Multi-channel audio – still going strong

[JonFo]

While most of the chatter around here seems to be about 2-ch, some of us are die-hard multi-channel aficionados and go to, uhmm, extreme lengths to get the ultimate in ‘surround sound’.

This month’s Sound+Vision magazine has several great articles on multichannel recordings, featuring the work of Steve Wilson as both author and producer.

Steve did the mixing work on the recent re-releases of King Crimson, and I have to say, the new edition of Red is mind-boggling. I’d heard this album decades ago, and played it fairly often back then. But it fell out of rotation until this new re-mix. And boy, what a treat for KC fans!

The new Steve Wilson solo effort: Insurgentes is also available in DVD-Audio, and is a sonic masterpiece of soundscapes and textures that are just stunning a great ML system.

The magazine also implies that many more surround mixes are in the works of key classic pieces. I hope some of these come to happen and become available.

 

[JonFo]

Media – the big conundrum of the past decade

The biggest challenge with surround audio has always been the media that delivers it to us.

Going waaay back in time, we had Quad, with SQ / QS / CD-4 and even discrete Reel-to-Reel editions of recordings. That whole mess imploded due to that plethora of formats as well as technical challenges with the matrixed encodings.

In the late 90’s, DVD-Audio and SACD were launched, and once again, the stupid format war limited adoption, even though this time around, the discrete, lossless high-resolution audio quality was absolutely incredible when well-reproduced. The equal of the master mix was now available to anyone.

Since the adoption of these formats was, how to put this charitably, ‘Limited’, the catalog is understandably thin.

But the quality in that catalog is pretty high, and some genres, like Jazz, Classical and progressive rock that all exploit the multi-channel, high-definition attributes created a loyal (if small) following.

With just a few new SACD’s and fewer DVD-A’s are coming out, these two formats are slowly fading away.

So what’s next?

Fortunately, the core audio profiles of DVD-Audio live on in the BluRay spec.
Few people realize that Dolby TrueHD is basically a renamed DVD-Audio spec, complete with MLP encoding of the multi-track LPCM. I think of it as more of DVD-A version 2

Therefore, any and all BluRay players are actually capable of the same performance (with some extras) as any DVD-Audio player was.

We are seeing a few more music-only titles hitting BluRay (see AIX Records for an exciting new catalog).
Therefore, I’m expecting to see a new wave of multi-channel releases (which also contain 2-ch mixes) available on BR in the coming year.

The other format I expect to see Multi-Channel mixes in is FLAC. The Free Lossless Audio Codec spec supports up to eight channels of 32bit/64Khz LPCM.

I’ve cross-encoded some DVD-A’s to multi-Channel FLAC and they work great on certain streaming interfaces. So I expect to see more download purchase options for these formats.

And my HomeTheaterPC now can stream Dolby TrueHD encoded streams to my processor over HDMI, so downloaded TrueHD encoded content is now an option as well.

 

[JonFo]

So, what are you doing with Multi-channel sound?

Buying any content? SACD, DVD-A, BluRay’s?

 

[JonFo]

What about your multi-channel setup?

Which processor do you have and are you satisfied with its multi-channel audio performance?

 

[Speedskater]

I think that one of the things that as always slowed up multi-channel recording, is that everyone as a different idea of how it should be setup. Wide screen mag issue #142 has a rigorous 15 page article on how 7.1 should be. Then in issue #144, a very interesting letter to the editor about standards and letting some setups just slip away.

 

[MiTT]

With just a few new SACD’s and fewer DVD-A’s are coming out, these two formats are slowly fading away.

I still disagree with this Jon. There are plenty of new SACD releases. If you're on the mailing list for either Music Direct or Acoustic Sounds there are usually 10-15 new SACD releases every week in their news letters. I still buy most of my new software on vinyl, but SACD is a close second. Now, I will grant that Classical and Jazz are the dominant genres, but Mobile Fidelity has offered a LOT of contemporary and alternative music on SACD just this year with more to come. The Amiee Mann and Pixies releases are awesome!

