The Difference Between Quad People and 2 Channel People

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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.
 
Doug, I've had the ability to play movies in surround for 30 years. I don't do it often. I own perhaps 300 DVD's and 100 Blu-Rays. Only a handful are movies. Of course, the rest are all about music.

Bleedink, you made some EXCELLENT points. My philospohy in setting up the speakers is to first adjust the image with only the fronts on, ala binoculars. Once the image is in focus, I'll set up the rears as close to that as the primary listening area allows. It works. To have speakers at different heights, or some horizontal and some vertical simply creates a mess. My two main systems are floor standing, so the "toe-in" is the main concern. Although four of the same speakers aren't necessary, I do advocate it where possible.

Most people who buy HTIB think they're buying something great. They're the equivalent of '70's compact systems. Mid-fi at best. I have a Sony HTIB that I inherited. I never play it. It does play SACD, although surround and compatibility are the only real benefits.

Many people assume that they can play their 2ch CD's and have them come out as surround on their home theater. Or, it's close enough. I've been sold on synthesizing since '71. Yet, that pales in comparison to a great discrete mix.

Sorry to say that a small percentage of my collection is surround. Yet, I own nearly 1000 Quad/surround audio-only titles. I have ALWAYS bought EVERYTHING I enjoy in Quad/surround. Often, that means buying something for the second, or even the tenth time. Record labels LOVE me! Even if the surround mix is just echo, I've always had the option of playing the title as 2ch, which I do with many rear echo titles. I ALWAYS play "discrete" mixes as surround.

DKA, although "you shoulda been around back then" is great nostalgia, it isn't necessary. It does provide a few things like a good reference point, an understanding of what a good Quad mix is (what most 5.1 engineers have missed), and experiencing Quad being "all the rage" for a short while. Doug is correct. You don't need that point of reference to understand and enjoy surround sound. So, sit back, pour a microbrew, or whatever you like, and enjoy surround in all its' glory.
 
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.
Key point as to why most people don't get surround systems for listening to music.
 
..... 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. ......

All good points....

A friend got a surround set-up a while back - but unfortunately only with satellite speakers :(. They got it for movies - I'd been trying to convince them about getting into surround music. I helped them calibrate it, and brought over a few discs. I spun up Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and they were blown away!!! I think once they heard it in their environment - they really listened for the first time.
 
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 cannot fully agree with this point.
i believe main reason 'cause very low awareness of the masses about an existence of music in surround format.
no one here would argue that consumers, who's hunting down surround titles, pretty small percentage of general
consumer base and mainly consist an older generation, from which even smaller percentage still have interests for
music.
majority of present consumers consist younger generation which for most part indifferent to musical genres of
60-70-80th. but top sellers at the moment from main stream of genres in fact doesn't offer anything to their fans
in surround or even stereo but well mastered in HiRes formats. they know that chances to remain on top for long
time pretty slim and have single motivation - make as cheap, as possible and grab the cash as much as you can.
the music industry also did nothing in past neither present to educate consumers. so we have the loop which led
us to nowhere.
 
Reading through again, I saw this and wondered, is there anybody here who wasn't instantly floored by quad/surround? Did it have to grow on you?
I was fascinated with the idea of quad before I ever had a chance to even hear it. I grew up in a tiny town in Eastern Oregon and there were definitely no stereo stores where you could go to preview equipment or recordings. I first read about quad. I don't even know where, but I do know that I was hooked on the concept as soon as I read about it. Maybe my fascination had to do with growing up on records. The original records my older sister and brother played were mono recordings. I remember how amazed I was by the separation in stereo recordings when my mom got me stereo record player. I think it was all that time I spent in my bedroom listening to stereo albums and being so amazed by how great it was to hear the stereo mixes. So, the concept of doubling that separation by going quad was a concept I could not resist. I found a quadraphoic 8 track player in either Sears or Wards mail order catalog and placed the order. It was a Toyo Quadio 8 track car player. I joined the Columbia Quadraphonic Tape Club and ordered my first quad 8 tracks. They were Jeff Beck, Edgar Winter They Only Come Out At Night, Janis Joplin Pearl, can't recall the others. When I got that quad tape deck installed (by my buddies, we didn't have the luxury of car stereo shops) in my 67 Camaro I totally fell in love with surround sound music. Frankenstein by Edgar Winter in the confines of a Camaro was a pretty wild surround experience. That was around 1971 or 72. I've been fascinated with multi channel music ever since.
 
