Multichannel Audio (Moved from MQA)
Aug 12, 2017 at 8:53 PM Post #106 of 116
I just wanted to note the problems I've had with every single SACD I've gotten from Dutton / Vocalion... Mancini, Floyd Cramer, Stokowski, Hugo Montenegro... I think this label is mastering their multichannel music improperly.

I just got the Stokowski Bach Transcriptions / Wagner Brunnhilde's Immolation. It's derived from a quad master, but when I play it the light for 5.1 lights up. The response is very band limited. There is almost nothing below 80Hz. I had bass management turned on and I tried boosting the level of my sub to +16dB. With any other music, that would make the bass explode rattling the walls, but I could barely hear any difference with this SACD. The kettle drums were all top end rattle, no sub bass and the same was true of the string basses. At the end when the Rhine overflows its banks there is an extended triangle trill. It sounded like a bell, not a triangle- as if there was nothing above about 10 or 12kHz. The violins were mushy and lacked definition too. Normally, I would blame it on the recording, but I have the Decca Stokowski CD box set and on there the bass is full and the treble is crisp.

There also seems to be some rechannelling going on. Even though this is a quad recording, there's sound coming out of the center channel, and sometimes there are odd balances where something that should be front left or front right gets smeared to the rear channel along the side wall. Very unnatural sounding when it's strings in the Stokowski or piano in the Mancini. When this happens there is a weird phasey distortion that sounds like one of those fake stereo boxes from the 70s. I've never heard the quad versions of these albums, so I don't know how the parts are laid out in the four channels, but I have the stereo CDs of the Stokowski and Mancini albums and the CDs sound a LOT better than the SACDs.

I encountered these same exact same problems on every other Dutton Vocalion disk I've gotten. It sounds nice and clean in the middle frequencies, but there are steep rolloffs on the top and bottom, as if I was playing them on bookshelf speakers, not full range speakers with a subwoofer. I thought it might be just the Mancini and Cramer albums since they were among the first SACDs Dutton Vocalion produced, but now more than a year later, I just got two new releases and they have the same problems. Perhaps they might sound OK on headphones or on little bookshelf speakers, but on a good system it sounds really bad.

Just letting everyone know. if you see stuff you like on the Dutton label, try one and see what you think before you go ordering a bunch from England. Caveat emptor.
 
Aug 29, 2017 at 8:04 PM Post #107 of 116
I found another very oddly recorded multichannel disc. It's Violin Concertos by Ole Bull on blu-ray audio- one of those small audiophile labels. The thing is pretty much unlistenable. The dynamic range is WAY too wide. Quiet passages disappear into the aether and loud parts blast. In the booklet there's a diagram of how they llaid out the band in a circle around the conductor and hung the mics right over his head. But all of the instruments were basically the same distance from the mic, so the balances are a mess. In fact, the tympani was positioned right next to the violin soloist, so every time there's a drum roll, you jump out of your seat. The violin section is at the back end of the circle, so they're in the rear channels. But I guess they thought that sounded weird, so they mixed them way down so you can barely hear them under the solo violin, basses, percussion and brass up front. It's the weirdest recording of an orchestra I've ever heard. In the liner notes the engineer says it's impossible to record an orchestra to sound like it does in a concert hall, so he didn't even try. Yow!
 
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Aug 30, 2017 at 11:19 AM Post #108 of 116
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Jul 15, 2020 at 12:11 AM Post #109 of 116
Aug 8, 2020 at 11:06 PM Post #110 of 116
Interesting article I found by Mark Waldrop. http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=6962

Even though I'm stuck in headphone hell for the foreseeable future, I make sure to buy what I can in surround because one day...

What do you think of Waldrep's quote on there being 75% of households with 5.1? Seems like 99% of those wouldn't be exactly calibrated ("We put the little speakers at different heights on two bookcases!"), so I wonder what his thoughts are on that in terms of accurate production... Also funny he mentions the Smyth, because I doubt people will consider a $4k device that requires a ton of measurements on an existing surround system to be a reasonable entry into surround listening ^_^
 
Aug 9, 2020 at 11:21 PM Post #111 of 116
99% of anything in any typical household isn't calibrated. But even uncalibrated is better than stereo unless it's seriously uncalibrated. Audiophiles make things too complicated sometimes when it comes to stuff like that.
 
Aug 10, 2020 at 5:51 AM Post #112 of 116
What do you think of Waldrep's quote on there being 75% of households with 5.1?
I'd say we don't know the same people. Then again, I'm French, so we probably really don't know the same people.

About calibration, I can see a not so distant future with object based formats like Atmos, and little BT trackers in the speakers to locate them in the room and decode the format using that information(and probably many little satellites everywhere the wife allowed to put one). It won't solve FR, horrible room acoustic and all that, but it could be pretty cool nonetheless and the tech is already all there.

99% of anything in any typical household isn't calibrated. But even uncalibrated is better than stereo unless it's seriously uncalibrated.
Then we could argue that 99% of anything recorded is stereo. You lose, I win, what was the question?
 
Sep 27, 2022 at 2:35 AM Post #114 of 116
Right now, everyone is talking about Pink Floyd's Animals. I have it, but my theater has been coopted by blu-ray sorting and shedding cases lately. Every flat surface has stacks of disks on it.

Alan Parsons just came out with a new album in surround. His stuff is always good sounding, but he mixes the center front channel down lower than I like. I always boost that on playback.

Tears For Fears came out with a new album that is getting very good reviews.

They are doing preorders for a limited edition multichannel album by Brian Eno that sounds very interesting. He supervised the mix himself and focused on immersive sound, rather than sound coming from the sides and four corners.

I recently got a huge box set of Robert Fripp's work from the early 80s. I really liked him back then. It's over 30 disks, with seven or eight albums worth of music in multichannel.

There's a Japanese SACD of Miles Davis's B itch es Brew that is a revelation. Absolutely incredible. And if you can still find them, Kraftwerk's Catalogue and Jean Michel Jarre's multichannel releases are great too.
 
Sep 28, 2022 at 8:20 AM Post #116 of 116
That’s what I meant with the reference to early stereo,
Using the emerging technology to attempt to get closer to “being there” as opposed to an Atmos demo with sounds whizzing around the room,
But then again with Pink Floyd and others who want to create an “alternative world” for want of a better description, it opens up whole new possibilities.
 

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