to the extent that surround is bullshit...

  • Thread starter Thread starter dobro
  • Start date Start date

surround is bullshit, right?

  • yes! surround is wonderful! I always endorse the latest techology, no matter what...

    Votes: 5 3.8%

  • yes! surround is great! It multiplies artistic possibilties by a factor of 3

    Votes: 45 34.1%

  • ho hum - now we've got 5 or 6 speakers worth of boy bandz in the room

    Votes: 32 24.2%

  • there's a guy somewhere who gets paid to invent this horsehshit and the amazing thing is, people hav

    Votes: 50 37.9%
  • Total voters
    132
dobro

dobro

Well-known member
... I want nothing to do with it.

Well, it *is* bullshit, right? It's like headphones, a completely synthetic sound environment. When was the last time you were surrounded by music? When you were second clarinet playing in the school band?

Okay, fair enough, art takes advantage of the tools that become available, but I get the feeling with surround that it's driven by technological development more than any need or desire to have five or six speakers all over the room. They're looking for something new to market, whether we need it or not ( I think I'll start a poll on this one...).

It'll be fun to play with. Compared to stereo, it'll be like 3D chess. It'll still be bullshit. How many times in the last five years have you said to yourself: "Damn, if only I could get sounds coming from every corner of the room."

Maybe I'll never do anything more than me and my guitar. Let 'em try and turn that into surround. Bastards.
 
They tried this years ago... around 1969 to 1971.

Albums were recorded and put out in "quadrophonic" sound.... the most notable being The Who's "Quadrophenia".
I also remember quad albums by Jimi Hendrix and several other big name acts from that time.
The problem was, nobody could afford the quad stereo's you had to play the music on, and the albums themselves cost more money. Hence, the idea faded as a novelty.

This is old technology with a new spin.... digital recordings.
It'll probably have the same fate as quadrophonic sound.
 
I remmember the Quad stuff. I wasn't impressed with it or the surround stuff that's out now. I wish we could still get that great stereo sound that we had back in the late sixties and early seventies. Back then you didn't even need an equalizer in the system. Just Bass, Treble, and balance. I had a Realistic system from Radio Shack, with 34 watts RMS and the sound was fantastic. You'd have to pay a lot to get that sound these days.
 
EQ's on stereo systems are like whipped cream on horse shit. They exist only because consumers THINK that they need to control the sound. In fact, I would guess that most integrated amps with built-in EQ's are built intentionally with the assumption that the user's going to immediately set the EQ to the ol' "V formation"....or the amp's are just so shitty that boomy bass and bright highs are the only thing that they can do decently.

I've got bass, treble, and balance and I leave them at zero.

As far as surround goes, I think it's the tits. Stereo was a joke when it was introduced too.

The reason that surround is here to stay is that people want it in their home theater systems. I enjoy watching movies in surround, and I think that most people do. It's also dirt cheap now, and with DVD audio already here I think that surround audio mixes will become more common.

The problem is the surround speakers....they're always weak and cheap. Plus it's hard enough to properly position even TWO speakers, let alone 4.

Yes it is a gimick, but there is no such thing as a "realistic" mix anymore, so I don't understand that complaint.

- When was the last time you were at a concert and you were so close to the drum kit that you'd hear half the toms & cymbals in one ear and half the toms & cymbals in the other ear?

- When was the last time you were at a concert and the vocals were the most predominant sound and you could clearly make out all the lyrics?

- When was the last time you were at a concert where the sound was mixed in stereo, and guitars were hard panned?

- When was the last time you were at a rock concert and there were 7 guitar players on stage?

- When was the last time you were at a concert where all the instruments weren't subject to the same reverberation characteristics?

- When was the last time you were at a concert that sounded like a studio recording at all?

There is a huge difference between the recording arts and the performance arts.

Even if it's just one guy and his guitar...I think that perhaps you'd be suprised at what a professional might be able to in a surround evironment. I'm thinking that it might be easier to reproduce not only the musician and his instrument, but also the appropriate environment. But like I said, most people just stick their speakers where they look good...so it might not work well for everyone.

There is a growing movement for mono these days. A lot of people think that stereo only mucks things up, and feel that a single sound source is necessary for pure musical reproduction. Fuckin minimalists...I think they miss the point.

Slackmaster 2000
 
"When was the last time you were at a concert that sounded like a studio recording at all?"

Well, the last time I went to a jazz, classical or folk concert. :D

I seldom go to rock concerts these days - they make my tinnitus worse. I try to avoid my discman as much as possible too - technology that damages health is to be avoided. But I'm digressing.

I take your point about fans of movies going for surround. But there's a difference between listening to movies and listening to music. Music's music; the movies are popcorn. So, although I'm really interested in DVD and what it offers to the music recordist, it's DVD video I'm interested in, one reason being that it offers super-high resolution on TWO channels of music - in other words, it gives me a stereo field, which is all I want.

All my recordings are in mono these days, BTW, not because I believe in it particularly, but because I don't need stereo for what I do. I like stereo for music, though.
 
I get some interesting results from using my SRS (sound retreval system) surround box durring the mastering stage. Accoustic solos and background vocals are very pleasing with this effect.

I am also a home theatre veteren (I Invented the term but didnt get a trademark on it), I even built my first front projection television while I was still in electronics school and Now I have a preety sweet system with DTS and a set of martin logans and velodyne 18" sub. and about 250 DVDs.(even tactile transducers that shake the seats durring low bass passages, so the explosions jar you).:cool:
 
Here's a tip for you...

