DTS Disc Question (1 Viewer)

[MarkHastings]

No offense guys, but I can not imagine that rock/pop music is best suited for surround. Surround is meant for orchestral/classical. Of my several DVD-A titles (all rock/pop), they get too 'gimmicky' with the surround because rock isn't really meant that way. Most recording studios like to put up 'walls' when recording rock music. Openness is not a friend of rock.

Classical is definitely best suited for surround. My DTS CD of Titanic is far and beyond more enjoyable than my DVD-A's because the orchestral nature of the Titanic soundtrack is great when you submerse yourself in it.

Everything else just sounds too fake.

 

[Phil A]

I concur. I have about 2 dozen classical hi-rez discs, mostly SACDs and a couple of DVD-As. I love the surround on all of them and don't even bother with the 2-channel any longer when I listen to them.

The Eagles "Hell Freezes Over" DTS soundtrack on DVD is an example of why it drives me nuts - love the performance - but the bongo player coming from the right rear channel is not what I would hear in a concert. I go to lots of concerts, much of it rock. A month or so ago I caught Jesse Malin (www.jessemalin.com) who is wonderful in concert (alt. rock with somewhat of a leaning to stuff that sounds more classic rock - at least to me) at a small club, the Iota, in Arlington, VA. I did not hear any musicians or vocals coming from the rear. I hear live music at least once a week on avg.

I do realize everyone has different tastes - that is OK.

 

[JeremyErwin]

Must a recording replicate the experience of a concert? I think REM's "Orange Crush" is a really interesting mix, but it doesn't reflect a live performance. (There's a helicopter in it, for crying out loud.)

I have a classical DVD-A (Vivaldi's Assumption of the Virgin Mary) that attempts to place the listener between the two orchestras.

I suppose that my appreciation for Glenn Gould will only strengthen my philestinian credentials.

 

[MarkHastings]

Not so much that it "must", but I would think that a lot of peoples preferences has to do with a familiarity with what we've experienced.

When you go to a rock concert, you're used to the wall of sound, coming from one direction (i.e. in front of you). And again, there is that 'openness' (that I referred to previously). Surround adds a level of 'openness' that is detrimental to the "Rock" sound.

Example: When recording rock and roll drums, you want to contain all of the sound and make sure it's 'tight' - the same goes with electric guitar. The best sound you can get with electric is an analog feel. Digital just doesn't work well with a classic electric guitar. And adding electric guitar to a surround mix, just makes it too digital sounding. When listening to guitar, I want it very 'focued'. At least that's my opinion.

Classical music is very open and lends itself best for surround. When you go to a classical performance, obviously you are not in the center of the orchestra, but the acoustics of the hall are meant to immerse you as much in the music as it possibly can (without having you actually sit in the center of the orchestra). Orchestral is meant to surround you, Rock and Roll really isn't.

 

[Phil A]

Not at all - depends on one's preferences. If one was used to being in the middle of studio musicians vs. at a concert, I can really see one preferring instruments from varying directions. If one wants to hear something different than at a real performance that is OK as well. When I listen, I want the illusion of the musicians playing as if I were at a concert. When I sit in a movie theater, I generally sit about 65-70% towards the back of the theater vs. in the front row. When I watch a movie at home, my main system is geared for that feel with a 100 inch screen. That does not mean someone can't sit in the front row of a theater or sit 5 ft. from my 100 inch screen. It is just not to my taste.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

See now, this business about "recreating the concert experience" raises questions for me. For example, the aforementiond Donald Fagen/Steely Dan material — it's not supposed to sound like a concert performance, because, quite frankly, we're not talking about a live performance band. In fact the idea of going to a Steely Dan concert has always amused me, precisely because so much of their sound is built up using multitrack studio techniques and processing. It seems perfectly "natural" to have the sound on the dtsCD of Gaucho coming from all speakers, with instruments and vocals and not just "ambiance", because the whole sound of the recording is deliberately artificial.

 

[LanceJ]

Thank goodness I believe art in its various forms, including music, doesn't have to be rooted in "reality" for me to enjoy it.

BTW: Beck announced he finished his new album though there's no release date yet. Man if appropriate I hope he releases a 5.1 version of this album (if Universal allows him to). His Sea Change album in surround is an especially moving experience and Guero is a really fun trip.

 

[Mark-P]

No offense, but the few rock concerts I've been to were so earsplittingly loud that I couldn't tell where the f--k the sound was coming from!

 

[LanceJ]

(taking two mandatory statistics classes actually comes in handy soemetimes!) I don't usually like to make up numbers based on responses on forums because such a survey would be wildly inaccurate. The fact that some are so against surround* is one of the aspects that causes this inaccuracy: even if no one asks them, their near-hatred of it (for whatever reason) causes them to express their feelings about it.....whereas people lukewarm on surround and surround fans themselves seem to kind of just sit back and don't say anything.

The opposite of this scenario (sort of) would be to go into a seafood restaurant and take a survey of who likes seafood. Obviously the results would be highly biased!

So to get accurate numbers, we would need to ask EVERY member of the music forum about their opinion of 5.1 music.

