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In Reply to: Multichannel SACD posted by kvakonsult on March 11, 2007 at 00:41:25:
if the two-channel system has been set up with due attention to speaker and listening chair placement and to room acoustics. With decent recordings in such a setup, you get a map that not only unfolds but presents its contours in bold relief. My listening suggests that not a little of the instruments-and-vocalists-are-fleshed-out sensation that gives multichannel its cachet relates to the listener's ability to perceive spatial and decay cues forward of the speaker plane. It also suggests that that's doable to a greater or lesser degree in two-channel playback (again, assuming care in setup and an appropriate listening space), depending on the acoustic of the recording venue and the mike selection, placement, and mixing decisions of the artist/producer/engineer. And you don't have to contend with the colorations inherent in the rear-channel playback equipment.
Follow Ups:
And you don't have to contend with the colorations inherent in the rear-channel playback equipment.
or is yours perfect?
My system has all kinds of compromises.The question is a larger one. IMO you have probably come close, with your room treatments, in duplicating what MCH is designed to do - create a concert hall ambiance. In doing so you have have removed a lot of "room-associated" coloration.
Although additional speakers may add coloration, a well-designed MCH system probably overprints any additional room-associated coloration with discrete ambient signal.The result is less AUDIBLE coloration - not more. Admittedly, this is not a purist approach. Many have argued in this forum that the more speakers, the more problems. However, that has not been my experience or the experience of many other MCH listeners. It did take a lot of time to correctly position my speakers, both rear and front. But the result is vastly improved sound over equivalent 2CH recordings.
On another subject, Norm mentions that his experience in listening to MCH sound has not been postive. I think that are a lot of HT systems out there that people use for music. IMO there is a huge difference between an HT systems and one set up properly for music. Speaker positioning is totally different and most HT subwoofers are horrible when it comes to music reproduction. HT bass management almost guarantees bad sound. I could go on but you get the point. I really wonder how many people have ended up with a negative opinion about MCH due to listening to it through an HT system.
The primary goal of treating this room to reduce its colorations has been to increase perceived playback resolution, and in that regard I rank it as equivalent to the Richard Kern mods to my SCD-777ES. One benefit of that effort has been to reveal more of the beyond-the-plane ambience present in some recordings. I hesitate to call it "concert-hall", since a number of those recordings, many of them symphonic or other large ensemble presentations, have been recorded in venues, including studios, hotels, and other sites, that we wouldn't normally go to for a live concert. It's also difficult to know how much, if any, of that ambience has been "created" in the mixing process. Be that as it may, the end result has been a more corporeal fleshing out of instrument, voice, and the recorded (or inserted) space, a better rendering of overall dynamics, and the sense that what emerges from the more-dimensional soundstage isn't confined to the oft-invoked two-channel "window".The "overprint" was not even a "probably" in an instance I cited here some months back when just a pair of tube traps placed along the side walls reduced a reflection coloration audible in five-channel playback through a friend's five Paradigm 100 v2's (initially set up in ITU configuration, and moved around when we discovered, before Michael Bishop's revelation, that for some recordings, ITU was "oh so nineties"). The discrete ambient signal did not mask the room coloration, so whatever the theory, in that instance it didn't hold.
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