Listening to now (In Surround!) - Volume 1

[Perp]

Gotta love that comb filtering effect.

 

[Disclord]

I'm listening to the remastered CD of Soft Cell's Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret - it also has the Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing EP on it too as a bonus. I'm playing it through the Proton SD-1000 surround decoder, which is an exact clone, electrically, of the Aphex ESP-7000. Listening in the MUSIC mode, the sound wraps around the room either in a horseshoe, if you don't have a Center Back speaker installed, or if you DO have a Center Back speaker the sound wraps around in a complete circle. As far as I know, only Aphex and Proton produced matrix surround decoders that decoded an Ex-type center back speaker - Aphex earlier SQ decoder, the AVM-8000, also produced a center back - as well as center front - its just too bad Aphex chose gain riding for the logic system and not a true matrix multiplier cancellation decoder. while they removed the SQ decoding from the later Aphex and Proton, the cancellation decoding is amazing. it's very deep and appears to work all the way down into the silence. it also gives you control of the amount of logic enhancement, in 3 steps, with all 3 steps being full logic and separation of 40-60 db. The two lower settings are 15db separation and 6db. the lower separation settings are supposed to be used with very reverberant classical music that doesn't have obvious directionality, and it prevents audible logic action when there shouldn't be any.

The 360 MUSIC mode is really impressive and I think I might try feeding its outputs into the Involve Encoder and see how it holds up when decoded by the Involve decoder. it could be a neat way to reprocess stereo recordings into Involve surround.

I haven't tried the Movie mode yet - that will come tonight. Right now I'm just basking in the soundfield that the decoder is creating from Soft Cell's album - all the sound efects of being wipped in the song Sex Dwarf are in the surround channels, as is Cyndi Ecstasy's voice in Seedy Films. It sounds VERY cool.

 

[fredblue]

Gotta love that comb filtering effect.

Ha! funnily enough the effect is most noticeable on the most expensive speaker of the 3 (the Acoustic Energy, the one at the bottom, with the silver cones).

Edit: what's even funnier is AE made a big hooplah about it being a 2.5-way design with a wide dispersion tweeter when they brought it out, so there wouldn't be the lobing of horizontal MTM's of days gone by, etc., yet the sweet spot's narrower than the cheaper Tannoy and Monitor Audio centre's. ah well, most of the stuff I listen to nowadays is Elliot Scheiner centre-shy or Quad mixes!

 

[Disclord]

Yikes! I'm getting an overall DR of 5. My copy is a DVD-A and is dated as 2001. This is the 1st surround disc that was released for NATO.

What are you using to get DR numbers? I'd be interested to have that capability. I have Sony Vegas 11 Professional and DVD Architect along with Sound Forge ($700 for programs just about makes me choke!) and I wonder if they can give me DR readings?

 

[Perp]

Sex Dwarf (Here doggy, doggy) is my favorite song by Soft Cell but this was my first record:

 

[IMachine]

Jeff Beck - Weird in Quad.

 

[ctc4001]

"The 2 channel on the DVD-A suffers from Loudness Wars brickwalling" Owen Smith ....yeah, I was going to say something to that effect..but still was pretty good...Agree with you on the 5.1..pretty awesome. Now, I didn't know that unit will not play "everything" as it is advertized that it will........there are flaws in everything.....Is there such a Player that will "Play Everything" !! I dont' know of one offhand.

 

[fredblue]

"The 2 channel on the DVD-A suffers from Loudness Wars brickwalling" Owen Smith ....yeah, I was going to say something to that effect..but still was pretty good...Agree with you on the 5.1..pretty awesome. Now, I didn't know that unit will not play "everything" as it is advertized that it will........there are flaws in everything.....Is there such a Player that will "Play Everything" !! I dont' know of one offhand.

If you can find an Oppo BDP-93 that hasn't had its firmware updated to remove ISO playback? oh and don't ever update it after that of course!

 

[fredblue]

Jeff Beck - Weird in Quad.

Weird! :yikes I was playing it the other day! I think its a Q8 t/fer.. Bass-tastic..!! :banana:

 

[IMachine]

Weird! :yikes I was playing it the other day! I think its a Q8 t/fer.. Bass-tastic..!! :banana:

You know what?
Now I'm listening to Can't Slow Down

 

[fredblue]

LTN:

Gratitude - EWF (M/C SACD).

aaahhhhhhhhh.... I still totally love the half dozen studio tracks at the end (sacrilege I know but the live stuff I could do without..).. just makes you wish all their 70's masterpieces had been remixed in similarly stunning[/I] surround fashion!

 

[fredblue]

You know what?
Now I'm listening to Can't Slow Down

Yeay!

we can't strictly talk about it here in this thread (stereo and all that!) but.. if you engage the Surround Master or PLII Music....

hope you're enjoying it!?

 

[IMachine]

My little child is hearing hear with me, so it is heard by 4 ears.... .
By the way.....fantastic.:banana:

 

[fredblue]

My little child is hearing hear with me, so it is heard by 4 ears.... .
By the way.....fantastic.:banana:

aww.. Super Cute!

 

[Quad Linda]

EWF has, of course, done Gratitude and the previously unreleased Live That's the Way on 5.1 SACD. Although not hi-res, their Quads had good fidelity and mixes. All of their albums from 73-77 output have been released in some form of surround. Besides the two SACD's, these got the Quad treatment:
Head to the Sky
Open Our Eyes (IMHO, their best)
That's the Way of the World (studio album, NOT the live '75)
Spirit

LTN:

Gratitude - EWF (M/C SACD).

aaahhhhhhhhh.... I still totally love the half dozen studio tracks at the end (sacrilege I know but the live stuff I could do without..).. just makes you wish all their 70's masterpieces had been remixed in similarly stunning[/I] surround fashion!

 

[fredblue]

Thanks for the info Quadess!

 

[LizardKing]

EWF has, of course, done Gratitude and the previously unreleased Live That's the Way on 5.1 SACD. Although not hi-res, their Quads had good fidelity and mixes. All of their albums from 73-77 output have been released in some form of surround. Besides the two SACD's, these got the Quad treatment:
Head to the Sky
Open Our Eyes (IMHO, their best)
That's the Way of the World (studio album, NOT the live '75)
Spirit

View attachment 11805

Thanks!

Didn't know about Head to the Sky....

 

[LizardKing]

Funnily enough - I'm listening to the "other Earth Wind & Fire" surround.... on SACD...

Can you guess what it is?

 

[Perp]

I'll take the tape cause' I'm old fashioned.

 

[IMachine]

After the burst of Between The Buried And Me - The great Misdirect in DD 5.1 now playing
Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother in quad.