Is 5.1 Really the Correct Format for Surround Music?

[fredblue]

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...5-Lou-Dorren-A-new-CD-4-Demodulator!!!/page10

See post #242, post #247 and post #277

From #277:
Best speaker location and pattern were part of the Acoustic double blind study that we conducted at the NQRC (National Quadraphonic Radio Committee). The ideal polar pattern for accurate 2 dimensional Quadraphonic sound reproduction is Cardioid synchronized wavefront generation.

...the speakers are placed in a square configuration with each at a 45 degree angle pointed at the diagonal speaker. The key is symmetry.

-------

IIRC, Audio magazine (USA) published a summary of the NQRC tests,
but I haven't found that article online (yet)

Kirk Bayne

Sounds kinda like the diagram down towards the bottom left hand side..?

 

[4-earredwonder]

Yes, I too have never had a problem with my tower speakers presenting a perfect center phantom image. But I still use a relatively smaller center speaker for movie dialogue as my TV is only 50" and also to help out with recessed vocals such on the Door's Perception 5.1. Is your Stewart Filmscreen somewhat sound transparent? If so, perhaps you could special order a single one of those 6'2" speakers for the center channel.

Those so~called transparent screens would probably do the same thing speaker grills do....the sound would be somewhat muffled. The first thing I did when I took possession of those huge towers (and subs) was to remove ALL the speaker grills, front and back and the sound was SO MUCH BETTER. Besides, the speaker manufacturer is out of business anyway (Genesis). I'm replacing them with FOUR matched Meridian digital speakers at a cost you don't want to know. When I auditioned them with Meridian's $20K (yeah, you read that right) center speaker.....I said....PLEASE turn that center off and you know what....the sound was SO MUCH BETTER without the center speaker and all in the room agreed WHOLEHEARTEDLY.

Imaging is KEY and if you have a good pre/pro and can also program your BD player to eliminate the center and sub channels you won't miss the center and sub, BELIEVE me. Sometimes LESS is WAY MORE!

BTW, removing ALL speaker grills will improve the sound immeasurably. Your significant other may not approve but you can always replace them after your listening session. TRY IT. It won't cost you anything.

 

[fredblue]

Those so~called transparent screens would probably do the same thing speaker grills do....the sound would be somewhat muffled. The first thing I did when I took possession of those huge towers (and subs) was to remove ALL the speaker grills, front and back and the sound was SO MUCH BETTER. Besides, the speaker manufacturer is out of business anyway (Genesis). I'm replacing them with FOUR matched Meridian digital speakers at a cost you don't want to know. When I auditioned them with Meridian's $20K (yeah, you read that right) center speaker.....I said....PLEASE turn that center off and you know what....the sound was SO MUCH BETTER without the center speaker and all in the room agreed WHOLEHEARTEDLY.

Imaging is KEY and if you have a good pre/pro and can also program your BD player to eliminate the center and sub channels you won't miss the center and sub, BELIEVE me. Sometimes LESS is WAY MORE!

BTW, removing ALL speaker grills will improve the sound immeasurably. Your significant other may not approve but you can always replace them after your listening session. TRY IT. It won't cost you anything.

While a mere pleb like moi can only imagine ever lusting after your extra large speakers but never owning such beasts/beauties, I just wanted to chime in to say I do agree with your grille removal point Ralpheeo.. doing so opened up the sound on my old Acoustic Energy's no end (they're very much closed up now, poor things are wedged behind my chest of drawers, I still love them, I can't part with them.. I can barely lift them to get rid of them anyway they weigh a ton! ..I just don't need them anymore/right now!).. but I've run Audyssey a few times on this Denon now and every time I bloody well forget to remove the grilles beforehand and by the time I've realised my mistake its already well into the setup process and I can't be bothered starting over again..!

Maybe (presuming like maaad!) Audyssey compensates somewhat for the grilles being left on?

Maybe not.. hang on.. maybe it does.. and maybe that's why Audyssey keeps boosting the mid and treble so much for every speaker (particularly for the centre speaker, its colossal the way it whacks up the EQ on everything to pretty much the max apart from the bass on the centre speaker..!) everytime I run the setup..??
(Something I've been moaning on about the Denon all the while.. Whoops! Could be my fault all along..!? )

Hmm.. I think you may just have hit on something there Ralph, you little genius.. this could be your "Eureka!" moment, Ralphimedes..! :upthumb
(Ps. Out the tub, its my turn for a scrub-a-dub-dub!)

 

[4-earredwonder]

While a mere pleb like moi can only imagine ever lusting after your extra large speakers but never owning such beasts/beauties, I just wanted to chime in to say I do agree with your grille removal point Ralpheeo.. doing so opened up the sound on my old Acoustic Energy's no end (they're very much closed up now, poor things are wedged behind my chest of drawers, I still love them, I can't part with them.. I can barely lift them to get rid of them anyway they weigh a ton! ..I just don't need them anymore/right now!).. but I've run Audyssey a few times on this Denon now and every time I bloody well forget to remove the grilles beforehand and by the time I've realised my mistake its already well into the setup process and I can't be bothered starting over again..!

