Steven Wilson Subwoofer/LFE/.1 channel content and mixes

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HelpfulDad

Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2012
Messages
24
First, I've tried hard to be succinct here, but there are a ton of little nuances to this and I can't find a better way to ask you this and explain why I ask. So my apologies to all for the length of this question.

Question: What content are you, Steven Wilson, putting into the .1/LFE/Subwoofer channel of your surround mixes? Is this even something you address, or could the content be determined in post-production when creating production masters? It appears that most recordings have full range content like a kickdrum track in there because it's predominantly low frequency/subwoofer sound. However it's not just low frequency. After all, I can hear it on my computer speaker. So what happens to that higher frequency sound when someone has a subwoofer trying to reproduce it all?

The reason I'm asking is that every Rock DVDA that I have checked (I haven't checked all of them but) has full range content, not just what is getting through some sort of low pass filter. However most home surround systems are configured with a subwoofer that has a low upper limit of reproduction (i.e. Velodyne HGS10) connected to the LFE channel with a cutoff frequency if the front speakers are small. What I've also noticed is that there is something different about the music when played through this configuration. There seems to be something missing and my guess is that it's the sound at frequencies above what the subwoofer can, or is set to produce.

Restating my question, what are you doing with the LFE/subwoofer/.1 channel? Are you mixing/selecting full range tracks for that channel that are predominately low frequency information for a subwoofer? If you are, are you putting the sound at frequencies above some sort of cutoff frequency into the other channels?

Bottom line is this: It appears that most people aren't really hearing your mixes correctly, unless they use method 1 below, because their configurations are cutting of any .1/LFE/subwoofer channel sound above some frequency. I say this because for a listener to get the full musical experience from a 5.1 mix with nothing lost, he/she must either:

1) Configure their electronics without a subwoofer, then connect the front channels to a subwoofer with a high gain crossover, connect the front speakers to the crossover. This way, any LFE/subwoofer/.1 channel sound will get mixed into the front 2 channels by the electronics, sent to the crossover which will then send low frequency information to the subwoofer and everything else to front speakers. (this would be problematic if you, Steven Wilson, are sending full range to .1 channel AND to other channels)

2) Configure their electronics with a subwoofer and a high power amplifier for that channel (inboard or outboard) and connect a full range speaker capable of very low LFE and full range that matches the sound of the other 5 speakers. Frankly, I don't know of any full-range speaker like this, nor any receivers with the .1 channel amplifier and speaker terminals, so I don't think this is feasible.

Yet, most people are just configuring with subwoofer on the "subwoofer/LFE" out on their receivers and maybe setting a cutoff frequency.

What say you?
 
First off, this is a great question and something that always puzzles me when I rip a 5.1 audio disc to PC and see a full range audio track in the LFE.

Secondly, Steven rarely stops by here anymore. The best way to get him is on his website or Facebook page. When he would stop in here from time to time, he did not have those resources set up for him yet.

Still, I agree with you as to why people who create 5.1 mixes put real audio in the LFE track. It might be interesting as an experiment to remove the sub and throw in a full range speaker sometimes and listen to a real 6 channel presentation in 6 channels! :confused:
 
First off, this is a great question and something that always puzzles me when I rip a 5.1 audio disc to PC and see a full range audio track in the LFE.

Secondly, Steven rarely stops by here anymore. The best way to get him is on his website or Facebook page. When he would stop in here from time to time, he did not have those resources set up for him yet.

Still, I agree with you as to why people who create 5.1 mixes put real audio in the LFE track. It might be interesting as an experiment to remove the sub and throw in a full range speaker sometimes and listen to a real 6 channel presentation in 6 channels! :confused:

Very interesting subject. My curiosity is peaked now. But, if you were to put a full range speaker in place of a sub, the crossover would change dramatically -I wander what it would be in order to detect a signal/ Experiment I suppose, if any can do this let me know?
 
First off, this is a great question and something that always puzzles me when I rip a 5.1 audio disc to PC and see a full range audio track in the LFE.

Secondly, Steven rarely stops by here anymore. The best way to get him is on his website or Facebook page. When he would stop in here from time to time, he did not have those resources set up for him yet.

Still, I agree with you as to why people who create 5.1 mixes put real audio in the LFE track. It might be interesting as an experiment to remove the sub and throw in a full range speaker sometimes and listen to a real 6 channel presentation in 6 channels! :confused:

I wouldn't recommend hooking up a regular full range speaker to the LFE channel - potential blown speaker I believe. On the Oppo if you set up the speaker configuration with the subwoofer channel to "Off" it redirects the .1 signal to the front L & R but it reduces the signal by 10db.

