Downgrading actually an upgrade?

I think soundtracks go up to 7.1 for a reason.

If you feel that your system is almost as good without surround speakers as with surrounds, then you probably have set up issues.

In my own sytem, if I switch off the surrounds on a 5.1 soundtrack, the whole soundstage collapses to the front taking the ambience and 3-D effect out of it. In short, the soundtrack becomes uninvolving...particularly in anation flick.

In terms of no center, as long as you sit exactly between your fronts, there is no significant loss in my opinion. But if your wife or friend is watching with you, their off center seating will be bothersome.

I agree with thebland.

I had the same problem with my surround speakers initially, I was very disappointed with the lack of surround sound coming from them. Once I actually read my Denon manual, I found I'd missed a bunch of settings.. It's still not up to par, but I'm redoing my whole HT system shortly.

Two movies come to mind for good surround sound. One is Chicken Run, the scene where one of the chickens is dumped into the oven, and the pilot lights fire one by one. I don't have this movie at home, but saw it in the theater. The pilot lights fired completely 360 degrees around the theater.

The other one is the Grudge, and there's one part where there's squeaking noises firing all around the room, I did experience that at home. It creeped me out. NO way you'd get that with a 2.1 channel system.

I agree that you can have a great experience with a 2.1 system, but I can't give up the surround effect speakers.

I listen to many live concerts on DVD, and the surround channels add an ambiance that cannot be correctly reproduced in 2ch. When mixed correctly, the surrounds can reproduce the accoustical environment of the live venue. It's almost as good as being there (and the seats are more comfortable).

one issue of turning off surrounds in a 7.1 setup is that rarely are the front left and right optimized for stereo imaging in a surround setup; not to mention that in your setup you likely have absorbtion to facilitate multi-channel as opposed to diffusion which is ideal for 2 channel......then you have the listening position issues.

screen realities also can many times compromise ideal 2-channel use.

for movies you are not speaking of real imaging anyway; but a foley stage. for music 'only' a top 2-channel setup will have a more convincing soundstage than multichannel......but not as expansive a feel.

personally; even though i am a 2-channel guy i have 7.1 in my HT for movies.

dubiousdavid: was your center channel identical to your L&R speakers, or was it just a supposedly "matched" center? If it was the latter, I have to wonder what would have happened were you to get a third L&R speaker. Now of course, in many systems that's not going to be possible without obstructing the screen... but if it can be done...

What was the nature of your system, and are you referring to an HT system?

If you listen to mainly music of stereo sources (CDs, records etc, not multichannel music), stereo can be an excellent choice.

If HT or multichannel performance is important to you, I think the benefits provided by 5.1/7.1 systems are quite significant. This does not mean that you can't enjoy a stereo only system, or that you NEED a surround system, or even that you comprimise the quality of the surround system performance to get better 2-channel performance (such as putting a lot more money into high quality L/R speakers than the rest) if that is important to you.

But a properly setup surround system can be very significant for movies that take advantage of it.

Of course, the other question is whether you're watching those kinds of films. For instance, I watch a great deal of old film and foreign film that may only be in stereo or mono, so the benefits of a surround system may be more minimal than for a new big-budget action blockbuster. I mean, if all you watch are Woody Allen movies, then a surround system is an unecessary waste.

So it depends.

Ah, OK David, thanks. In all honesty, I can relate to what you are saying. Before I installed my 7.1 system I had only a pair of Vanderseen 2Ce Sigs. What a great value those speakers are! And I did not miss the center channel. Not surprisingly, the speakers were particularly impressive (for the price at least) with movies with a good symphonic score. I particularly enjoyed Gladiator over those speakers.

But of course, what I didn't have with that system was surround. And for that I am glad I have a 7.1 now (with M&K S150's for LCR.) My center channel is not at the same level as my L&R's, so I angle it up a bit.

For wife friendliness I had to integrate the speakers into cabinetry. But if I did not have that constraint I think I could have achieved a good result by keeping the 2Ce's and adding surrounds & sub. And if I did, I might very well have skipped the center channel!

Diffusion isn't ideal; more of a necessary evil to make up for the lack of surround speakers. 2-speaker playback needs to use the room as a surround processor to create wrap-around envelopment, which is why absorbtion isn't preferred.
Other way 'round.

