to the extent that surround is bullshit...

[GT]

Sound reproduced as acuratelly as posible will allways sound more pleasing, than sound that has been added to.

Most surround systems are a joke, they just throw a whole lot of crappy speakers at you, so that when you open the box, it looks like Christmas morning.

Sound has to be somewhat coherant, to sound real. The more speakers, the less coherant.

I mean would you record an acoustic guitar with six mics? That would be bad.

 

[langleyt]

Surround in movies is a bit kitch in my opinion.It can be a giggle in those sci-fi blockbusters and thats cool,but really,go out of the visual stage in a "serious" movie and it just gets plain distracting(was it that git sitting in row G making those noises or was it in the film!)
Until we get surround vision......

This has also been my experience with surround at the movies. I have to really concentrate to hear the movie. And for now those systems with those puny little speakers are priced ridiculously high. And i just can't believe that some tiny 5 1/2" speaker box is ever going to procuce the depth and quality they claim to.

t

 

[barefoot]

And i just can't believe that some tiny 5 1/2" speaker box is ever going to procuce the depth and quality they claim to.

Surround or stereo, crappy equipment is still going to give you crappy sound.

barefoot

 

[barefoot]

I think my numbers were off in one of my previous posts:

Using the DVD-Audio specs of 9.6Mbps bandwidth and 8.5GB one sided (no flipping) disc capacity, I've calculated just a few bit/sample rate options one might choose from:

  Time  |   Left   |  Right   | Center  |  L Rear |  R Rear |   Sub   |
-------+----------+----------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
120min | 24/192kHz| 24/192kHz|    -    |    -    |    -    |    -    |
120min | 24/96kHz | 24/96kHz | 24/96kHz| 16/48kHz| 16/48kHz| 16/48kHz|
120min | 24/96kHz | 24/96kHz | 24/48kHz| 20/48kHz| 20/48kHz| 20/48kHz|

There's also the Sony/Philips SACD format. But unlike the open standard approach of DVD-Audio PCM technology, SACD DSD technology is proprietary to Sony/Philips. If their format wins, I have no doubt that they will do everything their evil corporate power to restrict our ability to directly copy and sample from SACD discs.

barefoot

 

[dobro]

"All you can hope to do create the illusion of that original acoustic event. More mics and more speakers means more control."

If what you're concerned with is "creating the illusion of that original acoustic event", you'd opt for stereo or mono, because it more closely approximates a guy with a guitar at one point in the room in relation to the listener somewhere else in the room. When you listen to a guitarist, he/she isn't all around you, playing from five or six different places. He's in one place, he's one sound source.

Surround is surreal. Don't appeal to realism to support the wonders of surround.

 

[barefoot]

dobro,

The guitar and player may not be all around you, but the room is. The acoustic event is the sum of the player, instrument, and the room. This “system” does surround the listener or microphone(s). Like I said before, even the guitar itself is not a point source. If you’re sitting relatively close by you can hear the subtle spread of sounds across the soundboard, sound hole, fingers moving across strings, etc. A stereo pair is a very poor simulation of these subtleties, especially in a normal listening room which imparts it’s own environmental qualities on top of those captured in the recording.

And once again, better imaging is only one of the advantages of surround. More channels also means greater dynamic range. Think of the dynamic range available to a solo singer versus a choir. The soloist’s range is from the quietist she can sing to the loudest she can sing. The choir’s dynamic range is from the quietist one of the individual members can sing to the loudest the whole choir can sing. (note that this is not an improvement in signal-to-noise ratio since each voice adds extra noise as well).

IMHO modern surround sound technology is unquestionably better than stereo. The thing it might not be is a better value. This is for consumers to decide. Stereo will remain the standard only if the majority of people decide they get from it more bang for their buck, and the higher quality of 5.1 isn’t worth the added cost.

barefoot

 

[barefoot]

Now that I think about it, just adding extra channels can also improve signal-to-noise.

To simplify things let's talk about a mix which has two components, music and vocals. Then lets compare how that mix would work in a 2 channel system (LR) versus a 3 channel system (LCR).

