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In Reply to: RE: "I invite anyone to hear my MC setup and tell me it doesn't put to shame their conventional box speaker two-channel rigs posted by David Aiken on May 21, 2007 at 23:47:21
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. "Anyone"? That's putting the bar a little high, methinks.
[Are you throwing down the gauntlet?]
I've got a 2 channel music system in a dedicated room. It just happens to be an L-shaped room and, despite that, there are people in our local audio club who comment that I'm getting the best imaging and soundstage they have heard. You don't need more channels to deal with an L-shaped room but you probably do need it to be a dedicated listening room and you do need to pay attention to speaker placement and room treatment. I think it's actually easier to do my L-shaped room for 2 channels than it would be to do it for multi-channel.
[Its easier cause you're only using two speakers.
I'm curious about your setup. In my L shaped living room I can't think of where to place two speakers with good seperation and placement that don't take up a huge amout of useful floorspace and has a good listening postion. I can place the two speakers in the corners that only projects the sound forward, and is narrow sounding. By placing a speaker in each corner of the L shaped room I immerse the whole room in sound which clearly sounds better than just two speakers. And the speaker are out to the sides not taking up valuable floor space, much less intrusive. I have since moved everything to the basement where I can contain the sound as I was getting noise complaints from the neighbors.]
I make that last comment with more than a little knowledge of what would be involved because in a different room I have a 6.1 channel HT system. That room has no acoustic treatments, a bare ceramic tiled floor, and lots of hard reflective glass and ceramic surfaces as well as the floor. With Audyssey EQ in the HT receiver, that system actually doesn't sound too bad at all on music, but not as good as the 2 channel audio system. I've wondered about combining the systems and just having a single setup but I really don't see how I could make a multi channel setup work all that well in the L-shaped room without a fair bit of difficulty, though it could be done.
[Why not combine the two, if you prefer listening to 2 channel than you can continue to do that or watch a movie. I not putting down 2 channel stereo. I am defending HT and MC application against people who write off and are saying that for serious listening, 2 channel is the way to go. I have not yet heard a 2 channel sounding better overall then a MC multi-speaker setup. They are talking from a position of ignorance of what a HT or MC is capable of when the same dedication is applied to it as 2 channel albeit at possibly more expense.]
A lot of things contribute to the difference in sound between my 2 systems. Ignoring the cost of the TV, the cost of each system is roughly the same but the money is spent in some very different ways in each system. Despite that, the audio system beats the HT system noticeably on music. The different rooms and the acoustic room treatments in the audio room are part of the difference, the audio components are a little more refined in sound, I can get away with an Audio Physic style speaker placement with the speakers in the centre of the room for the audio setup and that type of placement would probably be impossible in a multi-channel system unless the room was huge. The speakers are much closer to the walls in the HT system. It does sound better on music than many systems I've heard, however, and I do prefer multi-channel surround sound for movies. It really adds a sense of space and presence that I didn't get while that system was a 2.0 or 2.1 system.
[I don't disagree with you. Only that it probably comes down to preference as to what sounds better.]
I could set things up so that I could combine the systems with little or no detriment to the quality of sound that I get for music with the audio system, but it would be hard and it would require a bigger room than I have for either system at present.
[Okay maybe I was misleading. If your using a small room multiple speakers would be overkill in this type of room. I'm aware that in my bedroom with just two speakers and barely any volume the sound is bouncing off the walls. You can get good sound and imaging with just 2 speakers. But there is no way this room could even come close to the bass impact that I generate in my HT MC setup without overloading the room.]
Finally, my experience is that, regardless of whether we're talking music or movies, things tend to sound better when playback is accomplished using the same number of channels as are available on the disc. Spreading the sound over more channels using DSP or matrix technologies doesn't seem to work as well, at least in my view, as maintaining the original number of channels. The one exception I would make to that is that in the room where the HT system is set up, an open plan area with no side wall beside the right hand speakers and a large open archway in the rear wall, processing 5.1 channel soundtracks to 6.1 channels doesn't seem to do any harm and is usually beneficial but that processing doesn't affect the signal fed to the front channels which are the primary sound sources. In an ideal HT room I wouldn't feel a need to process 5.1 channel sound to 6.1 in order to compensate for particular room issues.
[You misunderstand, MC or multiple speakers in stereo is still 2 channel. You are just adding speakers to widen or fill out the room. the center channel is matrixed but can be turned off if you want. Its 5.1 that matrixes the sound to more channels. I don't like it for music either and only use it for movies.]
I think the problem with your original post, and the one that I'm responding to, is not that I think you're mistaken about preferring multi-channel sound to stereo in your system. The problem is that you're assuming that what works best for you in one particular system and room will give the best results with any system and room, for everyone. I can assure you that is not the case. There are no "one size fits all" answers to getting the best results. You can get good results for music with either 2 channels or a multi-channel system. You can get great results for music with both sorts of systems at the cost of a lot more work, but then great results always require more work regardless of whether we're talking sound or anything else. And then there's always the fact that different people have different tastes and what works for you or me or anyone else will never work for everyone.
[Agree :)]
David Aiken
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