Correction: the re-direct to the front L & R reduces the LFE signal by 15db.
 
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I'm not Steven Wilson, however I had the opportunity to interview Steven Wilson a few years back when working on a project about surround sound mixing for my Master's Degree, and when it came to the LFE, he essentially said that he will usually send a little bit of the bass drum, bass guitar, and anything else that has low frequency content to that channel.
He also made it seem like he doesn't filter that channel himself but lets the mastering or authoring engineer handle that.
Finally, he also lets the mastering or authoring engineer make the final call about how loud the LFE channel should be on any given surround mix.

Hope that helps answer your question!

:)
 
Engineers I have worked with mostly put just kick, bass, bass pedals and maybe low frequency FX into the LFE and roll it off with a low pass filter with a -3db point somewhere around 200Hz.

In my experience there are so many "listener dependant variables" that effect the sonics down at the bottom end (such as room dynamics/resonance, position of Sub/listener, front speaker Large/Small setting, frequency response of front speakers, cut off frequency setting, settings on the Sub itself, number of Subs etc) that it's pretty much guaranteed that you wont hear exactly what the sound engineer hears on their system!
 
Absolutely. The lowest frequency you can 'reproduce' is proportional to the longest diagonal in your room, but there will be a myriad of peaks and nulls right across the audible spectrum, resonant peaks can be a big problem, and are quite difficult to damp down at Low Frequencies. I lived in one place where certain Bass notes would cause the windows to rattle.

In my experience there are so many "listener dependant variables" that effect the sonics down at the bottom end (such as room dynamics/resonance, position of Sub/listener, front speaker Large/Small setting, frequency response of front speakers, cut off frequency setting, settings on the Sub itself, number of Subs etc) that it's pretty much guaranteed that you wont hear exactly what the sound engineer hears on their system!
 
I'm not Steven Wilson, however I had the opportunity to interview Steven Wilson a few years back when working on a project about surround sound mixing for my Master's Degree, and when it came to the LFE, he essentially said that he will usually send a little bit of the bass drum, bass guitar, and anything else that has low frequency content to that channel.
He also made it seem like he doesn't filter that channel himself but lets the mastering or authoring engineer handle that.
Finally, he also lets the mastering or authoring engineer make the final call about how loud the LFE channel should be on any given surround mix.

Hope that helps answer your question!

:)
Hi, and it almost answers it except what does he, or the mastering/authoring engineer do with the the "not so low frequency" sound in that bass drum, bass guitar, etc ? if the frequency spectrum of the kick drum runs from 500 hz and lower, and a user's configuration has a subwoofer with 125 hz maximum, will there be an overall dip in the effective loudness of the the 125 -500 hz for that instrument? I don't see how any engineer could possibly correct for the variations of cutoff frequencies for all configurations.

This seems to be one more reason to always configure as 5.0 with a high level crossover, ignoring rather than using the LFE only channel to a subwoofer.
 
I wouldn't recommend hooking up a regular full range speaker to the LFE channel - potential blown speaker I believe. On the Oppo if you set up the speaker configuration with the subwoofer channel to "Off" it redirects the .1 signal to the front L & R but it reduces the signal by 10db.

First, I'm not sure a full range speaker capable of going down to the depths for subwoofer would mean a blown speaker? If the speaker system is capable of those depths, then it's capable. But, I really don't think there are any but VERY expensive loudspeaker systems capable of the range from 20-20khz. Furthermore, I haven't seen a receiver with a built-in .1 amplifier, so, as I put in my original post, I think this is a pathological solution anyway.

About the Oppo setting. This is only a solution if you have a speaker system that can drop to the subwoofer depths and a power amplifier with sufficient power to reproduce it. But, most speaker systems do not reach to subwoofer depths (i.e 40hz and below) so then anything below the lowest frequency response of your front speaker systems is just lost. That's why many use a subwoofer to begin with....to relatively inexpensively recover that information below their large speaker systems.
 
Absolutely. The lowest frequency you can 'reproduce' is proportional to the longest diagonal in your room, but there will be a myriad of peaks and nulls right across the audible spectrum, resonant peaks can be a big problem, and are quite difficult to damp down at Low Frequencies. I lived in one place where certain Bass notes would cause the windows to rattle.