* the non-ambient variety

 

[gene c]

O.K. How about 2.73 people! I tend to generalize because actual numbers are not available. BTW it looks like two people (Phil A #21 and Mark H #22) have already hinted that they prefer an ambient mix, or none at all, depending on the disc. We'll hit three ('cuse me, 2.73) by 8PM.

 

[dany]

It seems most have problems with the surround which is at the mercey of the sound mixer which can screw it up. As for concerts,well i've been to a few the the sound in a most places is bouncing off the sides and coming all over the place,kinda like surround. Now stop it. Last time i looked,any concert of any type of music is in front of you,some spread out on stage more but nothing on your sides or in back but for an ELP concert i went to that had the same speaker setup on stage as in the back corners of the arena. Fricken loud.

 

[Grant B]

Most Blues based stuff is suited more for stereo or even mono....when it's old scratchie and played out of a tin can it's 'authentic'.
Clapton stuff sounds pretty good on the DTS discs.
But there is a ton of rock /pop that sounds wonderful in surround. I just wish it would actually start coming out. Later Beatles(Revolver & later) would kick start surround big time.

 

[LanceJ]

I totally agree with this.

Even if out of pure curiosity, I think many people would buy at least one copy to check it out. So many more people would finally be exposed to surround music, and very possibly try out other, less famous titles.

 

[MarkHastings]

I should state that when I refer to Rock/Pop, I'm not exactly talking Eric Clapton/Eagles type stuff. I can see how their music lends itself to surround.

These rock/pop bands with a whole slew of performers on stage, they must sound really nice with a good surround mix.

I'm talking more of the 4/5 piece bands. The Corrs DVD-A is neat, but the surround just makes me 'dizzy'. It's disorientating to hear rock music surrounding me.

 

[Phil A]

I have the Walter Trout Band on SACD ("Relentless" www.waltertroutband.com - blues/blues/rock). It is a live recording and from memory I did like the multi-channel. Not sure if I preferred it vs. the 2-channel mix but it was good.

I generally dislike seeing concerts in really big venues where the music is blasted and the sound system if one is lucky is mediocre. The places where I saw my last rock concerts held a couple of hundred of people. I'll be going to another this week that perhaps holds a bit less than a 1,000.

I did prefer the Beck hi-rez stuff in stereo but could easily see with the type of music involved (e.g. Sea Change in particular) that the multi-channel had many nice qualities.

To me the art of mixing and mastering a disc is about creating the illusion of the musicians playing in real space in your room not about saying we have multiple channels and we're going to make sure you hear all of them. My girlfriend's son just started school to become an audio engineer. He's already done studio work and sold beats. I could walk into a studio tomorrow and with minimal assistance create a mix that uses all the channels in an aggressive manner (I've heard enough of them - e.g. harmony vocals in the rears, etc.). To create one that is seamless in not knowing multi-channel is being utilized takes much more skill. I don't want to buy music that I find both distracting and that I have the skill to create (and I claim to have virtually none).

I should also note long before 5.1 I had surround music in my systems. Way back in the 1980s (when I was in diapers), I had devices known as time delays. The most common type had add-on rear channels with delays that could be set in milliseconds. The longer the delay, the bigger the acoustic space (e.g. 15 ms might be a small jazz club, 100ms might be a stadium). So I've played around with a good deal of equipment that produces surround over the years. With the DSPs in receivers and processors these days, if surround is what you want, you can create a much better sounding mix from stereo in my opinion than the vast majority of 5.1 engineered discs out there.

 

[dany]

A good read on the back page of S&V mag about the Beatles and surround.

 

[Phil A]

I should also indicate I loved the way EMI did "Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys on DVD-A. They included stereo, mono and multi-channel mixes to appeal to fans of both the orig. singles releases and also create something new. I enjoyed all of them. It would be nice if they did the Beatles the same way.

 

[JeremyErwin]

That would be this article

I was going to bring up Pink Floyd and the smattering of other bands that released music in "quad" format, but then I remembered that the current "5.1" mix on SACD is different. (Allegedly, there is a bootleg DVD-Audio with the original quad mix).

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Actually, quadraphonic recordings were quite common. I'm sitting here looking at Colors of the Day : The Best of Judy Collins Quadradisc, a CD-4 discrete 4-channel vinyl release [using a subcarrier above the audible range to carry the Lf-Lr and Rf-Rr information]. Unfortunately, I don't have the equipment to play it back as it should be heard, so I'm stuck with stereo [Lf+Lr and Rf+Rr channels play back in the ordinary way], even if the 45-kHz signal isn't all worn off the disc by now.
CD-4 was the only one of the Quad vinyl systems to be discrete, and at that the intermodulation and other problems meant that it wasn't perfect. I would be very glad if somebody would just go back to the master tape and dump it even to a dtsCD, so I could listen to "Both Sides Now" in 4.0. The Compact Disc standard actually provides for a double-data-rate 4-channel playback, but to the best of my knowledge it has never been used.

 

[JeremyErwin]

Alan Parsons. 1975 "Four Sides of the Moon" Studio Sound.