Bleedink
Well-known Member
I think much of the resistance to surround music and movies comes from people's resistance to stuff that doesn't 'just work' (you could say Apple has influenced that expectation somewhat). Surround done right is a complicated endeavor. With stereo you can pretty much set two speakers nearly anywhere, wedge your body in the middle of them, push play, and yer done! I love surround obviously or I wouldn't be here. But as much as I enjoyed it, I can say that the learning curve was a bit steep to get it done right. Speaker set up isn't an easy thing. There are 8 billion schools of thought on where 5 speakers should be placed, what angle they should edge toward, and if you google surround speaker set up you will see there is not a single go to formula to use. Despite loving the format, I'd say it was at least a year before I understood enough about surround to put my speakers in the right place, calibrate them accurately, ect. It was really only quite recently that all my ducks were lined up and I can safely say I don't need to set up my speakers again. It changed (the set up) my entire perception of the same material I'd been listening to. Suddenly pans were more geometric and even lossy formats like DTS and DD sounded like a more unified whole rather than a collection of sounds emerging from the speakers. I'm less concerned about how much is going on in the rears than how the whole piece sounds synergistically. Anyway I believe this is the biggest barrier. Sure consumers can and are buying HTIB's and such. But if they have one speaker on a bookshelf at 5' another at 3' and the surrounds wherever they will fit they are probably not getting that much from the experience anyway. And that is the level of the average consumer. Sure, some of the modern AVRs have the auto set up routine which does work. But if the speakers aren't set up correctly to begin with, this is not going to be very satisfying. For others their entry into the surround market comes thru cinema. Which is fine. But when the dynamic range of most movies is so far removed from the dynamic range of music we hear constantly from these folks about how they can't hear the dialogue of the movie. So they take to turning up the center which will kill the mix of some surround music. It obviously not only anchors dialogue, but also some of the phantom psychoacoustic effects in mc music. I personally think the average consumer would only conclude the whole thing to be more trouble than it is worth. I'm not sure they are not incorrect. I have a lot of surround music, but it is literally a small single digit percentage of my entire music catalog. There are a few albums that certainly justify the experience in my mind but boy what a journey to get there. It isn't as easy as buying 4/5/6 speakers and popping in a piece of music. Just saying. I personally think my Mom for example might enjoy surround music. Would she be able to set up a system to play that music? Not in a million years. And she is not alone. That said were someone to Apple-fy the experience of surround in so much that one could set the whole thing up with little user interaction, put the speakers wherever their lifestyle choices dictated, and had legacy capabilities for current material, who knows it might take off more than it has. Perhaps the object oriented stuff from dolby might be helpful. I think it more likely that surround won't take off until the actual speakers are removed from the equation. I see steerable sound arrays based on real time information about the listeners position and beamed directly to ears will be the thing that drives wide adoption. It won't be with the coffin boxes we have now. Not too many folks are willing to put speakers nearly their size in their living room simply for good bass response! Even for people who come over and are blown away by this or that surround experience I've yet to have anyone be so convinced that they went out and bought a surround system. I can't remember now why I went down that road. I'd only heard surround on matrixed computer speakers before I purchase a real system. I'm still puzzled that I had interest in the format after hearing it that way. Glad I did though. As Linda put it, it's difficult to eat sawdust after you've had food.