Once a diehard 2 channel guy... now, 5.1 well... ,maybe? (1 Viewer)

[John Morris]

I have long been an old fashioned 2 channel music lover. I tried and shunned Logic 7, Denon's 7.1 stereo, DPL2, and even eventually DVD-Audio. Then I bought and now, finally hooked up and tested my new Sony C555es SACD player.
The player came with 2 demo discs; one stereo, and one 5.1. I placed them both into the carousel along with my old speaker testing, regular CD disc, Donald Fagan's The Nightfly. First disc, the stereo SACD sampler. WOW! Alot of these cuts I've heard tens of times and yet, never have they taxed my speakers as fully as these cuts did. Most notibly was the added upper midrange and the very low bass now fully realized from this disc and player. Next, came the 5.1 channel SACD Sony demo disc... Holy Cow, literally. I was in heaven's church with heaven's choir. The surround channels were not in any way distractful from the front soundstage. Instead, I was enveloped and enthralled! Not only could I pick out each vocalist's seating area, but I also could close my eyes and feel the pew under my ass. I WAS in a cathedral!
Finally, came a CD that I'd listened to a hundred times, on my own system, on many divergent systems, and even on some of the best equipment available today. This time, it sounded different. I heard things I've never heard before... good things, I think. First, the sound was more 3 dimensional. The clarity of the instruments was there, as always, yet seemed more real. I actually heard things I never heard before. One example... at 28 seconds or so, I clearly heard Donald Fegan make a type of throat clearing sound. Before, this sound had been muddled, faded into the background. Anyway, this type of clarity isn't always good. On one cut of the demo disc, I can clearly hear recorded hiss... and for a second I glance at my turntable to see if a mishandled album has suddenly started playing.
Anyway, I MUST say I LOVE my new Sony SCD-C555ES SACD player. Those of you with lesser players will love it too!
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Take Care,
merc
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God Bless America!!!

 

[Chip E]

John, as you may have read in prior threads, i bought the 555ES a couple weeks ago too. I didn't have the cables to hook up the multi gig so, i ordered 6 BlueTigers from Doug at CatCables.com... Do ya believe USPS didn't leave the package on the porch! *sigh*, came home from work yesterday to find a note that their at the post office. Guess it'll be Saturday before i can hook it all up. I've been using digital out only for CD's so far... awesome cd player though. I picked up a few SACD's last week - James Taylor-Hour Glass (multi) Meatloaf - Bat Outta Hell (two channel) and Carol King - Tapestry (two channel). Best Buy had very little to choose from.
Hey, i'm glad you really liked the multi channel playback from the 555ES. I'm sure i will too.
- Chip
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[ling_w]

So what is the difference between DVD-A and SACD? They both offer multi-discrete channels. And added upper midrange and lower bass is just a EQ mix isn't it? There is an emphasis by engineers to take advantage of the .1 channel, like the way the movies are being done. But the question is whether they are natural or are they more used for hyper-realistic effects.
As far as the "You are there" feeling, it just comes down to the mix isn't it? You are not going to get more detail out of SACD compared to DVD-A due to its lack of LSB, therefore not able to add dither and preserve info below its lowest level of resolution.
You forgot to try a few mutichannel formats. Ambisonic produces you are there realism with 4+ playback channels that is independent of how many channels it was encoded in, and that has been around for many many years. It is based on different principles of how human perceive sound. With DVD-A's multi-channel capability, height encoding becomes a possibility, with some people utilizing 32 channels at different planes as playback. Trifield, a Meridian technology, makes 2 ch source sound more like "You are there" not in terms of enveloping the listener, but by making the soundstage more real and imaging holographic.

 

[Chip E]

Yo Ling... Me thinks thou dos protest too much. Lol..
- Chip
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[KeithH]

John, glad to hear you are enjoying your 'C555ES. I am enjoying mine. It is an excellent player at $800. I only have four multi-channel SACDs (Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells, Billy Joel The Stranger, James Taylor Hourglass, and Miles Davis Kind of Blue), so I have been using the 'C555ES primarily with CDs and stereo SACDs. Slowly, but surely, I'll add multi-channel SACDs to my collection.
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