The size of the listening room is key here: from headphones to a large living room (to an auditorium) the cost multiplies to achieve full range SOTA.
-
WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
How Much is Undoubtedly Too Much?
- Thread starter polocolo
- Start date
Can there not be SOTA 2 channel and SOTA multichannel?
Surely multichannel is just a preference, not an advance? Personally I don't like it, but then I don't listen to classical music, where I can see it may have some advantages.
Surely multichannel is just a preference, not an advance? Personally I don't like it, but then I don't listen to classical music, where I can see it may have some advantages.
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2022
- Messages
- 1,079
- Likes
- 1,552
Start with the room, which most of us can’t (or afford) control in domestic spaces. The rest is pretty easy.
MattHooper
Master Contributor
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2019
- Messages
- 8,825
- Likes
- 14,548
Anyone can go back and look at what you wrote and what I wrote. I wasn’t challenging any claim that properly done multichannel is SOTA. I was speaking to other claims you made and their implications.
You opined that stereo converted to multichannel is “better” than unconverted stereo.
You opined that it was perfectly fine to upmix all stereo recordings to multichannel.
And you agreed to the statement;
"Hi-Fi" is not about trying to "reproducing the source" as accurately as possible rather it is about "reprocessing" the source to be as "pleasing" as possible.
(“ it has always been thus”)
So I’ve been looking at the implications of what you’ve actually written.
Levimax brought up the implications, and you saw the subject as worthwhile responding to, so it’s not like I just shoved this into the conversation remember?
OK. Though I think that could be interesting and I have actually engaged Dr. Toole a little on the subject, I doubt what you want is going to happen. (And I suspect you are edging towards a fallacious type of argument from authority in any case ).
/conversation
I'd love to have some details on those speakers.
Dig the big screen TV in his home theater.
Frank, think you got enough cigarette variety in the bowl? LOL
ROTFLMAssOff.
You got him cranked up good Krabby, another 10,000 words in 2 pages just to say the some ole, same ole for the 500th time.
Go Matt, Go.
Sure. But I disagree that multichannel is not an advance over 2ch.
If you were to just consider the listening room real-estate allowed for a 2ch playback and a multich mastering of the same
recording you might begin to realize how separating the different individual recorded parts allows you to hear more clearly into
the recording. Without the entire production crushed together on the front soundstage, there's just more room for the instruments
to breath. J. Gordon Holt was trying to get that thru to Atkinson and Archibald at Stereophile back in the 80s until he finally got fed
up and walked out.
With almost 50 years of listening to multich music I came to appreciate long ago the ways in which multich has the ability better portray a recording.
Actually the popular forms of music better allows multich to shine.
Classical music has too many "rules" and expectations about how recordings should be sound staged.
They get all bent out if the surround channels are used for anything much beyond adding hall ambiance, borring.
A good multich recording paints a picture of music all around you in a 360 degree arch (and with Atmos or Auro in a floor to ceiling arrangement).
The painters of the Sistine Chapel understood 3 dimensional art 500 years ago.
I understand if you can't move beyond the old recording paradigm of listening thru a open window at the back of the hall.
But I find it much more pleasurable to be fully immersed with the music all around me.
YMMV
Sokel
Master Contributor
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2021
- Messages
- 7,690
- Likes
- 7,988
kemmler3D
Master Contributor
Coming in way late, but isn't "how much is too much" another way of asking how expensive the objectively best speakers on the market are?
I am not sure that's known definitively, even if you could settle on criteria for "best", which we definitely can't.
But my personal opinion is that you must be in the neighborhood of this if you're spending $30-50K. Like how much better than the Blade Meta 2 or Genelec 8381a can you get for $100K? Any?
I am not sure that's known definitively, even if you could settle on criteria for "best", which we definitely can't.
But my personal opinion is that you must be in the neighborhood of this if you're spending $30-50K. Like how much better than the Blade Meta 2 or Genelec 8381a can you get for $100K? Any?
If you need to take out a loan to buy it, it is undoubtedly too much (for you).
mhardy6647
Grand Contributor
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2019
- Messages
- 12,892
- Likes
- 28,631
If memory serves, they're loaded with Altec or JBL drivers. Pretty sure they're documented.I'd love to have some details on those speakers.
Dig the big screen TV in his home theater.
Frank, think you got enough cigarette variety in the bowl? LOL
ROTFLMAssOff.