No disagreement there about other variables. However, this post is a bit off topic. My post was about what is done about the "not so low frequency information" I found in the .1 channel. It wasn't about the "kitchen sink" of how may things affect what the engineer intended. I'm asking what the engineer is doing, if anything, about the "not so low frequency" information in the .1 channel and then, what can be done, configuration-wise, to reproduce it. Again, what you are saying is true, but if that "not so low frequency" information in the .1 channel isn't being produced by your system, no room acoustics or other variables will recover it.
 
Engineers I have worked with mostly put just kick, bass, bass pedals and maybe low frequency FX into the LFE and roll it off with a low pass filter with a -3db point somewhere around 200Hz.

In my experience there are so many "listener dependant variables" that effect the sonics down at the bottom end (such as room dynamics/resonance, position of Sub/listener, front speaker Large/Small setting, frequency response of front speakers, cut off frequency setting, settings on the Sub itself, number of Subs etc) that it's pretty much guaranteed that you wont hear exactly what the sound engineer hears on their system!

Thanks, the first sentence is the sort of thing I was looking for. Do you remember if, when they put the kick, or bass into the LF channel, what do they do with everything above the cutoff? Does it just disappear? My very subjective experience is that it just disappears. Listen to Sugar Magnolia on American Beauty with a subwoofer on an LFE then listen to it with the low frequencies sent to the subwoofer from the crossover as part of a 5.0 configuration. The LFE listening, to me, sounds like it has a "hole" in it.
 
Thanks, the first sentence is the sort of thing I was looking for. Do you remember if, when they put the kick, or bass into the LF channel, what do they do with everything above the cutoff? Does it just disappear? My very subjective experience is that it just disappears. Listen to Sugar Magnolia on American Beauty with a subwoofer on an LFE then listen to it with the low frequencies sent to the subwoofer from the crossover as part of a 5.0 configuration. The LFE listening, to me, sounds like it has a "hole" in it.

very interesting thread.. just had a quick look at the LFE content within the 6 channels of the 5.1 of Sugar Magnolia and while it is just solo bass in there on that track and doesn't have the (baffling imho) full range content of the .1 of some 5.1 music discs, there is mid bass stuff going on above & beyond the 120Hz my sub is rated to handle (my AVR crossover set to 80Hz, all spkrs set to Small) so I guess something must be missing, yet upon playback there's plenty of bass and it doesn't feel like anything is lacking in that regard. I'm guessing the Front L&R replicate this bass the sub cannot handle as there's pretty respectable bass coming out of the Mains as well as the low bass from the sub.. I don't know!?
 
very interesting thread.. just had a quick look at the LFE content within the 6 channels of the 5.1 of Sugar Magnolia and while it is just solo bass in there on that track and doesn't have the (baffling imho) full range content of the .1 of some 5.1 music discs, there is mid bass stuff going on above & beyond the 120Hz my sub is rated to handle (my AVR crossover set to 80Hz, all spkrs set to Small) so I guess something must be missing, yet upon playback there's plenty of bass and it doesn't feel like anything is lacking in that regard. I'm guessing the Front L&R replicate this bass the sub cannot handle as there's pretty respectable bass coming out of the Mains as well as the low bass from the sub.. I don't know!?

Do you have a way to crossover at high levels in the sub and send the hi-pass to the fronts and the low pass to the sub? And before I ask this next question, I realize what a pain the "you know what" this would be, but if you reconfigure the receiver/processor to be 5.0, front speakers as large, send the front two channels to the high level crossover and then to front speakers, I think you'll be surprised how different this album sounds with the extra information in the front channels.

Thanks for replying. This subject has been bugging me.
 
First, I'm not sure a full range speaker capable of going down to the depths for subwoofer would mean a blown speaker? If the speaker system is capable of those depths, then it's capable. But, I really don't think there are any but VERY expensive loudspeaker systems capable of the range from 20-20khz. Furthermore, I haven't seen a receiver with a built-in .1 amplifier, so, as I put in my original post, I think this is a pathological solution anyway.

About the Oppo setting. This is only a solution if you have a speaker system that can drop to the subwoofer depths and a power amplifier with sufficient power to reproduce it. But, most speaker systems do not reach to subwoofer depths (i.e 40hz and below) so then anything below the lowest frequency response of your front speaker systems is just lost. That's why many use a subwoofer to begin with....to relatively inexpensively recover that information below their large speaker systems.

good point no amp and you can only shut off the LFE with analog port use.
 
