[old tech]

The next month or two is going to be a big one for multichannel music. I've got three things coming... John Lennon's Imagine is on its way to me from the UK right now, and next month both The Beatles White Album and Jimi Hendrix Electric Ladyland are coming out.

Imagine is one of those albums which I prefer the original UK LP pressing over the original CD. The MFSL CD and 2010 hi res versions sound better than the LP but I prefer the original mix. I don't have a multi channel system so I'll be giving the latest issue a miss.

I didn't realise that the White Album remix is now available - I thought the release date was going to be the 26th, the actual 50 year anniversary.

 

[bigshot]

I just got Electric Ladyland and White Album today. I'll spend the day tomorrow on them. There are a whole bunch of outtakes and demos with the White Album.

 

[bigshot]

Electric Ladyland is one of the best multichannel mixes I've ever heard. White Album is hit and miss.

 

[bfreedma]

Electric Ladyland is one of the best multichannel mixes I've ever heard. White Album is hit and miss.

Thanks for the heads up on the Hendrix. My copy arrived today and I certainly agree with you on the MCH mix.

 

[jgazal]

Interesting how Dr. Choueiri walks around during playback to keep visual cues coherent:



Afaik, all songs were from Chesky binaural recordings.

 

[bigshot]

I like those absurd amps!

 

[jgazal]

I like those absurd amps!

After reading all arguments from @gregorio and @pinnahertz now I feel Dr. Choueiri affirmation that “stereo is flawed” a bit unfair.

Alan Blumlein did not have dsp available and good art was built in stereo foundation.

But I guess that might be some marketing license to help selling his products.

My 50w class d amp seems just fine to me.

 

[gregorio]

[1] After reading all arguments from @gregorio and @pinnahertz now I feel Dr. Choueiri affirmation that “stereo is flawed” a bit unfair.
[1a] Alan Blumlein did not have dsp available and good art was built in stereo foundation.
[2] But I guess that might be some marketing license to help selling his products.

1. Technically he is correct, stereo IS flawed. But:
1a. This is the part that he's ignoring: Commercial music and sound (TV/Film) recordings are specifically created for that flawed stereo format. We take that flawed system and use processing, along with our understanding of human perception, to create the illusion of a soundstage, of left/right and depth (distance/presence) and although that soundstage might sound somewhat realistic to the casual listener, it really isn't and crucially, it's usually deliberately designed NOT to be! Hence why commercial music/sound is an "art" rather than a facsimile. The casual listener would not usually be consciously aware of what's going on but if you are able to listen carefully/analytically, you can clearly hear the different acoustics/psychoacoustics employed and the incongruity of elements/instruments in the "sounstage". Clearly, many/most audiophiles do NOT have such listening skills/abilities because if they did, they wouldn't keep going on about a realism that in fact never existed. In a sense, it's somewhat like the art of painting; We have a 2D canvas plus the limitations of paint, paint brushes and light, so compared to actual reality we have a very "flawed" format! But what artists do is use their understanding of human (visual) perception to create the illusion of perspective and for the last 150 years or so, artists have actually used those "flaws of the system" to move beyond the limitations of reality and create interpretive "art", rather than attempting to create a facsimile. Continuing the analogy, Dr. Choueri's system would likely create a realistic 3D render if given a photograph (or certain realistic art, like a Caneletto) but what would happen if you gave it a Van Gogh, a Picasso or pretty much any modern painting? You would probably get something interesting, maybe even something that some people might prefer but you would also be destroying some/all of the artists' intention, of how it is supposed to affect one's perception (and one's emotional response to it). Where the analogy breaks down is that with the art of painting we have several centuries of artists pursuing "realism" and it's not until the mid/late 1800's where painting moves beyond that. But with stereo we had the equivalent period of "realism" from when it was invented (in the early 1930's) until the mid/late 1950's but this period is of little importance because stereo was not a common consumer format until some years later, when "realism" was pretty much already "history".

2. I'm sure that's a very large part of it but we can't ignore the fact that he's a physics professor and therefore approaching the issue from the point of view of physics. That's no excuse of course, it would only take a couple of hours in a studio with an engineer to understand that physics is only part of the equation of creating commercial music/sound content, that "art" is at least as big a part (if not a bigger part) and it's inconceivable a Professor would fail to do this essential background research.

G

 

[bigshot]

You're right, scientists don't create music. But today there's commercial music that is specifically designed for 5.1 setups, and there are artists and creative engineers who specialize in making it. Also there are DSPs designed to upscale 2 channel stereo to 5.1 surround and they do a very good job. The difference between stereo and 5.1 is as great as the difference between mono and stereo. The improvement is certainly due to creative choices, but those choices wouldn't be possible with a two channel mix. It is a lot harder to implement 5.1 properly than it is to set up a stereo system though.

