Resolved: the "LFE channel" should never be utilized on SACD/DVD-A. (1 Viewer)

[Ken_McAlinden]

And once you do get an ICBM, the issue of how a disc is mixed (LFE or no LFE, bass in the main channels or not, etc.) will be totally and completely irrelevant. You will then have some of the best, most flexible BM available.

Quite the contrary, you will then be at the mercy of whatever crossover the mixers decided your bass needed to go to mono, even though you have a system that could otherwise be tuned to your exact speaker set-up.

Regards,

 

[Ed St. Clair]

I agree with the concern that as it is employed for music, it pre-supposes the bass-management needs of the listener and as such will be wrong most of the time.

Agree.
It's like someone 'setting' DVD's to look good on 'all' video monitors. What's good for the average joe, is going to 'hurt' the videophile.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Taking out the discrete bass channel leaves me one step away, not closer, to the actual music event.

...and my point was that there was likely no discrete bass in the hall, the club, or the stadium.

Regards,

 

[Javier_Huerta]

Quite the contrary, you will then be at the mercy of whatever crossover the mixers decided your bass needed to go to mono, even though you have a system that could otherwise be tuned to your exact speaker set-up.

EDIT: I get what you are saying now. Still...

An ICBM gives me all kinds of flexibility regarding setting my own crossover point, tailored to my set of speakers. The whole issue of bass going monoaural is irrelevant to me, since the alternative is no deep bass at all (my main speakers begin rolling off at around 40 Hz).

DVD-A and SACD give me no flexibility at all. My player, for example, lets me set up my speakers at full range or 120 Hz high-pass. Neither setting is adequate for me. The ICBM can fix the issue.

Brian:
Aye.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

...and my point was that there was likely no discrete bass in the hall, the club, or the stadium.

There certainly are speakers at a concert that are for bass only!!!
Like I said; "Back to Mono".
There is no discrete center, left surround, center surround, or right suround, either.
Except, maybe at a Pink Floyd or Alan Parsons concert!
So, based on your "quote", why have 'any'?

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Ed,

A concert hall has spatial characteristics at all frequencies, right?

The array of speakers at home is set-up to create a spatial effect, right?

LFE bass has no spatial characteristic and is treated as directionless, right?

The ear is less sensitive to directionality at low frequencies, which makes directionless bass less of a compromise, but still a compromise.

No LFE = No compromise of spatiality.

Should your hardware require a compromise, bass management can be tuned to optimize this. Building it into the mix via sending bass to a mono LFE channel forces most folks to accept a sub-optimal compromise.

Regards,

 

[Brian L]

Quite the contrary, you will then be at the mercy of whatever crossover the mixers decided your bass needed to go to mono, even though you have a system that could otherwise be tuned to your exact speaker set-up.

I think the best place for this thread is in my "agree to disagree" file.

BGL

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

I think the best place for this thread is in my "agree to disagree" file.

With what do you disagree, though?

If your hardware has an optimal crossover point of 40Hz, and the mix has bass from 100Hz on down mixed to mono, then no matter how you have your ICBM set-up, you are stuck with mono bass from 100Hz down. If the bass had been left in the five full-range channels, your ICBM could "minimize the compromise". Rich's assertion that kicked off this thread would be the best possible situation.

I strongly believe that your ICBM should do your bass management, not some mixer who does not know your system.

Regards,

 

[RaulR]

Should your hardware require a compromise, bass management can be tuned to optimize this. Building it into the mix via sending bass to a mono LFE channel forces most folks to accept a sub-optimal compromise.

Exactly. High-end full-range speakers have always been designed to reproduce any audible signal you throw at them. Why should a dedicated channel for bass be necessary for anything now?

Let's not forget that the only reason why sub/sat systems -- which are the only kind of speakers that benefit from having a discrete .1 channel -- exist is that most people don't want or can't afford big, full-range speakers in their home. But if you have the means to get as many full-range speakers as you want and the knowhow to set it all up properly, why would you want a signal source (CD or DVD) that can only reproduce low bass in mono? And more important, why would you want a CD or DVD that forces you to do special bass-management settings to make sure you're getting the right amount of the low end?

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Ken_McAlinden,

Building it into the mix via sending bass to a mono LFE channel forces most folks to accept a sub-optimal compromise.

OK, there is the problem!
Your talking about some goof ball putting "ALL" the bass in the LFE channel.
That's stupid.
As I have stated previously, "ALL" five full range spks should be used full range.
Please tell me who you know of that puts "ALL" the bass in the .1 channel for music!

I am talking, and have be speaking of all along, is a discrete .1/LFE channel. With bass played and recorded for that channel and that channel only!

This thread seems to treat the LFE channel as BAD!
If your problem with the LFE is poor, to say the least, USE of this channel. Please say so.
Just don't take away the .1/LFE channel, cause someone doesn't use it properly!

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Let's not forget that the only reason why sub/sat systems -- which are the only kind of speakers that benefit from having a discrete .1 channel

RaulR,
Why would full range spks, NOT benefit from "a discrete .1 channel"?

Are you thinking that because a full range spk CAN handle the bass, there is NO benefit from "a discrete .1 channel?

Please test this 'theory' out on your 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1, or 6.1 system.
Using a musical format with a discrete .1/LFE information.
Play the .1 first (or second, yeah make it second), then with your two channel output from your audio source, play it back in stereo, prologic, prologic II, logic 7, whatever is appropriate.
And see if you notice a difference in the bass of said musical recording.