I wouldn't recommend hooking up a regular full range speaker to the LFE channel - potential blown speaker I believe. On the Oppo if you set up the speaker configuration with the subwoofer channel to "Off" it redirects the .1 signal to the front L & R but it reduces the signal by 10db.

That's probably a good point and I would never get around to do it anyway but I can say that in the past 10 or so years, as I've ripped many a 5.1 to PC to create discs for my car I have found a lot of full range stuff in the SUB/LFE channel. "Harvest" comes to mind, as well as "Moondance" and a lot of others.

If, on the PC, you take the SUB/LFE channel, paste it into a mono or stereo file (by doubling it), then play it on the PC through the front speakers, you can hear a lot of stuff that is not bass and way above the cutoff for LFE or most crossovers.

Very strange.
 
Do you have a way to crossover at high levels in the sub and send the hi-pass to the fronts and the low pass to the sub? And before I ask this next question, I realize what a pain the "you know what" this would be, but if you reconfigure the receiver/processor to be 5.0, front speakers as large, send the front two channels to the high level crossover and then to front speakers, I think you'll be surprised how different this album sounds with the extra information in the front channels.

Thanks for replying. This subject has been bugging me.

you're welcome. my REL has a neutrik speakon connection for high level connection to the Front L&R speaker terminals when they are set to Large/full range.

however when i have run 5.1 that way i've had to tinker the crossover dial on the sub so much to try and wipe out those frequencies that get doubled up and played back by both Large Mains and Sub simultaneously, it was never very satisfactory with both music and movies (often fine for music but less consistent for films) so i stopped doing it and have been setting everything to Small with an 80Hz Xover and its fine for pretty much anything without having to adjust stuff endlessly.

more recently its not been an option since i'm bi-amping the Front pair and have to run one set of drivers (can't remember if its the HF or LF right now tbh) out of phase otherwise YPAO setup reports reversed phase everytime. i guess either YPAO doesn't like the i guess intentionally wired out of phase drivers or there is some in-room phase issue? either way, how its wired up now i'm leaving it as it is as it sounds great.. and to try and work out how to hook up the Neutrik speakon connection with one set reversed would probably juat be too much for my little grey cells to handle! it may be as simple as swapping round the yellow and red cables or just flipping the phase 180 on the sub i don't know but i won't be in a position to try it anytime soon. if situation changes and i do try it i will post back and let you know the results.
 
Hi there!

Long time lurker around here but I decided to register today because as a huge Steven Wilson and surround music fan, the subject at hand here has been bothering me (a lot) for a while.

Aaaand I have found the answer: they simply messed up the channel order. A picture (well 2) is worth a thousand words :

Before messing up with channel order :

b19maZf.png

After:

wWL5dsb.png

(the quiet center on capture 2 is normal, he just stopped singing in that part of the song)

I'm using JRiver Media Center as you can see in those screenshots, and capture 2 is the result of using the parametric equalizer setting "order channels" where I simply swapped SR and LFE.

What led me to analyse the frequency content of individual channels is the fact that I could pretty much never hear anything from my surround right speaker. And the mixes seemed so left heavy. Also when I tried re-routing the high frequencies from the sub channel to the front like the OP said it made the mixes extremely front heavy and killed the surround feeling. It all makes sense now.

So basically there was a mistake somewhere down the production line that slipped through. Very disappointing. It affects To the Bone, Hand Cannot Erase, Raven that Refused to Sing and his EP 4 1/2 but not his 2 previous albums (Porcupine Tree and King Crimson releases are not affected either - I have all of them).

I am ecstatic at how good his latest albums sound in surround now. And I understand why I wasn't getting the "wow" effect in surround like with his older releases.

edit: actually I just had another thought : the rule is to have left before right so maybe the channel order correction should look like : L R C SR LFE SL (because I'm thinking what they did was : L C R SL SR LFE) instead of : L R C SR SL LFE (aka the quick fix I made). To my knowledge the standard is L R C LFE SL SR and that's certainly what has been used for the other releases I mentioned. Maybe I can find a song where the panning gives me clues...
 
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Hi,

Are you posting this information in this thread because you are suggesting that those of us who have discovered a full range of sound in the .1 channel should look into a channel reassignment to correct for an error in production? It seems that may be what you are saying.

