudiophilePhil

    AudiophilePhil Senior Member

    Location:
    San Diego, CA
    If you prefer listening as an audience/spectator, stereo is the preferred mix.
    If you prefer listening as if you are one of the musicians in the recording, 5.1 is the preferred mix.
     
  22. Joshua277456

    Joshua277456 Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Only after about the mid-1960s where tape manipulation really started to get off the ground, did artists intentionally create mixes that were too impractical to perform live. I'm saying, the basic idea of sound reproduction, in terms of music, is to reproduce what artists would do live. Play for an audience whether it would be on the street, a jazz club, at a concert, etc.
     
  23. fantgolf

    fantgolf Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rochester, MN
    It's just a different soundstage. Mostly stereo for me but I can really enjoy 5.1 if done right.
     
  24. katstep

    katstep Professional Cat Herder

    This.
     
  25. gd0

    gd0 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies

    Location:
    Golden Gate
    There is no "vs". There are choices.

    (Bolds mine) A little dogmatic, huh? Not exactly established fact there.

    Or you could drop the odd concern with calculating how to be The Smartest Shopper On The Internet, and just acquire things that will bring enjoyment.

    More dogma. This is ART – there are no rules. There is exploration and discovery. That's the whole point. Sure, assess and pursue your personal preferences, but others needn't accept proclamations thereof.

    Dark Side of the Moon, among many, many others. Yeah, I know you don't like Floyd – one of those Personal Preferences I was talkin' about.

    So what? That's not the sum-total holy-grail end-all-be-all of a musical experience. There are more possibilities beyond sitting in front of Creedence playing a bunch of bar tunes.

    Anyway, this is a non-argument. Sure, this is a place for opinions, but presenting them as The Way Things Should Be will necessarily draw counterpoints.

    Me? I have a modest system for each. Each trumps the other on certain recordings. The palette is expanded. Choices are good. I'm a happy guy. Musically, anyway. :whistle:
     
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