Maybe (presuming like maaad!) Audyssey compensates somewhat for the grilles being left on?

Maybe not.. hang on.. maybe it does.. and maybe that's why Audyssey keeps boosting the mid and treble so much for every speaker (particularly for the centre speaker, its colossal the way it whacks up the EQ on everything to pretty much the max apart from the bass on the centre speaker..!) everytime I run the setup..??
(Something I've been moaning on about the Denon all the while.. Whoops! Could be my fault all along..!? )

Hmm.. I think you may just have hit on something there Ralph, you little genius.. this could be your "Eureka!" moment, Ralphimedes..! :upthumb
(Ps. Out the tub, its my turn for a scrub-a-dub-dub!)

Rub A Dub Dub....audiophile in the TUB. Don't forget to scrub behind those all important ears.

Adam, I've made a point to always remove those grills as they act as filters. They may not look as SEXY but what does sexy have to do with sonic nirvana.

I wouldn't be so sure that Audyssey compensates for the grills being left on. It might but why take a chance. I leave those grills off ALL THE TIME but then I don't have to fret about the 'wife factor.'

I knew a gentleman from Austria who so hated the look of speakers in his living room that he placed vases of flowers in front of them (with grills intact) to camouflage them. So much for 'flower power!'

 

[fredblue]

Rub A Dub Dub....audiophile in the TUB.

Adam, I've made a point to always remove those grills as they act as filters. They may not look as SEXY but what does sexy have to do with sonic nirvana.

I wouldn't be so sure that Audyssey compensates for the grills being left on. It might but why take a chance. I leave those grills off ALL THE TIME but then I don't have to fret about the 'wife factor.'

I knew a gentleman from Austria who so hated the look of speakers in his living room that he placed vases of flowers in front of them (with grills intact) to camouflage them. So much for 'flower power!'

"There was a young fellow from Austria
Who covered his speakers with aspidistras..
The sound was so shitty,
It got on his titty
And he replaced them with grilles instead..!"

(c) Fred B. Wordsworth, 2016.

 

[4-earredwonder]

"There was a young fellow from Austria
Who covered his speakers with aspidistras..
The sound was so shitty,
It got on his titty
And he replaced them with grilles instead..!"


(c) Fred B. Wordsworth, 2016.

London's astute Poet Laureate. But then again, AB, placing flowers in front of those speakers might add a bit of context while listening to Joni Mitchell's FOR THE ROSES, the Rolling Stones "Flowers," or that perennial schlock ditty RED ROSES FOR A BLUE LADY!

 

[fredblue]

London's astute Poet Laureate. But then again, AB, placing flowers in front of those speakers might add a bit of context while listening to Joni Mitchell's FOR THE ROSES or the Rolling Stones "Flowers!"

Haha..! Love it! :upthumb

You know, I'm gonna stick my pot plants in front of the speakers next time I play some "Tower Of Flower Power" in honour of you and your Austro-naut friend, Ralphie!

:ugham:

 

[rtbluray]

For those who brought it up, the reason center channel information sounds louder when you switch the center channel to 'off' and the sound is routed to the front left and right channels is because what's mixed to the center channel is designed to be heard from one speaker, so when that information is route to two speakers, the loudness is doubled! That's why when you're creating a down mix of a 5.1 mix, you're supposed to lower the center channel by 3 dB so the level is the same.

 

[4-earredwonder]

Haha..! Love it! :upthumb

You know, I'm gonna stick my pot plants in front of the speakers next time I play some "Tower Of Flower Power" in honour of you and your Austro-naut friend, Ralphie!

:ugham:

If you do that, AB, your speakers may nod out and you'll be left with THE SOUNDS of SILENCE! "Hello Darkness my old friend...."

 

[himey]

Then come over to my dungeon and you will hear a proper phantom center DONE RIGHT. DEAD center and every vowel is articulated perfectly.

My fronts are huge [6'2" tall] flanked by two huge subs [also 6'2"tall and 2000watts] and there's a 102" Stewart Filmscreen smack dab in the middle so there's NO room for a credible center that would match those huge l/r fronts. Even the speaker manufacturer told my audio salon that NO center channel would do my speakers justice. And you know what....it sounds simply astounding...without the center channel.

Problem with no center and inviting friends over is the sweet spot is much more narrow.