Thank you for the contribution, and that should certainly be investigated if that's the case. In the instances where I've found full range of sound in the .1 channel, that hasn't been the situation. The other channels have sound that one would expect in a full range channel and the .1 channel has that as well, usually with a kick drum, so that doesn't seem to be the case here.

And, differing from what you said, I've always found the sound to be missing something, but cleaner when playing a track in 5.1 and the subwoofer hooked up as the .1, regardless of where the crossover point was set.

Now that I know about this higher frequency sound that isn't being reproduced out of the .1 channel, I can explain the "missing something but cleaner" sound that I've heard. It's because all of that mid-high bass isn't getting reproduced. To my ears, tracks with a lot of mid-bass are muddy, regardless of how clean the recording. Just a personal thing, not a judgement by any means.

The revealing scenario is to set up your source to output 5.0, with .1/LFE channels mixed into other channels, and using the subwoofer crossover to truly put the low frequency sound to the sub and the rest to the full range. When I do that, the sound is really spectacular, because the higher frequencies sounds are reproduced by these full range speakers, and I'm getting the low frequency stuff from my powerful sub, positioned appropriately in the room to go deep. It's a better, surround version of what I'm used to hearing, instead of a falsely cleaner anomaly hooked up the other way.

This also has the benefit of taking anything of really low frequency that's in the front two channels, and driving it into the sub, where they can be reproduced better. My Left and Right Channels go low, but there's a big dropoff below 80hz. Anything down there becomes attenuated, so setting the sub crossover around 80-100 Hz and letting the sub handle all the deep can make for a more accurate reproduction than by letting my full range Left and Right speaker systems try and do it.

I'm still poking around trying to find a way to hook up with an engineer who was responsible for the 5.1 mixes and ask them what they were thinking about the .1 channel when they were actually mixing. I have to believe they had some idea, but if they heard what I hear, they couldn't have been satisfied with it so I'm wondering how that all went down. Maybe they don't have a good 5.1 monitor. Maybe they thought about this when they were mixing and somebody said "you worry too much. It will be fixed in "post" or home users have a different set up. After all, nobody is complaining now." They reluctantly went along, but it always stuck in their craw. IDK, but I'd like to chat with one of them.

Sound engineering is such a meticulous activity with a huge impact on a recording, so I find it hard to believe this wasn't a consideration at all.


Hi there!

Long time lurker around here but I decided to register today because as a huge Steven Wilson and surround music fan, the subject at hand here has been bothering me (a lot) for a while.

Aaaand I have found the answer: they simply messed up the channel order. A picture (well 2) is worth a thousand words :

Before messing up with channel order :

View attachment 30884

After:

View attachment 30885

(the quiet center on capture 2 is normal, he just stopped singing in that part of the song)

I'm using JRiver Media Center as you can see in those screenshots, and capture 2 is the result of using the parametric equalizer setting "order channels" where I simply swapped SR and LFE.

What led me to analyse the frequency content of individual channels is the fact that I could pretty much never hear anything from my surround right speaker. And the mixes seemed so left heavy. Also when I tried re-routing the high frequencies from the sub channel to the front like the OP said it made the mixes extremely front heavy and killed the surround feeling. It all makes sense now.

So basically there was a mistake somewhere down the production line that slipped through. Very disappointing. It affects To the Bone, Hand Cannot Erase, Raven that Refused to Sing and his EP 4 1/2 but not his 2 previous albums (Porcupine Tree and King Crimson releases are not affected either - I have all of them).

I am ecstatic at how good his latest albums sound in surround now. And I understand why I wasn't getting the "wow" effect in surround like with his older releases.

edit: actually I just had another thought : the rule is to have left before right so maybe the channel order correction should look like : L R C SR LFE SL (because I'm thinking what they did was : L C R SL SR LFE) instead of : L R C SR SL LFE (aka the quick fix I made). To my knowledge the standard is L R C LFE SL SR and that's certainly what has been used for the other releases I mentioned. Maybe I can find a song where the panning gives me clues...
 
Hi,

Are you posting this information in this thread because you are suggesting that those of us who have discovered a full range of sound in the .1 channel should look into a channel reassignment to correct for an error in production? It seems that may be what you are saying.

Thank you for the contribution, and that should certainly be investigated if that's the case. In the instances where I've found full range of sound in the .1 channel, that hasn't been the situation. The other channels have sound that one would expect in a full range channel and the .1 channel has that as well, usually with a kick drum, so that doesn't seem to be the case here.

