I'm not sure if this is the appropriate forum. This does relate to both downloads and streaming though.
Steven Wilson, who needs no introduction here, remarked at this year’s Munich High-End, that stereo is already spatial. He took the words right out of my mouth, as I’d been thinking along the same lines.
Why is Stereo (for most of us) an advancement over Mono? I think the main advantage is greater separation of instruments and voices.
Also on John Darko’s video podcast with Srajan Ebaen of 6Moons, Srajan mentioned the BAACH filter as implemented in the Dutch & Dutch speakers.
The generic version of the BAACH filter can be purchased from BAACH Labs at €915.95. I’d managed to secure it at it’s earlier price of around €400. This filter works great, apart from the fact that when I tried it as a VST/AU plug-in within Audirvana, I had problems when I wanted to use it over UPnP. I reported this on the Audirvana forum; sadly that part is still not fixed.
On that forum Thierry of Home Fidelity mentioned that he’d created his own cross talk cancellation filter, which he calls, X-talk Shaper.
What these filters do, in case you didn’t know, is cancel cross talk between the left and right spealers. Depending on the recording in question, this can have spectacular spatial effects. In my experience this depends very much on the speakers concerned. The more focused/directional the speakers are, the more pronounced the effect is. The opposite type of speaker, such as omnis or electrostatics, and other planar speakers, don’t seem to benefit as much from these filters. As far as Omni-directional speakers are concerned, this limitation is aready mentioned on the BAACH web-site.
The best result I’ve had is with my Avantgarde Trios. The Avantgarde’s are focused. That’s not too say they’re not capable of creating a huge three-dimensional sound stage and that they can’t disappear (aurally); they can. Just that they’re not diffuse, as eletrostatics tend to be.
I haven’t compared the two cross talk cancellation filters extensively. I tend to use X-talk Shaper, because it simply works for me in all situations. It’s also priced at a very competitive €129.00.
A good example of a stereo recording with great spatial effects, using these filters, is Bryan Ferry’s deluxe version of Mamouna
For realy spactacular results though, check out Binaural recordings over speakers! Especially this one…Oxymore Binaural
Make sure you stream (or buy) the Binaural Mix as per the link. Binaural recordings aren’t supposed to work over speakers, and I’ve always wished they would, as I’m not much of a headphone listener. Well now they do! I have a 5.1 system and even though I knew the rear speakers were off, I had to check. The surround effect was that spectacular!
On non-binaural recordings the sounds don’t often appear from behind you, as if you had rear channels, It can happen. More often though, you’ll experience a greater lateral spread and once again, greater intrument and voice separation.
I asked the guy behind homeaudiofidelity.com, Thierry if he’d be open to developing some further VST/AU plug-ins, and he’s been very accomodating.
These plug-ins haven’t been officially released yet; but I think I can share with you what they do.
1/ De-coding of Quad QS and SQ encoded source material
2/ Decoding of UHJ Stereo to B-Format Ambisonic or direclty to Quadraphonic. The B-Format can be further decoded to any desirable speaker configuration, such as 5.1; etc. via a further plug-in. If you only have a stereo pair of speakers, the B-Format Ambisonic can be further decoded to Binaural Stereo, which can then have the X-talk Shaper applied to enjoy the spatial effects over stereo speakers. Although I haven’t found the results of this last approach to be quite as spectacular as applying it to an original Binaural recording.
All this can be done in real-time, though it can be demanding of resources.
What about the source material?
Most of the QS and SQ recordings on this list made it to CDs and are now available via the streaming services. Whilst there is no guarantee that the version on the streaming service will contain the QS or SQ encoded material, most of those I’ve tried have decoded well, via the plug-ins I’ve mentioned.
For Ambisonic, you have to mainly be a classical lover. There is quite a lot of Indian Classical music and other music from around the world as well on the Nimbus catalogue, though.
Almost all Nimbus recordings were made in Ambisonic and are on the CDs and streaming services in UHJ stereo format.
I find these Quad and Ambisonic encodings are like easter eggs hidden in the source material just waiting to be discovered.
Although there are a lot of Atmos releases on Apple Music these days, they are all lossy, so to get the full lossless Atmos experience you need to rip a Blu-Ray that contains an Atmos mix or acquire a lossless Atmos mix from one of the specialist download sites.
Atmos is great. I often read people almost apologising for “only having a 5.1” or less set-up. I think Quad is alredy a big deal when it comes to greater spatial presentation and intrument separation, and even stereo speakers can create spatial audio in the ways I’ve described.