 

[himey]

I have no doubt you get great imaging with stereo and quad sources. A good loudspeaker pair can produce an astonishingly good phantom center when properly aligned. But once you go to 5.0 or 5.1 source material, the disk player or preamp/processor takes on the job of dividing the center channel up into a stereo signal pair and mixes it into the front L/R signals in equal quantities. So how do you know the processing portion of it isn't presenting a compromise? From disk to disk the type of center channel information that is present varies drastically. Sometimes dry vocals, sometimes partial vocals with ambiance, sometimes instrumentation with ambiance, (fill in blank here), and all of it with applied EQ, reverb, etc. There is a good possibility that there are small phase differences that will affect front channel playback much more so than if the center channel were reproduced discretely because the process of electronic phase cancellation (as would be done by combining a split center to the front L/R and then routing to the loudspeaker) is a much more severe cancelation than is the acoustic cancelation (that would occur when the fronts and center are reproduced discretely). Since the discrete presentation is what the mixing engineer is listening to when he makes his decisions, I don't see how a center-less system can be as accurate as a system with a center channel, assuming all three front speakers are matched and the goal is to reproduce as best as possible what the mixing engineer intended.

I can understand your difficulty in adding a center channel that would do justice to your L/R pair. You would need to use three matched towers and its not like you can easily hide a speaker of that size. And even then, if you cant orient it the same as the L/R pair, you might be better off with a phantom center anyway. But I suspect that with a good portion of modern 5.1 recordings you would notice a significant improvement if you did go to a matched trio of loudspeakers up front.

Further thought: Another solution would be to purchase another pair of loudspeakers identical to your existing front pair and set them up as a second L/R pair. Add another 2 channels of amplification and produce a phantom center from the discreet center signal. I'll bet you are salivating at the thought of all that additional equipment and spending all the required cash. That would be crazy talk for most people, but ill bet its been done.

As I mentioned in the other thread on basically the same topic, some processors/players will downsample because of the extra workload going from 5.1 to 4.0. Someone mentioned that the Oppo players do this...

 

[fredblue]

Problem with no center and inviting friends over is the sweet spot is much more narrow.

True.. sadly, I have no offline friends who give a fig about surround music, or that would definitely be a consideration!

 

[4-earredwonder]

Problem with no center and inviting friends over is the sweet spot is much more narrow.

The problem with 5.1 surround or 4.0 for that matter is when one sits OFF AXIS, away from the so called 'sweet spot' the whole illusion is off kilter anyway. When you have friends over there is still one sweet spot......and usually anyone who sits in it is deriving the FULL benefit of surround sound....as everyone else is sitting OFF AXIS. Does that make sense?

:51banana: Mr banana is dead center....put him a little to the left or right and he's OFF AXIS!

In my summer home, I have a full 5.1 Bowers & Wilkins (B&W) speaker system with a KRELL 5.1 Power Amp with THREE recliners across the front and usually, I allow my guests to sit in the CENTER seat and I sit to the left so I'm not getting the benefit of neither the center channel nor the surrounds as I'm literally sitting on top of the front left speaker.

 

[fredblue]

For those who brought it up, the reason center channel information sounds louder when you switch the center channel to 'off' and the sound is routed to the front left and right channels is because what's mixed to the center channel is designed to be heard from one speaker, so when that information is route to two speakers, the loudness is doubled! That's why when you're creating a down mix of a 5.1 mix, you're supposed to lower the center channel by 3 dB so the level is the same.

AH! That's brilliant info! Thanks Ryan.

 

[fredblue]

The problem with 5.1 surround or 4.0 for that matter is when one sits OFF AXIS, away from the so called 'sweet spot' the whole illusion is off kilter anyway. When you have friends over there is still one sweet spot......and usually anyone who sits in it is deriving the FULL benefit of surround sound....as everyone else is sitting OFF AXIS. Does that make sense?

my friends are usually way off axis when they come over.. they just can't get enough of that Tanqueray, the lushes!

 

[himey]

I think we can all agree that manipulating channels is not ideal and is definitely a tradeoff. I think that is a seperate from what the origional posting topic was, which was more about what SHOULD be the standard layout.

 

[4-earredwonder]

my friends are usually way off axis when they come over.. they just can't get enough of that Tanqueray, the lushes!

DWL: Drunk whilst listening..........

 

[himey]

DWL: Drunk whilst listening..........

Definitely not a misdemeanor!

 

[fredblue]

I think we can all agree that manipulating channels is not ideal and is definitely a tradeoff. I think that is a seperate from what the origional posting topic was, which was more about what SHOULD be the standard layout.

Indeed..!

So if its in 5.1, play it back in 5.1..

..and if it's Quad, play it back however you like, all that old Quad stuff was whacked out anyway..!

..I mean drums in the rear speakers? really? I've never heard of such a thing! Outrageous..! It can only end in tears

 

[fredblue]

Definitely not a misdemeanor!

Mandatory chez moi :beer2

You got to open your eyes in the morning
Nine o'clock comin' 'out any warnin'
Gotta get ready to go
You say you went out late last evenin'
Did a lot of drinkin'
Come home stinkin'
And you went and fell asleep on the floor
And then your lady comes and finds you asleepin'
Starts in to weepin' 'bout the hours you been keepin'
And you better get your ass out the door

Ain't no crime
Yeah, it's good to get it on to get a load off your mind
It ain't no crime
Well, everybody gets that way some time
It ain't no crime...

Billy Joel (c) 1974​