Another depressing-and uninformed-article about surround music (1 Viewer)

[Eric_Connelly]

Lance,

I tend to agree but I will say this. I never was a fan of DSP created surround mixes. However my Yamaha 2600 does a good job with its 7 channel stereo mix which I think just outputs the same channels to each one.

The DVD player when left in Multichannel output also does a fantastic job compared to alot of the DSP modes.

I played around with it today and yes some DSP modes sounded decent for some things, but bad for others. I want to set it and listen to music not play with buttons all day long

I can leave it in multichannel or Stereo7 and have it sound pretty decent 90 percent of the time.

 

[LanceJ]

Eric: that Yamaha player has built-in Dolby Pro-Logic II right? does it only turn on when the player's m-ch output option is chosen? Somebody on another board said his Yamaha wouldn't let him turn this feature off, which I thought sounded strange.

I've heard a lot of other people say they also like their receiver's 6 or 7 channel stereo mode-sounds just like the olden days when people would use the A + B speaker mode which also was popular (no funky DSP stuff going on, just music but from everywhere this time).

On another thread-related note:

"SoundScan says music video sales dropped 23% this year"
from here:

U.S. Music Album Sales Down 7 Percent

This is significant to me because many times we bring up music videos as one of the reasons many people don't buy hi-res or even CDs anymore, supposedly because they need an image to go with the music.

Do y'all think this sales decline actually may be related to the fact that so many more people now have hi-speed internet connections and now download these in addition to music?

 

[Marc Colella]

DVD music videos can still be a reason for many people not buying CDs/SACD/DVD-A even though it's sales figures have dropped from last year.

I think one problem with DVD music video sales is that (at least with regards to concert DVDs) people dont feel the need to purchase a new DVD for every tour an artist has. It's not normally worth it for a few extra songs, which is the same reason artists don't usually release Live CDs after every tour.

It's not surprising the CDs sales are down again. Crappy music, high prices in relation to value received, and competition for the consumers entertainment dollars continue to kill the music industry.

 

[Eric_Connelly]

Lance,

That part is confusing...when I put in a disc it identifies it. Meaning it will pop up and say DOLBY II, PL II, DTS, etc.

I can pick multichannel surround, virtual surround, or stereo as my main output.

Multichannel output sounds nothing like any of the DSP modes on my reciever, it sounds for the most part better and does a fantastic job of splitting things up.

It does have a Dolby Digital and DTS decoder built in, but it will not do any of the sub categories like DD:EX and the like. For those I must go out my digital and let the reciever handle it.

I do not know what system it is using for multichannel output. Even when I put in a DVD-Audio disk, it identifies it by the non-DVD Audio track type. If the DVD has DTS and DVD-Audio Hirez, it says DTS, but then plays the hirez tracks but gives no further indication except for NO DOWN MIX when it starts each track versus DOWNMIX if I'm playing the DTS/DD tracks.

 

[LanceJ]

I'm guessing that choosing "multichannel surround" activates the Dolby Pro-Logic II system, which depending on which of *its* submodes is utilized (in a receiver usually there is one specfically for movies and another for music), depending on whether a CD, or a dvd with a stereo-only soundtrack is chosen, that's what emerges from the player's analog outputs. Panasonic's dvd-audio players do this too.

I guess this feature is provided for people like me who don't own a receiver with DPLII? I'm glad it sounds good. > Some albums seem to be mixed almost intentionally to get themselves "noticed" by such DSP systems. When my Technic receiver's "theater" mode is chosen (almost identical to DPL but much more disrete in back and the center sounds are spread across all three front channels), the Beastie Boys' Hello Nasty CD and this classy downtempo CD by Blue States have all kinds of stuff emanating from behind me-cool. FYI: there are still CDs being sold encoded with true Dolby Surround signals, most of them being classical.

 

[MarkHastings]

Yeah, I agree with that. It's like running a composite cable (from your DVD player) into a device that converts it into a component signal that goes into your TV. It's just not the same as going from component to component.

Does anyone own any DTS CD's? I have one and it's the Titanic soundtrack. What an amzing difference between the regular CD and the DTS CD. I'm not sure of what the technology exactly is on it (i.e. is it still a 2 channel signal that gets processed into 6?), but the quality is great.

 

[Philip Hamm]

I've had a bunch of them since long before DVD-A and SACD came out. They sound fabulous. The technology is just plain DTS 5.1 sound.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

If I wanted great sounding music, good ole vinyl does the trick. Otherwise, I really can't tell the difference between an audio track on a CD and an audio track converted to MP3 or AAC. Is the sonic difference really that substantial?

I have but three DVD audios: Rumours, Say You Will, and the The Best of R.E.M. I like how they sound, but what does everybody think of them?

 

[LanceJ]

Depends greatly on what bit rate was used. The first thing that usually gets ruined is the upper frequencies, then acoustic instruments at lower frequencies. A simple experiment can be done to demonstrate this by recording a CD with Windows Media Player using different recording rates. For me anything below 128kbps is unlistenable, especially if good quality speakers are used.