And, differing from what you said, I've always found the sound to be missing something, but cleaner when playing a track in 5.1 and the subwoofer hooked up as the .1, regardless of where the crossover point was set.

Now that I know about this higher frequency sound that isn't being reproduced out of the .1 channel, I can explain the "missing something but cleaner" sound that I've heard. It's because all of that mid-high bass isn't getting reproduced. To my ears, tracks with a lot of mid-bass are muddy, regardless of how clean the recording. Just a personal thing, not a judgement by any means.

The revealing scenario is to set up your source to output 5.0, with .1/LFE channels mixed into other channels, and using the subwoofer crossover to truly put the low frequency sound to the sub and the rest to the full range. When I do that, the sound is really spectacular, because the higher frequencies sounds are reproduced by these full range speakers, and I'm getting the low frequency stuff from my powerful sub, positioned appropriately in the room to go deep. It's a better, surround version of what I'm used to hearing, instead of a falsely cleaner anomaly hooked up the other way.

This also has the benefit of taking anything of really low frequency that's in the front two channels, and driving it into the sub, where they can be reproduced better. My Left and Right Channels go low, but there's a big dropoff below 80hz. Anything down there becomes attenuated, so setting the sub crossover around 80-100 Hz and letting the sub handle all the deep can make for a more accurate reproduction than by letting my full range Left and Right speaker systems try and do it.

I'm still poking around trying to find a way to hook up with an engineer who was responsible for the 5.1 mixes and ask them what they were thinking about the .1 channel when they were actually mixing. I have to believe they had some idea, but if they heard what I hear, they couldn't have been satisfied with it so I'm wondering how that all went down. Maybe they don't have a good 5.1 monitor. Maybe they thought about this when they were mixing and somebody said "you worry too much. It will be fixed in "post" or home users have a different set up. After all, nobody is complaining now." They reluctantly went along, but it always stuck in their craw. IDK, but I'd like to chat with one of them.

Sound engineering is such a meticulous activity with a huge impact on a recording, so I find it hard to believe this wasn't a consideration at all.

Hi, thanks for your reply.

I didn't think of coming back here but I did make some other findings in the mean time. I did have a channel assignment issue, but this issue is limited to the PCM tracks - because PCM on blu-ray uses a slightly different channel order (L R C SL SR LFE as I suspected) compared to Dolby or DTS tracks (L R C LFE SL SR). Depending on which application I used to rip or playback those PCM tracks, I would or would not get the correct channel order. So that's where my above post comes from - but now I know better and I understand this has nothing to do with the sound engineers. This might be happening to some other users though, especially those ripping all their discs to FLAC like I do (I do not have the issue when playing straight from the discs).

Ok, now that's out of the way, let's get back to the subject at hand. I did find that some tracks on Steven Wilson mixes seem to have a bit of mid/high frequencies in the LFE as well. But it's rare and on most tracks I found that it doesn't sound different - even if there's vocals and other things they are so weak relative to the other channels that they are perfectly inaudible unless you listen to nothing but the LFE (or your LFE is super loud). I did my testing like you said - by downmixing the LFE to all channels. I then toggled a lowpass filter (120hz) on and off on the LFE channel alone, before the downmixing, to see if I could actually hear any difference. The vast majority of the time, no audible difference.

In a few cases, I can definitely hear a difference. But it seems to me as if it just makes some content present in the other channels louder, and so I'm thinking it's (maybe) not intentional. Some films on blu-ray, for example, have hi/mid frequency noise (and I do mean noise) in the LFE channel because they (the engineers) forgot to lowpass it (and they played it back on a system with a subwoofer so they didn't notice), more about that over there if anyone is interested.

Do you have some examples in mind (tracks or even albums) where the difference is really noticeable to you and you feel it is really the right way of listening to the content?
 
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Hi, thanks for your reply.

I didn't think of coming back here but I did make some other findings in the mean time. I did have a channel assignment issue, but this issue is limited to the PCM tracks - because PCM on blu-ray uses a slightly different channel order (L R C SL SR LFE as I suspected) compared to Dolby or DTS tracks (L R C LFE SL SR). Depending on which application I used to rip or playback those PCM tracks, I would or would not get the correct channel order.


So...did you find this out from research into BluRay spec? Or is it something you are deducing from your own listening?
 
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