We all do it

Used to mainly use Dolby PLII Music mode, but have increasingly found myself sticking to straight 2-channel stereo; on my Marantz SR7200 PLII seems to lose a certain amount of detail.

The receiver actually spends most of its time in PLII Movie mode for general TV.

Not all of us...

Some play 2CH recordings through 2 channels and MCH through multiple channels...as the producers intended.

We all don't do it. I've never heard a 2-channel recording processed as pseudo-multichannel on any system that sounded as good to me as stereo. It's certainly true of my own system. Even without the boat-anchor sound of a synthetic center channel, there's nothing that can be synthesized from a stereo recording that doesn't *sound* synthesized or, and best, randomly spacially-smudged.

A good multichannel mix is a joy to listen to. Bad multichannel is even more horrible than bad stereo.

R

Another vote for that

On my Pre-Pro I have Anthem Logic available for pseudo-surround and do not use it.
2Ch for Stereo, MC for MC.

Another one that doesn't do it

The newly remastered I Robot from Alan Parsons is pretty darn good in PLII.
If I feel a stereo song/album will benefit, I do a software conversion to 5.0.
(I'm not a bass freak, and I don't feel I can do the .1 track justice in most cases)
It's sometimes very time consuming. It's sometimes almost futile. The ones that
turn out good are sometimes either very discrete, or have an amazing soundfield
overall.

regards,
boondocks

I certainly agree with your second statement.
If, with your first statement, you mean hardware processing such as DPLII,
I have found a few gems that DPLII does justice to.
There are software methods that , with a lot of work, will generate a multichannel
output, varying from an overall enhanced soundfield to really discrete.
.....and sometimes the methods will never satisfy those looking for "discrete"
multichannel-whether or not the overall sound excels.
JMHO

regards,
boondocks

Curious, I couldn't find the re-master for I Robot, so picked up Eye in the Sky for $10...I played it pure 2channel, Surround Off w/sub and DPLIIx. I ended up pure 2 channel, but the Dolby wasn't bad at all. The soundstage got more 3d, but the center didn't sound as natural. I'll experiment a bit, but normally I won't touch the DPLIIx matrix mix...

Ron, I have not yet received the remaster of EITS, so I can't comment on that.
There is certainly no perfection with either hardware or software decoders
for every song!
It's a very long story about 2--3--5.1 channel conversions.
Gerzon, Halfner, Klipsch and others wrote papers expounding their theories/concerns
about 3 speaker fronts (Trifield , etc), quad, and eventually what we know as
multichannel processing from stereo evolved. (be it hard/software)

I can tell you these statements I believe to be factual: Hardware upconversions
to multichannel are very convenient and have the instancy required for most folks requirements, excepting
those, and I often include myself here, who do not find those conversions
adequate for music that we actually sit down and listen to.
Software conversions, while not having the immediacy of hardware logic chips,
often offer a much more satisfying soundfield, albeit time and effort is involved.
Please excuse my rambling.

regards,
boondocks

Depends on the CD, if I go 2 channel stereo or let DPLII at it, and my mood at the time.

I'm with Rupert,rdclark,PaulT_BC,and mrkeeling.

I'm a huge fan of projects mixed in discrete 5.1 but would never run a stereo mix through a dolby processor.

So no, we definiately don't all do it.

Someone once said that if you do it, you'll go blind.

I's relly hard to tpe with the aid of a seing-eye dog, LOL.

I dont do it either - In fact I have quite a few multichannel SACD's and DVD-A that I prefer listening to in stereo.

Out of curiosity, could you name any rock multichannel SACD/DVDA that you
have that you would prefer to hear in Stereo?

I don't do it.

And I also quite often listen to my multichannel hirez discs in stereo with my fronts set to LARGE and no sub. I don't necessarily prefer them that way, but sometimes I just wanna hear my fronts, alone, in hirez stereo.

some of my live cd's sound good

I admit that I listen to most of my music on my Denon using the 6 Channel Stereo setting. I know that is probably sacreligious to some out there, but most of the time it sounds great. There have been a few times that I switched it back down to Stereo, because my ears were feeling "fatigued" by the 6 Channel, but that's on the rare occasion.

I couldn't give you an artist, song or albumn breakout on which sounds better in which mode.

Having said the above, I never use the other soundfields while listening to music, such as Club or Arena or the others. I have tried PLII and DTS Discrete on occasions, but the 6 Channel seemed to work best, and I seem to recall that according to the Denon instruction manual, the 6 channel was the preferred setting.