Steven Wilson, who needs no introduction here, remarked at this year’s Munich High-End, that stereo is already spatial. He took the words right out of my mouth, as I’d been thinking along the same lines.
Why is Stereo (for most of us) an advancement over Mono? I think the main advantage is greater separation of instruments and voices.
Also on John Darko’s video podcast with Srajan Ebaen of 6Moons, Srajan mentioned the BAACH filter as implemented in the Dutch & Dutch speakers.
The generic version of the BAACH filter can be purchased from BAACH Labs at €915.95. I’d managed to secure it at it’s earlier price of around €400. This filter works great, apart from the fact that when I tried it as a VST/AU plug-in within Audirvana, I had problems when I wanted to use it over UPnP. I reported this on the Audirvana forum; sadly that part is still not fixed.
On that forum Thierry of Home Fidelity mentioned that he’d created his own cross talk cancellation filter, which he calls, X-talk Shaper.
What these filters do, in case you didn’t know, is cancel cross talk between the left and right spealers. Depending on the recording in question, this can have spectacular spatial effects. In my experience this depends very much on the speakers concerned. The more focused/directional the speakers are, the more pronounced the effect is. The opposite type of speaker, such as omnis or electrostatics, and other planar speakers, don’t seem to benefit as much from these filters. As far as Omni-directional speakers are concerned, this limitation is aready mentioned on the BAACH web-site.
The best result I’ve had is with my Avantgarde Trios. The Avantgarde’s are focused. That’s not too say they’re not capable of creating a huge three-dimensional sound stage and that they can’t disappear (aurally); they can. Just that they’re not diffuse, as eletrostatics tend to be.
I haven’t compared the two cross talk cancellation filters extensively. I tend to use X-talk Shaper, because it simply works for me in all situations. It’s also priced at a very competitive €129.00.
A good example of a stereo recording with great spatial effects, using these filters, is Bryan Ferry’s deluxe version of Mamouna
For realy spactacular results though, check out Binaural recordings over speakers! Especially this one…Oxymore Binaural
Make sure you stream (or buy) the Binaural Mix as per the link. Binaural recordings aren’t supposed to work over speakers, and I’ve always wished they would, as I’m not much of a headphone listener. Well now they do! I have a 5.1 system and even though I knew the rear speakers were off, I had to check. The surround effect was that spectacular!
On non-binaural recordings the sounds don’t often appear from behind you, as if you had rear channels, It can happen. More often though, you’ll experience a greater lateral spread and once again, greater intrument and voice separation.
I asked the guy behind homeaudiofidelity.com, Thierry if he’d be open to developing some further VST/AU plug-ins, and he’s been very accomodating.
These plug-ins haven’t been officially released yet; but I think I can share with you what they do.
1/ De-coding of Quad QS and SQ encoded source material
2/ Decoding of UHJ Stereo to B-Format Ambisonic or direclty to Quadraphonic. The B-Format can be further decoded to any desirable speaker configuration, such as 5.1; etc. via a further plug-in. If you only have a stereo pair of speakers, the B-Format Ambisonic can be further decoded to Binaural Stereo, which can then have the X-talk Shaper applied to enjoy the spatial effects over stereo speakers. Although I haven’t found the results of this last approach to be quite as spectacular as applying it to an original Binaural recording.
All this can be done in real-time, though it can be demanding of resources.
What about the source material?
Most of the QS and SQ recordings on this list made it to CDs and are now available via the streaming services. Whilst there is no guarantee that the version on the streaming service will contain the QS or SQ encoded material, most of those I’ve tried have decoded well, via the plug-ins I’ve mentioned.
For Ambisonic, you have to mainly be a classical lover. There is quite a lot of Indian Classical music and other music from around the world as well on the Nimbus catalogue, though.
Almost all Nimbus recordings were made in Ambisonic and are on the CDs and streaming services in UHJ stereo format.
I find these Quad and Ambisonic encodings are like easter eggs hidden in the source material just waiting to be discovered.
Although there are a lot of Atmos releases on Apple Music these days, they are all lossy, so to get the full lossless Atmos experience you need to rip a Blu-Ray that contains an Atmos mix or acquire a lossless Atmos mix from one of the specialist download sites.
Atmos is great. I often read people almost apologising for “only having a 5.1” or less set-up. I think Quad is alredy a big deal when it comes to greater spatial presentation and intrument separation, and even stereo speakers can create spatial audio in the ways I’ve described.