Most 2-channel music recordings have the bulk of the sound mixed to the centre of the soundstage. This is especially true of vocals. The human voice is not a dual-mono, phantom-imaged, comb-filtering source. Why would you reproduce it through 2 speakers when you never (ever) hear it that way in real life?

Using a third speaker, placed at the centre of the soundstage, will allow those sounds to be reproduced more convincingly (insofar as more closely mimicking how music is heard in real life).

Sanjay

I differ from Sanjay on this topic.

I also certainly would not describe diffusion as a "necessary evil." Diffuse reflections are definitely preferred acoustically over specular reflections.

diffusion is not ideal? really? maybe explain why a concert hall uses diffusion. live music ideally is made in a diffuse space.....particlarly behind, beside and above the performance......the audience is the only absorbtive part of most ideal live music spaces. my room mimics a concert hall in it's layout......and it will out-soundstage any absorbtive room with multi-channel as far as recreating the event. multi-channel can do a better job of envelopment......but not localization of the stage or layering within it.

absorbtion is needed when spaces cannot handle the musical energy or speaker interaction.


as far as center channel verses the ideal stereo setup; it's debatable which will do a better job of recreating the original event.

personally; i have not heard a center channel that approached my stereo pair in center performance. OTOH maybe i've not heard a good enough multi-channel setup.


not in my experience. of course....part of the problem is that almost all the music that is important to me is not avalible in multi-channel.

last night i listened to a 45rpm Lp of Ella Fitzgerald "Let No Man Write My Epitath". that is real life!

i would challenge any center channel to even approach that level of reality......unless you have 15ips multi-channel master tape.

Regarding 5.1/7.1 vs. 2.1, IMHO if you are budget-constrained to say $20K, I think I would enjoy a $20K 2-channel system much more than a $20K 5.1/7.1 system...particularly if the room wasn't a dedicated HT room.

Actually, it is. Proper diffusion will not only soften up direct echoes, but also work to counteract resonant modes in the room. If you compare to the natural environment humans were bred in, a diffuse room is very similar to a wooded grove, where there are tons of micro-reflectors, all uncorrelated. Meanwhile, a reflective room is more like a cave, where the bears live :-)

Not all do. My last visit to Tanglewood, they were using flat panel reflectors. Here in Los Angeles, the Walt Disney Concert Hall was tuned using abosorbers.
But not its size, which is more important since small room acoustics are very different from large room acoustics. You cannot, for example, mimic concert hall reverberation times.
How do you know? Have you done any sort of A/B comparison to a listening room similar to your's but with more absorbtion and optimized for multi-channel playback? Do you have some objective measure to support your claim? Or maybe explain why 2 speakers would image better than a surround set-up?
Imagine a live event where you have a vocalist in the middle of the soundstage. She is pressurizing the air at that location, just as a centre speaker would. How does a phantom image, which is created by your ear/brain mechanism, get the air to pressurize at that location?

The sound from the vocalist goes straight to both your ears, just as it would with a centre speaker. With 2-speaker playback, the sound from each speaker is first heard in the nearby ear and then wraps around your head to be heard in the opposite ear. Which means you literally hear the same mono sound four times, with a timing delay between each pair of arrivals. Those timing differences compete against the ones that allow us to hear soundstage depth (front to back layering). How do your two speakers overcome that?

When it comes to envelopment, 2-speaker and surround can both deliver. With a surround set-up, ambient/spatial cues are heard from the same direction as they were at live event, arriving initially from your sides and behind you. Absorbtion will help cut down on the sonic signature of your listening room. With 2-speaker playback, recorded ambience arrives initially from the wrong direction: in front of you. It is then reflected and scattered around the room for you to hear as ambience. But that adds spatial cues that describe your listening room on top of the spatial cues in the recording that describe the original venue. How do your 2 speakers up front initiate sound from your sides?

Please understand that I am not arguing your personal preference, just explaining the difference between how live events are heard vs how 2 speakers play back the same event.
What do you mean by "cannot handle the musical energy"?
And you probably won't, until you use another of the same model as your centre speaker. When setting up a 2-speaker system, you wouldn't use similar speakers for left & right. You'd use the exact same speaker at both locations. No reason to change that way of thinking just because the soundstage is made up of 3 speakers instead of 2.