 

[DTB300]

There are plenty of new SACD releases.

Absolutely True.

The main issue most people bring up is Classical and Jazz are the primary genre's.

 

[JonFo]

Absolutely True.

The main issue most people bring up is Classical and Jazz are the primary genre's.

Well, I guess if one is still buying those genre's, 'plenty' might apply

Just like Progressive Rock seems to be the only genre supporting DVD-A these days.

But both are what I'd call a trickle, consideing the hundereds of releases weekly.

Here's the question: would you start buying BluRays of those albums if they started becomming available?

 

[JonFo]

I think that one of the things that as always slowed up multi-channel recording, is that everyone as a different idea of how it should be setup. Wide screen mag issue #142 has a rigorous 15 page article on how 7.1 should be. Then in issue #144, a very interesting letter to the editor about standards and letting some setups just slip away.

Agreed, setup has a LOT to do with how good a result one gets.

This is why I believe the only way we will ever have a truly faithful surround experience is if we move away from discrete channels to a vector-based encoding. I allude to this in my article on predictions for the next 20 years.

 

[JonFo]

I still disagree with this Jon. There are plenty of new SACD releases. If you're on the mailing list for either Music Direct or Acoustic Sounds there are usually 10-15 new SACD releases every week in their news letters. I still buy most of my new software on vinyl, but SACD is a close second. Now, I will grant that Classical and Jazz are the dominant genres, but Mobile Fidelity has offered a LOT of contemporary and alternative music on SACD just this year with more to come. The Amiee Mann and Pixies releases are awesome!

Tim, I looked, and none of the new arrivals or pre-orders appealed to me.

The entire SACD catalog is only 700+ discs.

I'm glad there's a bit more action there and that it's meeting your needs, but it's leaving me wanting more.

Plus, many of these re-releases are just re-releases of old 2ch recordings and not really high-rez masters mixed for multichannel.

 

[amey01]

No interest in multichannel for me.

While I am intrigued, I'd have to be an awfully long way down the path to audio nirvana before I even considered placing more speakers, more amplifiers, more cables et. al. before better quality speakers, amplifiers, etc. IE - why do I want to invest in five speakers when I can get two of 3x better quality?

That, and also that accomodating five (or more) speakers in my listening room would be a bit ridiculous.

 

[MiTT]

The entire SACD catalog is only 700+ discs.

Actually the Acoustic Sounds website has more than 3000 titles available on SACD.

 

[DTB300]

But both are what I'd call a trickle, consideing the hundereds of releases weekly.

Your thread stated " Multi-Channel audio still going strong", but based on the majority of MCH releases (Classical and Jazz) now you say it is a trickle?

MCH does not always equate to better sound but when done correctly, it can sound very good. Classical performances, "usually" based in great sounding venues, has the ability to get closer to the "sound signature" of the venue with MCH. Again if done right.

Now if someone is taking a 2CH recording and making it MCH......not what I consider MCH.

 

[Rich]

The entire SACD catalog is only 700+ discs.

Actually, Jon, according to wiki, there are over 6000 titles currently available, although a little over half of them are in the classical music genre. Of these, over 2000 of them are multichannel.

I personally hope there is a resurgence in this format, but I'll be surprised. I just don't think the sales volume is there to drive it.

 

[Gordon Gray]

No interest in multichannel for me.

While I am intrigued, I'd have to be an awfully long way down the path to audio nirvana before I even considered placing more speakers, more amplifiers, more cables et. al. before better quality speakers, amplifiers, etc. IE - why do I want to invest in five speakers when I can get two of 3x better quality?

That, and also that accomodating five (or more) speakers in my listening room would be a bit ridiculous.

Same here. Smallish room and little desire to explore this technology at this time.

