Listening to Now (Derived/Fake Surround-Specify Method)

[LB-V]

Really rock'n via Stereo 2 Surround QSD-1 style....quite a spectrum of surround...

 

[humprof]

Listening to experimental rock outfit RUSK's latest proggy-orchestral-psychedelic foray, Om Improvement, on Apple Music, using my AVR's Dolby Surround Upmixer. Very convincing quasi-Atmos. Can also be streamed (and purchased) from Bandcamp:

 

[slmccaul]

Bought this CD at a HiFi show in Chicago back in the late 90's and have loved it since. Hope this is the correct forum to post on. Listening to it in a DTS:X upmix into my 4.2.4 Atmos system and it sounds great. The Denon X3600 receiver is a great product for the money I paid for it...

 

[kfbkfb]

Lizzo SPECIAL album - prerecorded compact cassette (no evidence of Dolby NR):

(I bought this cassette today at Vintage Stock, I've seen a few other prerecorded cassettes there, but they weren't albums I was interested in)

Thru DPL2 music (played with a Sony CFD-S70 Boombox) - modest surround effect - in a few songs, the backing vocals were mostly in LB&RB.

(I'm making a DVD-R of my cassette [for personal use], I'll try it on my DynaQuad system later)


edit: Once again, the DynaQuad "decoding" was better than DPL2, the surround channel had content during all the songs and in a few cases could be mistaken for discrete 3 channel surround sound (too bad the receiver makers don't include a "no frills/basic" surround sound decoding mode that is DynaQuad [with all the surround speakers receiving the same audio - no THX type "decorrelation"]).


Kirk Bayne

 

[humprof]

As usual: DSU with center spread on a 5.1.4 system. When you think of Eno, you're naturally inclined to turn to the ambient catalogue for upmixable material. But the classic studio albums hold up, too: I'm getting ready to file away used copies of the 2004 DSD remasters of Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and Here Come the Warm Jets that I picked up last summer, and they really open up, with lots of quasi-discrete elements in the rears.
https://www.discogs.com/release/13540135-Eno-Taking-Tiger-Mountain-By-Strategyhttps://www.discogs.com/release/293891-Eno-Here-Come-The-Warm-Jets

 

[kfbkfb]

Was discussing this album in another thread recently, had some time and I played it w/Fire 7 tablet headphone out into my upstairs DynaQuad system.

Once again, DynaQuad > DPL2 music, it's amazing how DynaQuad (many times) sounds like discrete 3 channel surround sound.


Kirk Bayne

 

[humprof]

Dolby Surround Upmixer (with Center Spread) on my 5.1.4 system makes this beautiful piano-and-bass duo date impressively immersive:
https://www.discogs.com/release/1492507-Larry-Karush-Glen-Moore-May-24-1976
ECM was my gateway drug to jazz as a high-schooler, and after digging Jarrett's Koln Concert I was willing to take a flier on more free improv. (I recognized Glen Moore's name from Oregon, but didn't know a thing about Larry Karush. Further incentive: I think the record store had marked down the LP just to get rid of it!)

I'm slowly cataloguing my collection of physical discs with the aid of Discogs, and moving through my old vinyl has turned into a chance to listen to a whole bunch of albums I'd virtually forgotten about.

https://ecmreviews.com/tag/larry-karush/https://worldmusiccentral.org/2013/...music-pianist-and-composer-larry-karush-dies/https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/in-memoriam/obituaries/june2014/lawrence-karush-1968.html

 

[kfbkfb]

https://www.discogs.com/release/6111979-ABBA-The-Visitors
This CD arrived today, good fake surround sound (DPL2 music) on a few songs (Head over Heels), I hope to find the original CD release since it was the 1st CD manufactured in late summer 1982 (and see if the fake surround is the same [being a digital master recording, I would expect that it is]).