I think I fall somewhere between two chairs. I own, listen and enjoy all of the following systems, mono, stereo, orthoperspecta and quadraphonic. Mono and 2-channel stereo are missing the depth, so the last round is between orthoperspecta and quad. Orthoperspecta has one front speaker and two side (not back) speakers. Because of mono front channel it is obviously missing the left-right difference and it is working perfectly only with stereo records recorded by MS microphone setup. But depth and ambience is there and side speakers doesn't sound unnatural, they are only doing what they are supposed to do, creating the depth and space. Quad is also nice, but sounds from behind doesn't sound right in music (IMHO, of course). But when there's no direct sound coming from the back speakers, only reflections from the concert hall walls etc. then quad is like better version of orthoperspecta with stereophonic front channels.
 
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When I saw this thread, I thought of stereo people as dedicated 2 channel music lovers, not the masses who don't usually listen to music seriously anyway. I have heard a lot of true music lovers contend that 2 channel is the only way to hear music as the artist intended; i.e. if you re-mix or synthesize to surround, you are changing the artist's creation, the vision. This makes sense to me, as the best mch mixes I have heard seem like different experiences from their original mixes. Its like Lennon said about listening to the Beatles in mono- that's how they created it and the stereo came as an afterthought and the artists themselves weren't even involved (although one could make a case for George Martin being one of the artists in the Beatles).

That being said, I love mch music, even if it is different from the artists' original creation. Sometimes, a surround mix might be more of what the artist would have created, had the technology been available- e.g. Brain Salad Surgery in 5.1 seems to me more like what ELP would have done if they had been able to record in mch. But there are also some albums, which to me, may be more authentic in 2 ch than mch. It seems to me that there is sometimes a limiting dogma on both sides of the 2 ch vs. surround debate.

I also hear 2 channel enthusiasts who claim multi-channel is unnatural because you don't hear instruments coming from behind/beside you in live music. Again, I feel there is merit to this argument as well and it boils down more to personal preference. We surround lovers claim that mch adds a lot of the depth to music that is present in a live performance and well-mixed ambient mixes remain true to nature in this respect, but 2 channel champions would retort that high quality speakers and other components can create that depth just as convincingly from well-mixed sources. Again, this is the arena of subjective preferences, not objective facts.

I just saw this thread and read through it and it seemed like 2-channel people were getting short-changed, being lumped in with the masses who disregard mch listening for entirely different reasons. I just wanted to give them their due, even though I'm definitely a surround-lover, because true 2 channel music lovers are just as passionate, knowledgeable and caring about music as we are.

On another point, I got into mch through movies. I was totally unaware of quad's existence in my teens during its heyday. It was until I heard about dolby surround soundtracks that I started looking into surround. My first foray into the field was to add onto my 2 channel integrated amp with a Yamaha unit that took the 2 ch input, decoded the center and surround channels and supplied the amplification for those 3. It took a lot of tweaking, but I fell in love with the depth and ambience it provided to movies and yearned for this enhancement for music. The original DPL sucked for music, because too much collapsed into the center channel. But then came dvd and DD/DTS 5.1, soon followed by dvd-a and sacd and I was loving it. I bought what I could find that I liked in surround, but held off on some borderline releases, thinking I could always get them later and looking for more things that I craved to be released in mch. We all know what happened then...

Anyway, I think dedicated 2 channel aficionados are entitled to prefer their music that way and have just as sound arguments for their preferences as we do for ours. It seems to me that a lot of this thread has discussed not quad people vs. stereo people, but music lovers vs. non-music lovers, i.e. people who listen to music, but don't care very deeply about it. Of course, to them, the requirements of good surround sound are too demanding. And they are happy with their lo- or mid-fi systems. Unfortunately, this is the group of people who are in the vast majority, so we surround lovers suffer (as do stereo people- they have to put up with mixes tailored to the masses as well, even if they do have more high quality releases in their preferred stereo).

As usual, just my $.02- your mileage may vary.
 