/snip

/snip

Well, Sir,
If you've read very much here, you'll find that many of us just agree to disagree.
I listen to what I like, any way I like that I enjoy.
All the pedantic nonsense aside, you only have to satisify yourself!

regards,
boondocks

Sheer heart attack - Queen, sounds great in Dolby pro II. Would love to hear this one on a SACD.

I agree with Joe Hendrix, I find myself listening to most of my music on my Marantz 7100 in 6 channel stereo, I know it's not "pure" but I like the way most things sound in that mode, they sound richer and fuller to my ears. I find it's especially good at parties when you really want to fill the room with sound. It also somtimes use it when watching TV at night because the surround speakers are a little closer to my listening position and so sometimes it seems like I can hear the shows more easily at slightly lower volumes.
I have played around a little with some surround formats with some music though not that much. I find myself enjoying the Circle Sound setting on my receiver (that's CS 5.1, the next year I beleive is when Martantz started putting CSII (which does 6.1) on receivers, but I've only got a 5.1 set up anyway so... no huge loss as far as I now) more than DPLII, I found it did a very nice job with Tools most recent album 10,000 Days, a few tracks where there were things like lightning and such it put them in the surrounds and it really sounded like it was happening behind me off in the distance. I've actually found myself over the years liking Circle Sounds treatment of various stereo sources, especially TV more then DPLII's, it usually sounds a bit fuller and I find speaking to frequently be clearer and louder, and it tends to put sound effects where I'd expect them to be. Anyway that's my two cents!

I've tried DPLII and DTS Neo:6 Music a number of times on 2 channel recordings, but I always go back to 2 channel. I do love all my MCH discreet mixes (hi-res and standard res) and wish my entire collection was available like that, so it's not that I don't like MCH sound. For TV and 2 channel DVDs, DPLII Movie is ALWAYS on. (For sports, my receiver has a setting called Enhanced that works great, especially with hockey.)

There are some 2 channel recordings that sound decent with DPLII Music, but so far, to me, they have all been Dolby 2.0 (either on DVDs or the music channels on my cable box). That seems to work much better than from a non-Dolby source. I have no idea if it is true or not, but it seems to me that Dolby 2.0 recordings have a Dolby Surround encoded within them or something that makes those tracks more compatible, and thus better sounding in matrixed MCH, with DPLII. Who knows?

if its done in 2ch thats how i normally play it with the exception of the live
performances i kind of like what pl2 does to it give it a try.

I went through a phase of trying everything I have through the various PseudoSurround modes, DPL II (In all it's variations, including DPL & LCRS types), Neo DTS etc and have come to the conclusion that whilst there are indeed some CD's that will decode beautifully into surround, these are usually in the minority and all that happens is a greatly reduced output level & poor imaging.
Additionally, with the modern trend for crushing the living snot out of music with horrors like L2 and Finalizers, you end up[ with a massively phase smeared output as well, with L-R tanking out & very little coming from the rears and the centre channel pumping like a bastard.
Those that do decode are oftemn old CD's, and equally often unmarked QS or SQ encodes in the first place. Those that are not SQ/QS are likely to be either Q-Sound (This really does decode well) or even material that has whole parts in the mix that are out of phase with the L-R - Hendrix' "Electric Ladyland" is a fine example of this & decodes beautifully, in large part because there is so much phase variation in the mix.

In short - it is always worth trying this on a new disc, or even a "new to you" disc. After all, you never know how it will sound until you give it a try.

It can also be worthwhile experimenting with various upmixing procedures, and writing the results to DTS-CD or DVD-A - after all, media is cheap, tools are plentiful, and you can do some very interesting stuff with little more than a set of MS imaging tools, a Multichannel aware DAW & a little bit of time spent.

Sure...why not? If you are going to upmix to surround, why not add some tracks while you are at it?

More cowbell!


.

i don't do it either.

2 ch gets - 2 channel treatment (ok 2.1 )

multi gets multi.

We do the same, except for cable TV and children DVDs where we use DPLII Movie unless - sometimes - it is music (uses DPLII music or Orchestra that is an Onkyo DSP program) but we very seldom watch music programs on TV prefering CDs instead.

The DPLII movie program gives those not in the sweet spot a better sound, so of course we use that, unless we get 5.x from cable TV.

As written above, DPLII movie program is is always used in children DVDs. In Europe there is a good selection of very good children movies, and they are mostly in stereo.

Wow. And here I thought this was the "Surround Music Formats" area.
What is YOUR impression of what people should talk about in this forum?

Please tell us.

regards,
boondocks