I got the ABBA laser videodisc video compilation back in 1981, the only other ABBA album I have is their new one purchased in late 2021 (haven't listened to either one in fake surround yet).

edit: in the case of the aforementioned song, DPL2 music creates some separation in the fake surround in LB and RB, so it sounds better that the DynaQuad single surround channel fake surround sound.

edit 2: tried this CD on my old Sony D-5 w/single DAC (DPL2 music). Although using a single DAC means the stereo playback is less accurate than LP or cassette, it doesn't seem to affect the fake surround sound as much as I thought it would.


Kirk Bayne

 

[jaybird100]

https://www.discogs.com/release/6111979-ABBA-The-Visitors
This CD arrived today, good fake surround sound (DPL2 music) on a few songs (Head over Heels), I hope to find the original CD release since it was the 1st CD manufactured in late summer 1982 (and see if the fake surround is the same [being a digital master recording, I would expect that it is]).

I got the ABBA laser videodisc video compilation back in 1981, the only other ABBA album I have is their new one purchased in late 2021 (haven't listened to either one in fake surround yet).

edit: in the case of the aforementioned song, DPL2 music creates some separation in the fake surround in LB and RB, so it sounds better that the DynaQuad single surround channel fake surround sound.


Kirk Bayne

I've listened to all of ABBA's albums through the Surround Master. Results vary, but the later albums, beginning with "Voulez-Vous" tend to deliver a better surround effect than the earlier ones. I think it's more in the mix, than whether the original master was analog or digital. If you haven't already, check out "Voyage". Awesome sound.

 

[kap'n krunch]

https://www.discogs.com/release/6111979-ABBA-The-Visitors
This CD arrived today, good fake surround sound (DPL2 music) on a few songs (Head over Heels), I hope to find the original CD release since it was the 1st CD manufactured in late summer 1982 (and see if the fake surround is the same [being a digital master recording, I would expect that it is]).

I got the ABBA laser videodisc video compilation back in 1981, the only other ABBA album I have is their new one purchased in late 2021 (haven't listened to either one in fake surround yet).

edit: in the case of the aforementioned song, DPL2 music creates some separation in the fake surround in LB and RB, so it sounds better that the DynaQuad single surround channel fake surround sound.

edit 2: tried this CD on my old Sony D-5 w/single DAC (DPL2 music). Although using a single DAC means the stereo playback is less accurate than LP or cassette, it doesn't seem to affect the fake surround sound as much as I thought it would.


Kirk Bayne

I have tried fake surround on most ABBA albums and most of them will give you almost nothing which leads me to believe that the engineers were damn good and avoided phase issues in the mixes--

 

[MidiMagic]

Check the label to see if the Haeco CSG system was used on the record Atlantic was using it then. It gets rid of the oversize soloist, but in doing so, it looks a lot like SQ.

 

[jaybird100]

Check the label to see if the Haeco CSG system was used on the record Atlantic was using it then. It gets rid of the oversize soloist, but in doing so, it looks a lot like SQ.

That system was not used on any of Abba's albums. It had already fallen out of favor by the time "Waterloo" was released. Only their American releases were on Atlantic.

 

[kfbkfb]

IIRC, ABBA albums were mixed to have a good mono downmix, also, IIRC, BBC 1 radio was on (mono) AM until the late 1980s when it began moving to stereo FM.

That's probably why there doesn't seem to be much out of phase content on ABBA albums.


Kirk Bayne

 

[The56Kid]

Listened to Big Sugar’s Heated this afternoon and it delivered some very impressive and discrete Pseurround!

 

[kfbkfb]

Listening with the "wrong" decoder - FAVO(U)RITE CHOPIN - Nimbus NI 1409 - UHJ matrix encoded - DPL2 music decode (will try DynaQuad later).

Ambience type recording, LF and RF imaging is kind of vague (I've never heard a UHJ decoder decoding UHJ encoded content, maybe the vague imaging is intentional in this mix and not the fault of the encode/decode mismatch).

edit: just relistened to this UHJ CD w/original DPL - much better stereo imaging, but not as much ambience.

edit 2: DynaQuad - not as good as original DPL, which sounds the best w/UHJ encoded content.