Most (non surround) amps has two sets of speakerconnectors. Use the free pair to connect a THIRD speaker... (not a fourth).. Connect it to the +connectors of left and right. Place the speaker somewhere behind you.. This speaker will only play the differencies between left and right. I have it set up like this at home, and it actually gives a great result for movies..
 
Surround is here to stay!!!
Not in music, but in movies. All the guys that buy bigscrren TV buys these home movie surround systems with subwoofers and all too!

But for music? Why? Whats the point? OK, it's fun as an effect, but is there anything more really? Maybe, but I doubt it.
 
The world is evolving and these days almost everybody is listening on surround at home at least. Two channel stereo is still the standard for audiophiles but surround is on its way in.

Its time we all entered the 90's.:cool:
 
Evolving?

What kind of evolution is it when people embrace something new just because it's new, just because it's there, whether they need it or not, whether it's useful or not?

Q: Why'd ya buy surround?

A: Because it's better.

Q: Why's it better?

A: Because it's new.

Q: Yeah, I know it's new, but how does that make it better?

A: Well, it must be better - more and more people are buying surround.

Q: Strange little thoughts cross your mind from time to time, don't they?
 
But I only have two ears

I'm afraid that as surround sound becomes more popular they'll realize the need to genetically modify humans so we have enough ears to appreciate all this great technological wizardry. :eek:

Oh, and for the record, Quadrophenia is a great album, even in plain old stereo.
 
When was the last time you went to a classical concert and, unless you were sitting in the back row, had all of the reverberations of the hall come only from the front? One of the great things about live music (and sometimes one of the worst) is the acoustical ambiance of a space. Don't a lot of people go to great lengths and great expense attempting to create and/or re-create the feeling of a space, yet with normal stereo, this information is delivered only from the front. Doesn't make much sense, does it? Now admittedly, surround lends itself to being used much more effectively in certain kinds of music than it does in others. I personally don't relish the thought of standing in the middle of N Sync, with a different singer coming out of each speaker, but on the other hand, imagine how thrilled some adolescent girl would be at that prospect. ( Can you say record-buying public?$$$. I knew you could). I would envision sitting about five feet from Keith Jarret's grand piano, in the middle of a really great live room. Or imagine the Stones playing live in a bar somewhere, with the sound of clinking glasses and partying fans all around you. Admittedly, surround will get overused and abused, just like quad and even the early days of stereo. (What was George Martin thinking when he said, "I know, let's put all of the drums in the left channel, and all of the vocals in the right! That'll be cooool!" Well, OK, Mr. Martin wouldn't have said 'coool'.) And I could talk about a near-religious experience I had with a quad version of 'Dark Side of the Moon', but I'll spare you ;) Anyway, that's my bi-annual rant about something. Most new technologies are rarely either all their advertised to be, or all totally hyped BS. Everything has it's place.
 
Yeah room simulation is a good use of this technology, I hadnt really thought of it in that way but that is really interesting.

Its like when you were a kid and the teachers all said smoking pot was from peer pressure, But I smoked it because it was good.:cool:
 
Surround me once in a while

Surround can be good for an effect, but i wouldn't want to hear it that way all the time. Although, i remember me and a friend hearing Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lot of Love" on her dad's old quad system. It blew me away; i felt like it was moving right through me, so certainly the placement of the sound, whether the placement of speakers or a quad system, makes a difference. Or we could try to clone extra ears and make surround sound a real worthwhile thing. :D

t
 
On of the main probs with full acceptance of surround sound is that it is not portable. It would be completely impractical to implement it with portable listening devices. These devices include walkmans and boomboxes. Sure, it can be implemented on a boombox, but that would just be a glorified bookshelf system. For example, imagine going to the beach and having to finagle with setting up your surround system so people do not trip on the wires and only to have most of the effect drowned out by ambient noise.

However, surround will not go away the way that quadraphonic sound did. Mainly because people will always use it for their home theatre systems. Thus, it will be a novelty on these systems created by engineers having fun with technology.
 
BBB - what you say makes sense. But that's gonna mean a lot of frustrated engineers then, and here's why. DVD-video uses surround, but you can only do 2 two channels at full resolution - if you want five channels or whatever, the audio has to be compressed (engineers won't like it). By contrast, DVD-audio does all surround channels in full resolution, but the technology is a light year or two behind DVD-video. Apple's got a shit-hot authoring program plus the hardware in place for DVD-video *right now* at a price that some people on this board could afford. Compaq does a Windows-based computer with a DVD drive in for $3000. This is happening because there's a market for DVD-video (people's homes have got the systems, the players are getting cheaper, they like it for movies cuz they've heard it in the cinemas, etc). But DVD-audio's just getting ignored, left behind.

I think DVD-video is so exciting - I think two channels of sound is all you need for audio, and DVD-video offers two channels of *high-resolution sound*, way higher than CDs. Plus you've got all those video possibilities to explore to enhance the music. Damn! All I need is $4000 and a cameraman. Or camerawoman, I'm cool.
 
Yeah, you're never going to have a guitar player behind you in real life, but that's not the point. It's not supposed to make the recordings more realistic. It gives more mixing options, and that's all good. Who knows what you can do with it? Mixing engineers haven't had enough time to play around yet. Anyway, it's more room in the mix anyway you look at it. Engineers won't have to eq as much to get instruments out of each others way. Now they have the option of just moving them to the back. More options is never bad. It is the abuse of those options for the sake of cheap gimmiks that is bad. Yes, there will always be mixes full of cheap gimmiks, but give the pro's time to make great mixes that actually add something and you'll never know how you could have lived without it.
 
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