I am buying lots of Classical and Jazz SACD's. Many of the Classical genre are new recordings. Labels include Pentatone, Harmonia Mundi, Channel Classics, etc. The selection is more than I can ask for.

GG

 

[JonFo]

Actually, Jon, according to wiki, there are over 6000 titles currently available, although a little over half of them are in the classical music genre. Of these, over 2000 of them are multichannel.

I personally hope there is a resurgence in this format, but I'll be surprised. I just don't think the sales volume is there to drive it.

The correlation of 'available' to purchasable seems skewed towards smaller numbers in my experience.

I buy every multi-channel disc that is even remotely of interest, and I think I've only managed to snag less than ten this year.

I'd happily buy >100, but nothing of interest is being offered. So I buy a lot of CD's still.

I'm hoping BluRay will re-spark an increase in choice in the coming years.

 

[JonFo]

Your thread stated " Multi-Channel audio still going strong", but based on the majority of MCH releases (Classical and Jazz) now you say it is a trickle?

MCH does not always equate to better sound but when done correctly, it can sound very good. Classical performances, "usually" based in great sounding venues, has the ability to get closer to the "sound signature" of the venue with MCH. Again if done right.

Now if someone is taking a 2CH recording and making it MCH......not what I consider MCH.

Dan, agreed, it's all about the recording and mastering. I've heard some truly bad mastering and some good mixes of bad recordings.

But a great multi-channel mix from a well recorded album (e.g. all recent Porcupine Tree DVD-A's) only makes one wish for more music done this way.

A producer can do so much more with those extra three channels, it really allows them to position the sounds and to create soundfields no stereo album I've ever heard can remotely approach.

To you last point, sounds like you'd love Meridian's TriField. It is magical on 2ch sources.

 

[JonFo]

Gordon, Amey, if you don't have the room for MCH, I agree a good 2ch is preferable to a sub-standard MCH setup.

Sort of like 3D video. I would prefer a good 2D display than a lousy 3D.

But as I experienced at CES, a good 3D display is something else.

Eventually, we'll get to full vector-encoded 3D audio as well. But that will take decades at the pace we're going.

 

[JMAUSGP]

Jon,

Pretty much agree with everything you said. I also buy everything MCH that is of any interest at all, sometimes I will buy a genre that is not my cup of tee if it has really good MCH presentation.

As I get older, I am beginning to believe that MCH is an acquired taste kind of like beer.

Not everyone likes it at first or for some they don't give it enough of a chance.....some may fear the final results.:devil:

I have 3 separate MCH systems, but I listen to music on a dedicated 5.1 system and only occasionally on the other two systems. The two HT systems are 7.1 using the latest AVR surround sound technology but the 5.1 uses a McCormack MAP-1 analog preamp that has been upgraded by Steve McCormack himself. I listen to all two channel sources in McCormack 5.1 surround mode which is called ARM. This is similar to Trifield I have been told. All I know is that given the option of listening to Passport in two channel mode versus ARM 5.1, I will pick 5.1 every time. But that is just me, I guess. I guess I like to experience the music in an immersive sense rather than listen as a bystander. But again that's just me.

Regardless of the current formats or the future formats I plan on buying anything and everything in MCH.....cause that is what I do.

Oh yeah, I plan to get a pair of used CLXs for the rear and if I get the chance, I would use one CLX for the center channel.......but then that would be overkill wouldn't it.

 

[JonFo]

...
Oh yeah, I plan to get a pair of used CLXs for the rear and if I get the chance, I would use one CLX for the center channel.......but then that would be overkill wouldn't it.

JMAUSGP, thanks for sharing your views.

And no, nothing at all wrong or overkill about a CLX center. As you may know, I believe in rather large centers

Matter of fact, I think that many who've not enjoyed MCH, could be due to mis-matched centers. It takes a very large center to mate with big linesources.

If you ever need someone to split the 'extra' CLX pair you use for the center, just let me know.