Case 1: 2 Channel Stereo

The music is rolling, spread across both channels, and peaking just a hair below 0dB. Now we want to bring in the vocals, dead center. The vocals need to share the L & R channels with the music so we must reduce the level of the music to make room, otherwise it will clip. By reducing the level of the music we have brought it down closer to the noise floor and reduced (worsened) it's signal-to-noise ratio.

Case 2: 3 Channel LCR

The music is rolling, spread across the L & R channels, and peaking just a hair below 0dB. Now we want to bring in the vocals, dead center. In this case the vocals do not need to share the L & R channels with the music. We can throw the vocals straight to the Center channel. We don't need to reduce the level of the music and consequently maintain it's higher signal-to-noise ratio.

Of course in practice you might not mix things like I've described, but it's a simplified example to illustrate the point. I'm not 100% sure how to do the math, but it's a reasonable guess that with every doubling of the number of channels you increase the signal-to-noise by 3dB.

barefoot

 

[dobro]

I think I might have to change my opinion about surround, based on things I've read in this thread and elsewhere. Here's Bobby Owsinki on surround:

"Surround sound is almost universally acclaimed to be a more realistic and pleasing experience to the listener than stereo. This applies to just about any type of program, from music to motion pictures to televison. People that can't tell the difference between mono and stereo can immediately hear and appreciate the difference between surround and stereo. It is a development so dramatic that it will change the way we listen, record, mix and enjoy music forever." ('The Mixing Engineers' Handbook')

Okay, I'll give it a try.

 

[CyanJaguar]

It is a development so dramatic that it will change the way we listen, record, mix and enjoy music forever." ('The Mixing Engineers' Handbook')

Didn't they say the same thing about compact discs.

If you have the right system, and have recorded with the right mics and preamps, you dont need surround to make a sound feel like its right in the room with you. Simply mix down without any reverb, and a person sitting in a room about 7 feet from floor standing speakers will think that person is in the room with him.

 

[Senor Cactus]

Simply mix down without any reverb, and a person sitting in a room about 7 feet from floor standing speakers will think that person is in the room with him.

That's not what people want. I don't want to take the orchestra playing in Carnegie Hall and put them in my living room. I want to put myself in Carnegie Hall.

 

[Havoc]

Mixed blessing, that's for sure.

Having a dedicated center channel is indeed very useful as it will give far more stability to center located sources compared to center panned sources.

Use of the rear channels is less obvious, but I have attended live performances where the singers are going arround the audience while singing. Also one where the audience was surrounded by the instrument (yes, it was a strange construction with lots of pipes) so it may have some uses. But we will have to live for a while with bizare mixes.

 

[happy hour]

Barefoot et al..

I KNOW im gonna get bashed for this, but here goes...

DVD-audio is just the exact same encoding as a CD, except it has dual layers, higher bit ratio, and a faster time-base (24Bit, 96KHz). It still has the same problem of needing all the digital processing and filtering that CD's have. PCM is ANCIENT as far as digital electonics are concerned, its over 20 years old.

Of course DVD-A is an open format, even sanyo could figure it out. Take a DVD, put PCM audio on it, and make it go faster. The worst thing about DVD is that the standard is so shitty and un-standardized that the first gen DVD players were obsolete in a matter of a couple years. CD's never had that problem because the standard was documented and done properly.

Everyone hates Sony and Phillips, blah blah blah. I will admit, Sony has made some real shitty products over the years, but the formats they have made are the best we have seen.

Bottom line, the SACD uses new DAC's, DVD type discs (unfortunately) and a much better encoding process.

Even at 96KHz, you have to put brick-wall filters @ 48KHz, which isn't bad, shouldn't be a problem for our ears, but SACD samples at 2.8224 MHz.

And last but not least of my rants, look what software is available in teh two formats;

DVD-A:
-The Kinks
-Bob Marley
-Megadeth
-Joey Ramone
-Lynyrd Skynyrd
-Sytx
-Sex Pistols (WTF?!?!?! all their record are terrrrrible quality, what a waste!!!)

SACD:
-Diana Krall
-Andrea Bocelli
-Ja Rule (boo)
-Louis Armstrong
-Ella Fitzgerald
-John Coltrane

What would you rather listen to in Hi-Fi, shitty hard rock, or jazz.

And this ends my rant. Start hate mail...... NOW!

