do you think this will happen when 6.1 and up come out. (1 Viewer)

[Richard Paul]

Funny, but you are mistaken since to achieve a 3-D sound field a height channel is all that would be needed. Which you would know if you knew how a height channel works. Also Tim you apparently didn't read my post since I myself said the height channel will probably not catch on. You are right in that many people, yourself included, would not have any desire for a height channel and the problems involved in installing one. So too are there many people who think that stereo is all that's needed and that anyone bothering with surround sound is wasting there money.

 

[Tobias Kepner]

The WSR "review" was hardly objective: co-author Norm Schnieder is the president of Smart Devices, makers of the CS-3X Jr. A previous thread discussed WSR's longtime obsession with the CS-3X and its chameleonic ability to extract the next big thing in phantom channels, despite the fact that the unit has never changed design. WSR and company heard what they wanted; as was stated above, whatever height information was encoded for the special exhibitions of We Were Soldiers is not on the dvd.

 

[Richard Paul]

Tobias, I understand that the We Were Soldiers DVD has no height channel, but after reading that article carefully I see that Widescreen Review NEVER said that it did. The article said that We Were Soldiers was the first movie with a height channel. In the article they did say that the AOTC DVD has a height channel. Can anyone confirm or deny that there is a height channel on the DVD of AOTC?

 

[Tobias Kepner]

I have seen nothing in print about height channel encoding in the AOTC theatrical release or dvd except what was printed in WSR issue 68. Now that I think about it, WSR also claimed you could emulate SDDS in a home theater environment, using U-571 as an example, by hooking up the CS-3X inline with the screen channels to extract center-left & center-right channels (for a total of five front channels). According to WSR, films released theatrically in SDDS supposedly still contain enough steerable soundtrack information folded down into three front channels for dvd to extract the extra screen channels. My point is this: any two channels plugged into a Pro-logic type decoder (ex. CS-3X) will derive a third. Whether or not the new channel reproduces what may have been present theatrically is doubtful and at best purely coincidental.

 

[Richard Paul]

Interesting, I see that trying to extract SDDS would be a rather useless endeavor so maybe what they said about the height channel in AOTC would be the same. They didn't said that AOTC was created with a height channel, only that it contains "height channel information". Apparently WSR wants people to believe that there is a height channel on several movies when the only time it was ever done was for a special theatrical release of We Were Soldiers.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Richard, at the risk of saying "I told you so", let me repeat what I said above:

[M]atrix technology can be applied to extract all sorts of "additional" channels on playback. But that doesn't mean there's a new sound "format".

M.

 

[dan fritzen]

To me it's the law of diminishing returns. 5.1 is great but is 6.1 a major improvement?

agreed.

 

[Wes]

Well this weekend I ran a new speaker wire up to the ceiling in the overhead PJ conduit and installed the single overhead channel. I hooked it up to the Surround channel from the DPL receiver that is decoding my matrixed EX/ES channel.
Ran some of the same discs I ran before and some new and found the same thing as before. WWS does in fact process a overhead channel! The chopper blades are definitely over head as are chopper flybys. I put in Tears of the Sun expecting "hoping" for the same type effects and I get none!
Some discs do process signals that really do fit as over head effects. In no case have I heard effects that clearly do not fit up there on any disc, some discs the over head channel just remains quiet or a slight (can't hear unless all other channels are off) sounds or music, nothing distracting.

I know I am just setting myself up again for nay-sayers but Oh well, I have tried it with my own equipment and this time I will leave it permanently. If you are in Salt Lake and want to hear it come on by.

Wes