You got him cranked up good Krabby, another 10,000 words in 2 pages just to say the some ole, same ole for the 500th time.
Go Matt, Go.
I don't mean to doubt you but what led you to believe the speakers shown in the Sinatra photo are the same as above?Here you go,this ones recorded (assisting recording to be correct) masterpieces!
They look nothing alike and a obviously custom built cabinet enclosure lends us no clue to whats inside, the usual path of the day was DIY ??
I wouldn't be surprised.
Robin L
Master Contributor
Honestly, it has more advantages in Pop/Rock. Classical music can have a presentation like sitting front of the house, that's usually what recording engineers/producers aim for. In Classical surround productions there usually are the performers in a proscenium arch up front with hall ambience in the back and sides. With the right kind of stereo recording and playback, there is a fairly good hall illusion without surround sound.
On the other hand, there are plenty of Pop/Rock productions consciously mixed/mastered with surround sound in mind, with instruments and vocalists surrounding the listener. I've found that surround is more effective in a movie theater, I suspect that would be a matter of scale. I haven't heard many rock concerts with a surround mix though I understand that some bands insist on it.
The Meyer Bluehorns are phase linear to really low frequencies and measures pretty flat. It’s rated at 130 dB SPL which makes sense if you are listening at something like 10m. Alternatively, if it can handle 130 dB, it’s likely to have very low distortion at normal volumes.
Bozak speakers
kemmler3D
Master Contributor
So another 3-4dB headroom and a f6 a few hz lower than the Genelecs at $60K, but considerably more expensive. I am sure there are other reasons to get the Meyers instead but I do think this illustrates the "diminishing returns" aspect from the perspective of people with listening rooms you can't also play full-court basketball in.
It was the hall ambience I was thinking of for classical.
I don't like it for popular music whether it's deliberate or 2 channels up mixed. Like I said, it's a preference thing. It's not better the way DVD is better than VHS.
BTW I've been to the Sistine Chapel, I thought it was a bit disappointing. The paintings are a bit crude and cartoonish. Wasn't what I was expecting. There's a big gift shop though.
Sokel
Master Contributor
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2021
- Messages
- 7,690
- Likes
- 7,988
They are probably not,I just combined the era and the 3-channel recordings.These are the ones that fit.
No,the ones at the Sinatra photo looks passive,the ones I posted are powered and probably similar size.
I agree.
More channels will always have the potential to get a music mix to "breathe" better than having to crush everything through only 2 channels, there's no question about that as the mixing engineer doesn't have to struggle as much to make room for everything as there is less need for overlapping sounds in the mix, which leads to less need for compression and EQ "carving" as there are fewer problems with frequency masking and such.
But with the above said, that is when the mix is done for multichannel, but I have rarely heard up mixing of a 2-channel mix to sound good. It can work okay with some recordings made with a few microphones that have captured an ensemble of instruments, but with mixes containing panned multi-mono objects the result of up-mixing will more than often sound worse than the ordinary 2-channel playback, in my opinion.
My two cents on the multichannel issue.
Do you know what reproduces two cellos better than a multichannel system? Two cellos.
So is the future of hifi to have a myriad of musical instruments that play on command at home? I doubt it.
The problem with multichannel is that it would struggle terribly to spread enough to make it convenient to publish multichannel music by default, how many people would have the space, money and patience or interest to install a multichannel system at home? Many people have great difficulty finding the space and a position at least decent for two small bookshelf speakers.
Multichannel music could also be qualitatively better than stereo, I have no doubt about it, but I don't think it will ever go much beyond the niche, due to the objective difficulty of spreading such a complex, expensive, space-demanding and compromise-intensive system in a normal home.
Do you know what reproduces two cellos better than a multichannel system? Two cellos.
So is the future of hifi to have a myriad of musical instruments that play on command at home? I doubt it.
The problem with multichannel is that it would struggle terribly to spread enough to make it convenient to publish multichannel music by default, how many people would have the space, money and patience or interest to install a multichannel system at home? Many people have great difficulty finding the space and a position at least decent for two small bookshelf speakers.
Multichannel music could also be qualitatively better than stereo, I have no doubt about it, but I don't think it will ever go much beyond the niche, due to the objective difficulty of spreading such a complex, expensive, space-demanding and compromise-intensive system in a normal home.
Similar threads