Kirk Bayne

 

[stevendive]

Listening with the "wrong" decoder - FAVO(U)RITE CHOPIN - Nimbus NI 1409 - UHJ matrix encoded - DPL2 music decode (will try DynaQuad later).

Ambience type recording, LF and RF imaging is kind of vague (I've never heard a UHJ decoder decoding UHJ encoded content, maybe the vague imaging is intentional in this mix and not the fault of the encode/decode mismatch).


Kirk Bayne

As I have DPL2 and UHJ (plus B-Format) decoding available in the same box, I thought I'd try your method, so I had a look through my Nimbus collection to see whether I had that Chopin recording but have only NI 5393 - Mazurkas . Scherzo No.3 . Tarantelle. On UHJ decode set to Row C, there is a lot of depth and an excellent sense of being in the space of the piano performance. On DPL2, with plenty of delay (around 15 ms) and some attenuation on rear and sides, the piano was quite solidly central and somewhat 1 dimensional by comparison with full UHJ, which is not unexpected really. I have not tried that many changes to the DPL2 parameters, though. Using DPL2, if the rear & side levels and delays are high and short, respectively, then stereo imaging will be affected quite a bit, which might account for the sense of vagueness you describe, as well as the UHJ stereo matrixing giving vaguely spatial effects via an 'incorrect' decode.

One thing to keep in mind with Nimbus UHJ and the music performance locations Nimbus favours is that these recordings can sound rather 'wet' when played back in stereo, due to quite a lot of reverb energy and loads of reflections reaching the ambisonic mic. Nimbus don't generally use mixes as such for ambisonic recordings, just placing a single ambisonic mic in the listening position they judge to be best. (Nimbus generally uses the Nimbus-Halliday native B-Format mic for ambisonic recording.)

 

[humprof]

Since we'll almost certainly never get multi-channel versions of Fela's music, I'm relying on the Dolby Surround Upmixer (with center spread, on a 5.1.4 system), which doesn't really do justice to the polyrhythmic layers & textures of his compositions, though it still manages to put enough elements (hi-hat, shaker, rhythm guitar) into the rears to make you feel like you're in the middle of them.

Fela was on a tear in 1972, releasing as many as four albums, depending upon how you count 'em--including two of his all-time greats, Shakara and Roforofo Fight. That's what we're listening to right now as we get dinner ready. Go slow, go slow. . . .
https://www.discogs.com/master/150526-Fela-Ransome-Kuti-And-The-Africa-70-Shakarahttps://www.discogs.com/master/150515-Fela-Ransome-Kuti-The-Africa-70-Music-Of-Fela-Roforofo-Fight

 

[humprof]

I haven't really kept up with Lambchop over the past few years, but this review absolutely compelled me to check out the newest release, The Bible.
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/28/1125432600/lambchop-the-bible-review-career-essayBeautiful record. The mix has a blend of acoustic and electronic elements that lends itself well to Atmos, and my AVR's DSU seems to know just where to put each one on my 5.1.4 system. Some tracks sound like they were mixed by a thoughtful human hand. Lots of subtle atmospheric touches coming from the ceiling.

 

[LB-V]

it still manages to put enough elements (hi-hat, shaker, rhythm guitar) into the rears to make you feel like you're in the middle of them.

Nice music for sure. Thanks for sharing. The SM does a nice job as well....

 

[humprof]

Fleet Foxes, A Very Lonely Soltice (Dolby Surround Upmixer with Center Spread, 5.1.4). Almost entirely a Robin Pecknold solo concert, so there's not a lot for the DSU to work with, surround-wise. Still: I've never been to St. Ann's church in Brooklyn, but one supposes that reverb in the rears and overheads approximate the sound of that space. I'm listening to hi-res FLACs, but I may have a look at the YouTube version after: