I generally agree with this unless you are also using the system to watch movies. In that case one or more subs are definitely required. Since they are there already for the movies they "enhance" the music experience as well.
And then there's that damn center channel...
- Thread starter Jim the Oldbie
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I think that my (DIY) full range speakers will blow away most typical sub woofers. If I was to use a sub I would want something truly massive, like one of those DIY Sono tube ones! Might have to reinforce the house though, so that it doesn't shake off it's foundation!
It's better to have multiple smaller ones.
Here's a truly massive subwoofer:
https://soundapproach.com/velodyne-...MI34iviqmj-AIVQdSGCh3HNgjvEAQYAyABEgIkI_D_BwE
However, one might have to take out a second mortgage on the reinforced foundation to pay for the sub.
Agreed.
Happily we're living in a time when surround and immersive mixing is taking off like a rocket.
What some always put down as "gimmicky", I see as a mixer art form of it's own.
Reach out and grab the sides of that stereo soundstage, wrap it around the room to join again behind me. Use Atmos or Auro to paint an audio canvas covering my room with images anywhere within it's cubic space (and possibly beyond).
I love the recent stuff from Booka, Yello, Tears, S Wilson, ------------------------------------------
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Some of us don't have the luxury of "no compromises"
Forgot about Velodyne. My very fist sub way back, was a Velodyne. I'm shocked something this huge is only 140 pounds. Honestly...
jimfisheye
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If a display screen gets in the way you could always set up a stereo (dual mono, that is) pair of speakers to create a phantom center image. Then route the center channel audio to that. This is probably not good advice.
Why wouldn't it be? The theaters have a bunch of center speakers across the front. As long as comb filtering isn't an issue, shouldn't it work?
Well, OK. Then how about this one?
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/de...o-15-inch-sl-downward-firing-studio-subwoofer
It only weighs 132 lbs but costs more money. One in each corner should do the trick.
timothyemerson
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
Since a year I dont have a center speaker in the set up, in JRiver I have set Mix center to L/R. To my ears it sounds good.
jimfisheye
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Guess I wasn't being as silly as I intended! I was thinking of the juxtaposition of single speakers per channel vs an array to drive the center in a smaller room. It may very well be a good suggestion for someone!
A phantom center shouldn't be elusive or something is going wild. Either pronounced room reflection actually masking severely or a genuine mismatch between the two speakers in question. I can still fool myself with a phantom center at any time as is proper.
I suppose the thing to avoid would be too wide of a "center array" to where it screws up a pan across the front. But then this move is usually kind of avoided on the mixing board. Circular pans using just the quad mains and treating the center as a front solo channel usually makes more sense. Getting subjective...
And that's the thing. Almost nobody has a really perfectly tuned listening room and system where they could take a pure ambisonic style approach to a mix with perfectly resolved phantom imaging and have that come across. There are elements like that in surround mixes (as there should be) but then we still have old school moves. Coupling front mains for mono bass content. Putting a primary sound directly in one channel and a reflection from it directly in another. So some of the meat n' potatoes of the mix still comes across on cheapness.
jimfisheye
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If I only have even a stereo array in front of me and I'm interested in hearing a piece of music, I'm happy. I try to keep that perspective anyway!
The surround mixes are matter of fact though. There are a lot of mixes made that include a center channel and the format isn't going away. I want to hear them unaltered for good or bad. There certainly are some examples where it might not matter as much. I'd still recommend to someone just getting started and trying to be frugal that speaker managing the center channel into a quad array is an valid option. But the mixes using it are out there and plentiful and I want to hear them fully discrete and it's just matter of fact just because.
I'm a music listener first and movies not so much. For me, surround is for music and a wholly moot point for movies. In that scenario I'd absolutely compromise with a speaker managed array. And I usually do just that and only listen in stereo for movies. 9 out of 10 movie soundtracks are just so darn crude anyway! The feeble attempts at surround use often distract and make one laugh out loud. Low end balance is all over the map. The sub use is more "Hulk smash!" than "calibrated".
barfle
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
I hope this isn’t too far off topic, but I recently got “A Hard Day’s Night’ in blu- ray, and there’s a short with mono audio, and it uses the center speaker only. Never saw that before that I had noticed.
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jimfisheye
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The default for a single channel audio file is the center channel. That's why we usually deliver mono to the final media format in dual mono to force it to the front L/R.
Could probably start a couple more 'annoyance' threads here.
5.1 vs 5.1(side)
5.1 standard (L R C Lfe Ls Rs) vs film format (L R Ls Rs C Lfe)
And the media players that don't deal with any of it properly. Or the examples of two wrongs making a right and it somehow ends up in the correct speakers anyway!
I wish that the "standard " would follow what you show for "film format". It's very annoying to me that C and lfe come before the surround channels, when working with and playing files via the computer, especially with only a four channel sound card! Even with my eight channel card I mostly run 4.0, so have I to swap cables to hear the surrounds.
You can downmix channels with Foobar (but correct me if I'm wrong), you can't do it on the fly.
At a friends place they would move one of the main stereo speakers (5.1 system) outside on the deck. Listening to (less than) half stereo wasn't too bad but every time a mono song came on, it would play only through the centre speaker which was inside the house!
jimfisheye
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I'm most familiar with MacOS for this. (Still haven't jumped ship to Linux yet.) You can assign the channels to the speakers as you please in the OS audio utility, FYI. And then you can select a lesser output format if you want autopilot downmixing. For example, if you set the output to 4.0 quad, the center and Lfe channels are mixed into the front L/R. (And it expects those to be channels 3 & 4 from the source file respectively.) Some media players can be a little weird though. Everything still needs to be tested and vetted.
The standard channel order is what it landed on for good or bad. It only requires action when you decide to do something different. But there ARE outliers as I mentioned.
I remember visiting someone who had the 2 fronts, center, and one of the rears randomly scattered in front of the room. Literally random everything like one half turned sideways. Some people truly have no interest whatsoever in reproducing sound as it was intended. Not even in stereo. Not even in mono. That's why I think much smaller steps are needed before we start telling people to hang 4 additional speakers from their ceiling!
The standard channel order is what it landed on for good or bad. It only requires action when you decide to do something different. But there ARE outliers as I mentioned.
I remember visiting someone who had the 2 fronts, center, and one of the rears randomly scattered in front of the room. Literally random everything like one half turned sideways. Some people truly have no interest whatsoever in reproducing sound as it was intended. Not even in stereo. Not even in mono. That's why I think much smaller steps are needed before we start telling people to hang 4 additional speakers from their ceiling!
Kal Rubinson
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You can with JRiver so I am surprised that there is no such facility in Foobar.
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