Sanjay

I think you've hit on something really important here, and I think you're 100% correct.

Unfortunately, the advent of multi-channel home theater setups has seemed to 'dumb down' audio quality for the vast majority of listeners. Why? For exactly the reasons you mentioned.

20 years ago, when a grad student went out to spend $2500 on a set of speakers, he bought a pair, at $1250 each. Now, the same grad student going out to buy speakers buys a $2500 5.1 set; $750 for the sub, and $350/speaker.

Last time I checked, a $350 speaker rarely, if ever, sounds as good as a $1250 speaker. Not even when coupled with a $750 sub.

Now, this guy will probably eventually go out and buy much better equipment. However, his expectations for audio quality have been set at a far lower level than his 'elders' were.......

[Of course, you could also make the case that MP3s are responsible for the decline in average audio quality requirements.....but that would be another thread.]

Dunno. It may be because stereo, as we have come to know and love it, relies on spurious listening room reflections to achieve a sense of spaciousness, in many (if not most) cases. We accept that as part of a traditional paradigm for domestic listening. What mch and ht has forced us to to do is acknowledge the role that room acoustics plays and to accept that we must deal with it. Most traditional stereophiles (small initial s) are in denial.

Stereo or mch, room acoustics are equally important, even if they are not dealt with in the same way. So, a $20k stereo system is just as in need of acoustical attention as a $20k mch system except that, since it has only 2 channels, the electronics can be of a somewhat higher quality.

When 'stereo' reproduction was developed in the early part of the 20th C, it was determined that three channels across the front was optimal. I'm not aware that these findings have ever been overturned.

I use the same brand and model of speaker all around (except for the sub of course). The only times I;ve heard center channels NOT sound right was when 1) a different speaker was used for the center or 2) the center wasn't set up optimally.

Most of us bang the drum for OAR- why would we do want our audio to be any different? MC sountracks can only be heard properly (ie the way they were mixed) over a MC system. Expanding 2CH sources into faux MC can sometimes be interesting, but can also sound terrible.

I think you miss a lot on action type films with just 2.1, and the dynamics is compromised. Still, good stereo is better than a crappy HTiB rig!

Drawing an analogy to aspect ratio is, in my opinion, erroneous. The two are very much dissimilar. Cropping an image alters the content of the image itself. Using surround-sound processing is not altering the content at all, merely its presentation. There is no accurate statement that can be made that the number of playback channels should match the number of discrete source channels because that simply has never been the case at all. You can prefer that, but it is not at all related to some kind of "accuracy."

Playing a 2.0 source in 2.0 does not have any bearing on the accuracy of the playback, nor does playing a 5.1 source in a 5.1 system.

However, as I've said before, I prefer playing stereo sources back in stereo, I feel it is the best way. But that position is not at all based on any kind of concern with "accuracy" per se. It is not analogous in any way to OAR presentation of a film which cery much concerns questions of accuracy and artistic intent.

Indeed, there are many cases where, assuming this line of reasoning, questions of accuracy and artistic intent would point to very different conclusions: of playing back source content on systems with a number of channels totally different than the discrete channels of the source content.

My point is just that there is no comparison here between this issue(which is a preference issue) and OAR(which is an issue of accuracy and artistic intent).

I have just found that getting a multi-channel setup to sound integrated to be far more difficult than 2-channel (eg. getting the rear surrounds to sound better than "the speakers in the back", and to truly get seamless integration all around the room)...and that to get 2 front channels to sound seamlessly integrated is a far easier challenge. This is not to say that acoustic challenges for 2-channel are "easy"....

That is not surprising and it has been my experience as well. However, despite all the micromanaging of 2channel devotees, it may be simply because we accept the acoustic influence of the room too easily in stereo listening. It is partly due to the necessity of adding some ambience to the 2 channel signals since they were mastered to expect such. With the multichannel, the reliance on room influence is less making the demands for treatement/setup much greater. But so are the rewards.........