I would likely agree with you with respect to the artists intent but for the simple fact that most artists have terrible contracts that give them virtually little control over their music until they have sold mega millions. Bands like Led Zeppelin and The Patti Smith Group had contracts that let them have musical freedom to do what they would. They were the exceptions. Then and now most artist have little control over their own music. In fact the music is likely closer to the way the producer envisioned it than the artist (particularly if they aren't that good or are starting their career). Not enough hits? Don't worry the record company will find you some songwriters, another producer. Then they'll hand it to the bloke doing the mastering who will quash it within an inch of its life. You do hear stories about various artists wanting their songs louder but this is usually a production decision after the album was completed. We've all heard the stories of entire albums being shelved or sent back to the artist because it didn't have enough hits. No offense but I just don't buy the 'this is the way the artist intended it" in stereo. Exactly what choices would they have had? Release the entire thing in 5.1? That will sell exactly 4 copies to the six of us reading this. I see mixing in 5.1 as no different than different remasters and the like. It rarely changes the character of the music-well remastering can kill a perfectly good recording or help a terrible one. Just because something has depth (something that is true of good 2 channel as you pointed out) doesn't mean that the character of the song has changed. It's the same songs from the same MC stems. It can't be different except in terms of where individual instruments are dumped. The only circumstances I can see that would destroy the music would be a terrible mix. Now THAT might change the entire intent of producer, mastering pro, and the artist. If the mix is anywhere approaching coherent it mostly translates to big stereo anyway.
 
Or that they find sounds from the back unsettling or distracting.

And there is the true difference between "them and us". They find sounds from the back unsettling. We revel in them. (y)

Should I then assume that no Quad fan would position all four speakers across one side of a room?

:confused:
 
Stereo 2 Channel Music is like purist Black & White films
- they're great , but Technology has advanced
 
ooooo I'm a total snob regarding that!!!
I think that surround folks are just more intelligent-we process more information and are more aware of things....I know it sounds wrong but that's it for me....

OTOH, it's like cinema aspect ratios- yes, Kubrick ended shooting his last film in 4:3 but it was a personal choice,

still; Stereo to MCH is like 4:3 to VistaVision (or Cinemascope=Panavision=2.35:1)...actually VistaVision is somewhere around 1.85:1 but since the frame was imprinted vertically in the film stock, its resolution kicks ass!!!

EDIT: Here is how a VistaVision film strip looks like (the real "single camera" Hi Resolution method, since Cinerama was a 3 camera affair in which each was camera was not widescreen)
 
I also hear 2 channel enthusiasts who claim multi-channel is unnatural because you don't hear instruments coming from behind/beside you in live music. Again, I feel there is merit to this argument as well and it boils down more to personal preference. We surround lovers claim that mch adds a lot of the depth to music that is present in a live performance and well-mixed ambient mixes remain true to nature in this respect, but 2 channel champions would retort that high quality speakers and other components can create that depth just as convincingly from well-mixed sources. Again, this is the arena of subjective preferences, not objective facts.

But why can you not put the multi channels through speakers that are all in front of the listener? Would that not be the best of both worlds? You could have the singer coming from over here, the guitarist from over there, the bass player from over there, the keyboards from over there and the drums from way over there, but all in front of you just like in a concert in an intimate coffee shop.

:confused:
 
Certainly you could. A properly engineered recording, with 2 speakers set up correctly can achieve that effect, so there would be little or need for "Full Frontal Quad."

But why can you not put the multi channels through speakers that are all in front of the listener? Would that not be the best of both worlds? You could have the singer coming from over here, the guitarist from over there, the bass player from over there, the keyboards from over there and the drums from way over there, but all in front of you just like in a concert in an intimate coffee shop.

:confused:
 
But why can you not put the multi channels through speakers that are all in front of the listener? Would that not be the best of both worlds? You could have the singer coming from over here, the guitarist from over there, the bass player from over there, the keyboards from over there and the drums from way over there, but all in front of you just like in a concert in an intimate coffee shop.

:confused:

anyone can put the speakers in any configuration they want. it's just personal preferences.
as for live concert vs. on the stage (or perhaps more correct - studio experience) this is quite
two different fruits. recording from live show even in surround prefer to locate behind/on sides
of listener ambient sound and noises as it usually heard in concert.
unlike concert performance, the studio recording, which done in surround, is trying to bring to
listener feel of presence at the studio during the recording, when musicians surround and/or moves
around you. but it's just one simple basic example. the intentions in creating of immersive surround
can be very many and all depends on the fantasy and creativity of those, who doing the mix.
 
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