 

[jgazal]

Apparently Sony is also in quest for the holy grail:

engadget - CES 2019
I want Sony's 360 Reality Audio to be the future of music...
but I'm tempering expectations until it's ready for prime time.

(...)

Sony says you won't need a dedicated device to listen to the 3D audio, but you will need to use an app it's currently working on to measure your hearing. To do this, the smartphone software will allow you to take a picture of your ear so the audio can be tailored to you based on an analysis of your hearing. Basically, you'll snap some photos and Sony's app will ensure the 3D Reality Audio will be optimized for you. You'll only have to do this once, and it sounds like it will eventually be pretty simple, but Sony's CES demo was a lot more involved.

In a tightly controlled room, Sony representatives first played some audio samples over a system of speakers positioned around the space. Those tracks already included the spatial component, delivering music in what was basically a 13-channel surround sound system. Then we moved on to headphones. For the sake of the demo, the hearing analysis was done with very sensitive wire microphones inserted in my ears before I put on a pair of audiophile-grade MDR-Z7M2 headphones. The same audio samples were played again, and to be completely honest, I had a hard time telling the difference between the two. It's worth noting there's no head tracking at work here, but the 3D sound is big, booming and noticeably more immersive than what I'm used to from Spotify and other sources.

It's easy to impress with a well-planned demo that pumps carefully created audio files through $900 headphones, so it will be interesting to see what 360 Reality Audio sounds like when it's available for public consumption. The potential is certainly interesting, but until we know more about cost and overall availability, it's hard to get too excited. However, based on what we heard here at CES, Sony could very well be onto something.

 

[castleofargh]

Apparently Sony is also in quest for the holy grail:

on one hand I'm jumping around all happy anytime such products/techs come out. on the other hand, it's yet another story of format with brands going all Highlander on each other and trying to become THE one remaining format. and while they battle, years go by where us consumer need to purchase 2 or 3 different gears to be compatible with most stuff produced. why can't they spend more time cooperating, like when setting the standards for USB... oh wait, Sony still uses it's own cable on many products, bad example ^_^.

 

[bigshot]

Sometimes I wonder if they even intend to come out with these products they announce at CES.

 

[bigshot]

I have another multichannel recording to recommend... Jean Michel Jarre's Aero. It's a compilation album of goofy electronica, and musically it's not much more than drum machines, and one finger Casio over sustained synth chords, but the production of the album is like a three ring circus. Stuff is constantly flying around the room like ping pong. There's some interesting immersive stuff, and elements placed in the center of the room. Good subwoofer content. Video game synth voices. Sound effects, callliopes, birds tweeting, rain and thunder, wind... It pulls out all the stops for the pot smoking crowd.

It's really good for checking levels because things move from speaker to speaker without changing volume. You can instantly hear if a channel is imbalanced. It has one odd anomaly in one of the songs with sound effects. The sound of a match being struck is used as percussion and every time it hits, it's in a different speaker. The last time it hits, it is smack dab in the center of the room, really well placed. But the tone of it sounds different. The high end is rolled off and it is just midrange. I wonder if higher frequencies in the effect made it impossible to place in the center of the room?

It comes with a CD and DVD with DTS 5.1. I think it's out of print. I picked up a copy cheap second hand at Discogs.

 

[RRod]

I have another multichannel recording to recommend... Jean Michel Jarre's Aero. It's a compilation album of goofy electronica, and musically it's not much more than drum machines, and one finger Casio over sustained synth chords, but the production of the album is like a three ring circus. Stuff is constantly flying around the room like ping pong. There's some interesting immersive stuff, and elements placed in the center of the room. Good subwoofer content. Video game synth voices. Sound effects, callliopes, birds tweeting, rain and thunder, wind... It pulls out all the stops for the pot smoking crowd.

It's really good for checking levels because things move from speaker to speaker without changing volume. You can instantly hear if a channel is imbalanced. It has one odd anomaly in one of the songs with sound effects. The sound of a match being struck is used as percussion and every time it hits, it's in a different speaker. The last time it hits, it is smack dab in the center of the room, really well placed. But the tone of it sounds different. The high end is rolled off and it is just midrange. I wonder if higher frequencies in the effect made it impossible to place in the center of the room?

It comes with a CD and DVD with DTS 5.1. I think it's out of print. I picked up a copy cheap second hand at Discogs.

Got that one recently as well; LOLing at the description which is pretty spot on. Which track is it with the matchstick? I'll look into it.

 

[bigshot]

It was either the first or second track.

I listened to some pretty goofy stuff when I was a kid. The two that really took the cake were Jon Anderson's Olias of Sunhillow which was 40 minutes of new age psychedelia with nonsense rhymes, and Tomita's Bermuda Triangle which had an alien space ship taking off as its centerpiece. It's not easy to be sillier than this Jarre album, but those two do it. It would be fun to hear them in surround.