Respectfully, altering the amount of playback channels very much alters playback! Compare the SACD remix of Pink Floyd's DSotM to the original stereo to see how much. Alan Parsons was very upset, both with the mix and the fact that he wasn't consulted. I'd say the artistic presentation is extremely different.

IMOHO, the proper way to listen to something is the way it was designed to be heard. Obviously it's a free country, and you're just as free to watch a pan & scan DVD as you are to down mix a MC or use some faux matrixed surround to "expand" 2CH sources. Ultimately, we're not hand copying the Bible! It's just music/cinema, not the end of the world!

Ultimately it comes down to what you enjoy most. Certainly 2 superb speakers and a good sub will probably be more satifying than 5/7 mediocre speakers. And of course, before '77 films generally were mono or stereo. Although I will admit it's sometimes harder to hear everything in a mono mix if there's any background noise.

Compare the SACD remix to Parsons' originally intended quad mix (which has been making the rounds on the internet as a downloadable DVD-A). You'll find they're more alike than different; Parsons' complaints notwithstanding.

BTW, the "original stereo" you mention is a 2-channel down-conversion of the quad mix, done due to technological limitations of music delivery media that were popular at the time, not the original intent of the artists.
That's not a certainty. 2 speakers, no matter how "superb" they are, cannot be in 5 or 7 locations simultaneously.

Just as 2 mediocre speakers can overcome limitations of one superb speaker (the former can throw a stereo soundstage while the latter cannot), likewise 5 speakers can overcome the limitations of 2 speakers.

Whether overcoming those limitations will yield a more satisfying experience 'comes down to what you enjoy most' (as you put it).

Sanjay

? Pink Floyd didn't mix DSotM in quad -- in fact they were rather disdainful of the quad mix back in the day, probably because they felt they had little to do with it; it was commissioned by the record company. That mix was done quickly, after the 2-channel mix; the 2-channel version everyone knows was definitely not a down-conversion of the quad mix. It was of course two-channel mixdown from multitracked parts, as was the case for virtually every other stereo release from after the mono era.

Parsons gave a different account on a videotaped interview with BBC, even mentioning how the band (except for Wright) didn't come to the press launch of DSotM because their label (EMI) failed to install a quad playback set-up at the London Planetarium.

Sanjay

According to Povey & Russell's book, the band boycotted the premiere because the quad mix had not been completed in time, not because they disdained it -- so that's my mistake. But according to Guthrie , the band also listened to the Parsons quad mix for possible use for the SACD release, and elected not to use it. And here is Parsons himself, in Sound & Vision:




If there's stuff in the stereo mix that's 'missing' from the quad mix, how could the stereo mix be just a downmix of the quad? And why would the band not 'OK' the quad mix, if it had been used to downmix to 2-channel?


I think what really happened is that PF, already into quad via their live shows, kept eventual quad release in mind during recording, but didn't actually use the released quad mix as a source. This is borne out by a 1975 interview with Parsons -
http://www.stereosociety.com/FourSides.html



As for the less aggressive use of discrete surround by Guthrie, that several people have mentioned, Guthrie's said in at least one case -- Any Colour You Like -- he'd gone for a wilder mix but Waters made him tone it down.

The error in your thinking is the assumption that the number of channels in the source is "the way it was designed to be heard." There are many many MANY cases where this is not true at all. It is the very basis matrixed channels and the entire groundwork of surround sound.

I said above that you're altering the presentation but not really the content. Pan and Scan DVD is very different because you are actually altering the content in a way that is more significant becaus you are removing information from the source. It seems like a subtle difference, but I think the difference is large. If you were say, EQing audio content so as to try to remove certain instruments from the music or something like that, it might be a better analogy, where you are actually changing the content itself that is being presented, rather than just making choices on how it's presented best.

OK, that explains why the music label didn't have a quad set-up for the press launch. In the Parsons interview I saw, he never gave a reason why EMI did that, just that Wright was the only band member not to boycott the event.
Parsons may have been talking conceptually in the interview I saw and I ended up taking him literally -- my mistake.
Having played both mixes side by side, I find them more alike than different. In fact, I like both: the Guthrie mix for the first few songs and the Parsons mix I prefer from 'Us and Them' onwards.

Sanjay