 

[rocky outcrop]

your list of dvd/a has some of my favorite "artists" and I would dispute the quality of the recordings. On the other hand I wouldn't be so syre about the quality of the bands. I mean maybee they just sound that way,besides its about the songs man??

 

[Roel]

DVD-audio is just the exact same encoding as a CD, except it has dual layers, higher bit ratio, and a faster time-base (24Bit, 96KHz). It still has the same problem of needing all the digital processing and filtering that CD's have. PCM is ANCIENT as far as digital electonics are concerned, its over 20 years old.

The same encoding... the same digital processing, blahblah. The same digital processing but with 8 bits resolution more, and at a freq of 96 kHz. Following nyquist, that 96kHz would mean they can reconstruct all the waves up to 48KHz. Which would allow to filter all the excessive highs out in old analog fashion much easier, since we only hear up to 20KHz...

Then, the calculations (which there really aren't in decoding, it's a lookup table that is used.) have a precision of 8 more bits, which means ALOT... But there isn't any digital filtering and processing in the audio. There is in the decoding of the signal that comes from the laser, but that has nothing to do with audio... The data that comes from the decoder is just the same as was given to the encoder (plus errors offcourse, but not that many...), which is just 16 bit for each channel, and this 44.100 times per second. This goes straight to the DAC. Believe it or not. If there is processing, it's some of those EQ algorythms they put in or something. you won't find that on a quality cd player. Or maybe upsampling, which will just give a better result...

PCM is ancient. So is a analog. So is digital. What is your point?? SACD uses beter DACs?? That's bullshit. You can put in any dac you want. In fact, I can take that 'good dac' right out of that SACD player and put in a shitty one, no buyer would see it...

So, SACD samples at 2.8224 MHz?? Any idea how much data that would give? Make a simple calculation, and see how many minutes you'd get on a DVD with max capacity. That must be a joke...

I really want to see your answer on this mail...

 

[happy hour]

Rocky Outcrop:
my appologies, i really shouldn't have brought my opinion in about the artists. What i should have said is that most rock cd's have a tiny dynamic range, no where near what these formats are capable of. My appologies.

Ok, how much difference does 8 bits make?
16 bit has a resolution (at 4 volt output) of 4/65536 = 61 microvolts
24 bit 4/16777216 = .23 microvolts
135 times the info on 24 bit, which is obviously an improvement on cd.
Unfortunately I can't figure out the resolution of SACD because of the different DAC.

Lets look at the BPS:
DVD-A: 24 bit * 96000Hz = 2,304,000
SACD: 1 bit * 2,822,400 = 2,822,400

Any PCM digital audio device has filtering, even the best players. Its a purely mathmatical format that needs to be oversampled (which is interpolation = bad), decimation filtered, converted to analogue and then the analogue brick wall low-pass filter.

Digital-Analogue with DSD (Direct Stream Digital which is what SACD is) is just sending a digital signal to a DAC and then the brick wall low-pass filter.

All DACs are different depending on the way the analogue signal is represented in the digital domain. For my money, I would choose the format that doesn't mathmatically interpolate what isn't there.

 

[happy hour]

DAC's

A PCM DAC would not work in a SACD machine, and vice versa. Digital Audio is not Digital Audio is not Digital Audio.

 

[Roel]

From what I understand from your mail, the resolution of the SACD is 1bit. That's why it needs that high samplerate. In fact, from your calculations; this is about the one bit equivalent of 24 bit at 96KHz.

The difference 8 bit makes should be 2^8 which is 256... Which is indeed quite an improvement, think some error got into your calculations...

If you'd put a 24bit DAC in the system, you wouldn't need any upsampling, but this would be kindof expensive, so there will be interpolation. And if they would upsample it to 1bit, (so using the same DAC) they'd need quite some interpolation. Guess you are right there. But with a decent 24bit DAC in there; there's no interpolation needed.

On the other hand, most people have a DVD player already. SACD is not compatible with normal CD players, nor with DVD players (well, not all dvdplayers... just some), which makes it a independant market, so I don't think it will ever win the race.

About the better dac. I don't know where I read that, it's not in your post. It says newer dac. Since it is a one bit DAC, they are cheap as hell already, so I'd have trouble finding a worse DAC. Actually; I believe there is no real 'dac', just an pulse modulated output and filtering...