But that's a clue right there to many people's satisfaction when using such low-quality digital formats: their playback gear is also low quality. From what I have seen, many people's gear, especially younger peoples', consists of their computer with a basic soundcard and a $20 pair of plastic speakers. Or a portable MP3 player with $5 headphones. Since the industry constantly tells us that if something is "digital, so it's great!" I am not surprized in the least so many non-hobbyists think a 96kbps music file is the shit.

....and after all of us old audio nerds complain, there's a rush on gear like this by teenagers & twentysomethings so they can better connect with Radiohead, the White Stripes and Foo Fighters. And you can mix drinks on them too! It could happen!

 

[gene c]

Look for the DTS discs produced by Mobile Fidelity. Especially Fly Like An Eagle by The Steve Miller Band and Not Fragile by BTO. These sound incredible. Very aggressive surround mixes. The way m/c is supposed to sound (IMO of course....but I'm right ).

 

[Eric_Connelly]

Lancej,

I have a few Danzig MP3's that sound fantastic in my car, MB Quarts, 1600 watt amps, Pioneer deck, solobaric sub.

I went and checked them later on and they were only 96kbps.

I couldn't believe it and I did verify the bit rate.

I made a CD to demo of 192kbps through 320kbps and I could tell on all of them they were mp3's when I auditioned my speakers.

Sucks because there are alot of things I have in Mp3 that I'm dying to get on CD but no luck.

I have a Skinny Puppy cover of Tainted Love but I can't find it anywhere on real media.

 

[LanceJ]

Maybe the MP3's distortion sort of blended in with the music's guitar distortion effects? I'm not making a snide comment about his music, because I own most of The Rollins Band's CDs, along with some Black Flag, NOFX and Sonic Youth.

I did my Windows tests with a Windham Hill new age sampler disc full of acoustic intruments and delicate synthesizers (this disc came out before new age turned into 21st century elevator music done by low-talent musicians. This Mark Isham album, Vapor Drawings, is one of my favorites. The seven minute long "On The Threshold Of Liberty" is awesome, epsecially at night. Windham Hill albums-CD & vinyl-also have excellent sound quality).

 

[andrew markworthy]

Before we attribute every auditory sin in the world to MP3, I think we should have a word in its defence [sorry, my American chums, I of course mean 'defense']. The idea of MP3, as I understand it, was to offer a medium for situations where people were willing to sacrifice some loss of auditory quality in exchange for far greater compactness. I have a large library of MP3 discs on my computer to provide background music (largely to drown out extraneous noise) and on my PDA or MP3 player for when I'm travelling. I know there are compromises in sound quality (though still arguably less than from a typical cassette portable stereo, for example) but I can put up with these because of the saving in space. I also have MP3 discs when I just want background music playing on my home theatre system. In this, I don't think I'm any different from a lot of people who like music and have a reasonably sensitive ear. MP3 in these circumstances is a brilliant compromise.

Where people who care about music diverge from Joe [or Jo] Public is that for serious listening we have our CDs, DVD-As etc. As far as JP is concerned, music listening may as well stop with MP3s - JP doesn't listen critically or with insight (how else can we explain the deplorable state of the pop charts and the decline of classical music?).

The irony of all this is that for the first time, good quality reproduction is available to anyone with even a modest amount of money to spend on home theatre or hi-fi. True, you still have to spend megabucks to get the absolute last word in audio fidelity, but a modest starter system of today is likely to give a very respectable sound. So just at the point where the average consumer is in a position to appreciate well-produced music ...

 

[MarkHastings]

If I am correct, MP3 was orignally developed for internet presentation.

Before the notion of MP3 files, I used to work with Shockwave audio from Macromedia. They were SWA files which used mpeg compression. They were used in Shockwave movies for the internet (for games and presentations).

I remember using my Shockwave application to compress songs (which took over an hour to compress), then changing the extension from SWA to MP3 to play as stand alone files. The quality loss verses savings in storage space was AMAZING!

So, orignally, they were compressed to allow music to be delivered in internet presentations and not clog up slow connections. Also, at that time (i.e. early to mid 90's) computer space was fairly expensive and people (much like myself) found it extremely desirable to put entire collections of CD's on their computers. And even though there was a bit of quality loss...at a 90% savings, it was worth the loss.

Back then, it would have cost me THOUSANDS of dollars to afford the amount of space necessary to fit my entire CD collection on my computer at 16 bit / 44 kHz / stereo / uncompressed WAV files.

My MP3 collection was 60+ GB. Without MP3 compression, I would have needed (if I did my math correctly) a 6 terrabyte hard drive in order to store it all on my computer. Did they even have terrabytes back then? Were they even available on a consumer level? Even now, are they cheap enough to afford???

 

[FeisalK]

terabyte solutions nowadays are... accessible

I know someone who has 1.2TB on this unRaid system but you can go all the way up to 5.5

 

[MarkHastings]

But can everyone afford that? I would venture to say that if people don't care about sound quality, they're not going to spend the money on terrabyte solutions for storage.

 

[FeisalK]

no and i doubt many audiophiles nowadays will deign to run their CD collection - even uncompressed - off a hard disk. despite the emergence of true audiophile-grade (and -priced) stuff like the Ti48 (review)

 

[MarkHastings]

Oh, sorry, I'm not sure if I was clear, but I was talking about consumer level products for your average audio listener.

Due to lack of storage space, the consumer level market was what made MP3 so popular.