[Audio Empire]

On Fri, 24 Jun 2011 20:48:42 -0700, Olafur Gunnlaugsson wrote
(in article ):

Þann 24/06/2011 17:02, skrifaði Gary Eickmeier:
[ Entire quotation snipped as not being relevant to
the new article. -- dsr ]



On a more practical level....

Have you played with the commercial SACD releases from Telarc, and would you
consider them worth the expense over the CD format or Dolby Digital? Are
they 3 front channels, or just two?

They are usually 4.1 or more seldom 6.1 in other words 2 front channels
but many still have a summed or mixed signal for the centre channel
(making it sort of 5.1 and 7.1), the reason for not utilising the centre
channel is that some manufacturers of centre channel speakers limit
their frequency range to be more intelligible for voice applications and
the simple fact that the typical centre channel placement does not help
much in establishing spatial awareness and may in fact hinder, the
centre channel is there for making dialoge appear to come from the
screen after all and not intended for music per se.


Some labels like Pentatone have released old quad recordings from the
70's as 4 channels and some American re-releases have surfaced of
recordings originally recorded on Ampex triples have been released as 3
channel recordings but those 3 channel releases are not surround sound
per se, and you may or may not hear an improvement from a stereo mix and
may need to play with your set-up for optimal use.

Actually, you need three identical channels )including speakers to get these
three- channel recordings to sound correct. They have spectacular soundtage
even though three omnidirectional mikes (L-C-R) are wrongheaded in my
opinion. X-Y or M-S or other true stereo techniques is always the way to go
for real stereophonic sound.

Some of these old 3 channel recordings have sounded superb however,
especially a couple of the Mercury recordings, the old Philips quad
mixes are also an interesting listen if only to hear the tendency to
emphasise the quad much like happened in the early days of stereo, and
the sound quality is surprising as well.

Certainly, the "quad" is over-emphasized in a lot of these, but remember, the
S-Q and Q-S matrix systems that were used limited the separation between two
of the channels (front to rear with S-Q and right to left with Q-S) to only 3
dB (without logic steering). 3 dB is barely audible, so they had to do
something to make the quadriphonic effect seem to be adequate.