 

[Javier_Huerta]

Ed,

A properly recorded disc won't need to use a .1 channel to deliver visceral bass.

A properly configured system is required, though.

Again - why would you let someone else decide where bass should go in *your* system?

Would you support a ".1" channel dedicated for high frequencies, too? How about a ".1" channel, just for the mids, so singers have "more presence"?

The .1 channel is a "special effects" channel. Nothing more. It's merely used to add some extra oomph to on-screen explosions and stuff like that. It was never designed as a music medium!

I also promise - this is my last post on this thread.

 

[Ken Stuart]

You guys are arguing about abstract concepts as they apply to a system which was created by practical realities.

All current multi-channel music sources are available solely because of the presence in millions of households of Home Theater equipment designed to playback Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 DVDs.

So, DVD-A (and SACD) are an extension of that reality.

While many in this Forum would not want to own a system of tiny satellites and a sub, nevertheless the affordability, availability, and ultimately, the performance of such systems are what allow DVD-A and SACD to exist in the first place.

While it makes sense not to cripple audiophile playback in the creation of source media, in order to do so, the manufacturers of equipment are going to have to deal with the bass management issue.

Either BM capability is added to players (presumably by development of inexpensive chips), or else someone needs to create a chip version of the ICBM-1 and place that in new A/V receivers (so call up Onkyo and HK and harrangue them).

The blame ultimately rests in the failure of hardware manufacturers to support these capabilities, while continuing to market the "DVD-A" and "SACD" features in their products.

 

[Rachael B]

Ken, I think you should point your finger at the "big five" who demanded analog outputs only in the first place. Best wishes!

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

Well said, Ken.

 

[Ken Stuart]

I survived the AFI top 100 Film Challenge! I've seen them all.

Hey, I'm impressed. :star:

 

[LanceJ]

To help defend the 5.1 music creators, I think their insistence on full-range channels is to avoid problems with crossovers on the user end...............

What if the musician wants to use stereo effects in the upper bass region? What if the playback system's xover takes them & crams them both into the subwoofer? Not good.

A bass guitar note contains more than just one frequency--what if a someone's system xover was directly in the middle of those frequencies? You could very well introduce phase (cancellation) problems from the xover circuitry itself; or parts of the sound could be lost because the sub's cutoff slope didn't exactly mesh with the satellite's cutoff slope.

And then you have another unnatural situation: you have one speaker playing one part of that bass guitar & the sub reproducing the other part, and from a different location in the room! Call me an audiophile if you like but I want no part of that twisted situation, never mind the previous three problems. :frowning:

Now I know why some dvd-audios use the phrase "strongly recommend" when speaking of using five full-range speakers.

After realizing the above scenarios about two months ago, that's when I decided to start looking for a very large center channel, and to purchase two rear channels with at least 6.5" woofers.

5.1 channel movie effects are one thing: if the alien's claw steps don't 100% perfectly match with the on-screen movement I personally am not worried. But chopping up musical instruments? No way.

The LFE channel itself? I wish they wouldn't use it at all. But if the customer has chosen to use a subwoofer, let the user's processor deal with the 5 main channel's bass as it sees fit. Even $200 HTiB's do this right now with CD's and the radio.

LJ

 

[Steve_AS]

I agree that the test tracks are 5.1, and further, those tracks show that the BM does NOT work on the 45A, but I also think it is flawed with the DVD-A music tracks.

Although I have an ICBM in the signal path, I set all speakers to Bypass, such that it is really not doing anything. Playing any of the music tracks on the disc (I like the Latin Jazz cut for this) and there is NOTHING coming out of my sub (note that this is with the 45A set to all small, sub on just for that test. Normally its all large, sub on so that the ICBM can work its mojo).

In that scenario, if the player WAS doing BM, the bass from the main tracks would be routed to the sub.

True. But that doesn't mean the 45a doesn't do *any* BM. I tested this at length and posted the results on another thread, a month or two ago. *IF* the mains are set to 'SMALL' and the sub set to 'ON', the 45a does BM on 5.1 (3/2.1) and 2.0 DVD-A but not on 4.0 (2/2) DVD-A; the Chesky musics tracks are in 4.0. That's why I've said the 45a does BM, but not comprehensively. Since relatively few DVD-A surround discs *aren't* 3/2.1, the 45a handles *most* DVD-As properly, at least in terms of BM. Setting the mains to large turns off output to the sub, regardless of whether the sub is set to ON or not. (SACD , btw perhaps behaves slightly better, in that the 45a will do BM on a 3/2 source such as 'Tubular Bells'; I wasn't able to test a 2/2 SACD).

The test results are here:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...49#post1458749

Follow-up posts there also report and discuss the Chesky disc enigma.

 

[Steve_AS]

Let's not forget that the only reason why sub/sat systems -- which are the only kind of speakers that benefit from having a discrete .1 channel -- exist is that most people don't want or can't afford big, full-range speakers in their home.

Even if they could, there are still room response issues in the bass frequencies, that subs can solve better than any full-range setup alone. How important these issues are to you is a matter of preference, of course.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Are people here suggesting that mixing for the lowest common denominator is a desireable thing? Nobody mixing surround music is going to know the strengths and weaknesses of my hardware, let alone any room response issues, so how are they going to pre-suppose my bass management needs? Let me figure that one out on my own, thank you very much.

Regards,