 

[barefoot]

happy hour wrote:
Any PCM digital audio device has filtering, even the best players. Its a purely mathmatical format that needs to be oversampled (which is interpolation = bad), decimation filtered, converted to analogue and then the analogue brick wall low-pass filter.

A point you fail to mention, though, is that DVD-A gives an exact representation of the recorded waveform while SACD does not. DVD-A is not just simply PCM. It's PCM which has been compressed with a lossless compression method (Meridian Lossless Compression). In other words you get back bit for bit what you put in just like a .zip file compression. SACD on the other hand, uses an interpolation compression method akin to mp3. Of course it's much better than mp3, but it's not exact.

But my biggest concern is not with audio quality. You're really splitting hairs when you argue the merits of 2.3 MBPS versus 2.8 MBPS or 192kHz PCM DACs versus 2.8MHz DSD DACs. My concern has to do with the market and artistic freedom aspects in all of this. DVD-A is designed to be an "open" standard. All of the common tools for extracting and manipulating CDA files will be readily available for DVD-A because the compression code is openly licensed. Software or hardware developers just have to pay Meridian (same company that built those beautiful high end CD players) a relatively small fee for using their MLC code.

Sony and Philips own and control SACD and they are guarding it very closely. This is probably because Sony and Philips also happen to be huge media companies which maybe own more record labels than anyone. They're not interested in licensing their code to companies which make, for example, ripping software and the like. In fact, they are actively pushing for more laws to prevent people from copying media. They're even going so far as to try and force computer chip makers like Intel and AMD to build "anti piracy" guards directly into their chips. This would put a huge damper on multimedia technological innovation and pretty much kill the growing home multimedia market. And personally it would prevent me from obtaining 90% of the raw material I use as a sample based electronic musician.

SACD bad. DVD-A good

barefoot

 

[Roel]

Sony and Philips own and control SACD and they are guarding it very closely. This is probably because Sony and Philips also happen to be huge media companies which maybe own more record labels than anyone.

As far as I know, philips is not involved in music publication anymore. They would never started that CD-recorder ting if they had close relations with it. They do have to build in these anti piracy thingies however, in deciding for a format, the media giants have ALOT to say.......

There's al sorts of silly things going on in this design business, you wouldn't believe what funny or silly stories I have heard.

 

[happy hour]

Ok, many issues here.
1. Resolution is the total output, i used 4 volts as a common reference... i think cd's are actually 250mv output, but its not important.... anyway, its the total output divided by the number of 'steps'. 4/2^16 for cd and 4/2^24. my numbers should be correct.

2. My biggest concern is if im paying the cash for a high-end player, i don't want it to be something thats old-technology with the same inherit (i can't spell) problems as CD's, a decent format at a higher speed is a slightly better format, but who are we kidding? its no revolution, only an evolution.
If I'm paying top dollar for an audio format I want it to be as close to the analogue source, not something thats been interpolated, processed, and all that garbage, thats where I'm coming from.

3. I agree, an SACD player DAC in all probability is a capacitor or some other mixture of discreet analogue components. I would much rather have my audio signal going through discrete analogue than an IC smaller than a penny.

4. Compression has not beed addressed whatsoever in this discussion. I know MLP is lossless. It's about time somebody put it too good use.

5. Sony and Phillips, as much as everyone hates them, have done so many good things for audio. The introduction of the CD influenced audio technology to a huge extent, speakers, amplifiers, and recording equipment all took a huge leap in quality to keep up to the audio quality. Phillips would not let certain record companies use the CD Digital Audio logo on their 'copy protected' discs because it was a perversion of the format that introduced errors, had they been totally greedy the would have said 'Yes, ok, do it. Where's my cheque?'
Also, Sony and Phillips are letting other companies make SACD machines. Sony has a ton of MP3 products out there. Nobody likes MP3's and they can't decide where to make a stand. I would assume Sony is against it mostly because they have several record label, no wonder other electronics companies don't care too much, either they don't have record labels, or they are willing to let other record labels fight the battle, or they dont' give a fuck. In all honesty, can you say that you rightfully use the samples you do?

6. If it weren't for Sony and their lawyers you would not have VCR's or Cassette decks with record buttons. Keep that in mind.