Guys,
Who was it predicted ‘
Pet Sounds’ would split the DVD-Audio community straight down the middle…
Personally, I’m in full agreement with Nick’s summary of the disc and found the left-channel bias particularly distracting. Just to be clear on this, the front right channel isn’t dead; rather the vocals mainly come from elsewhere (over to the left).
As someone who is also a proponent of centre channel use, I’d like to put my own take on what Nick was driving at in his review (he’ll correct me if I’m wrong). Rather than suggesting that the centre is a requirement to produce a convincing multi-channel mix, what he’s saying is that it provides yet another creative opportunity, almost on an equal footing as the surrounds. There’s no reason for the centre to be a ‘poor relation’ and sit idly by. Moreover, when a recording such as ‘Pet Sounds’ is so vocal orientated and a producer is given the opportunity to spread those vocals out across three front channels, it seems a waste not to do so and crush most of the voices into the front left. The result isn’t even a convincing phantom centre image, which could be argued in the case of many other predominantly 2/2.1 discs.
Incidentally, so left heavy is the mix that I found the soundstage more pleasing if I turned 45-90 degrees to the left when listening!
To go off on a tangent for a moment – many producers seem loathed to use the centre channel for no good reason – but the more progressive do steer content to the middle of the room and often the results are spectacular. ‘
Welcome to the Pleasure Dome’ on the Frankie Goes to Hollywood SACD is a particularly good example; the centre is fairly quiet until about seven minutes into the track when it suddenly springs to life to emphasis a rising and falling guitar chord. Boy, is the result compelling. Likewise the recent release of ‘
Avalon’, which is another fantastic surround mix that makes just the right use of the centre.
Back with the plot – to pick up on a point Cai made about Nick preferring a “watered-down ambient type mix” and the rest of the board perhaps preferring “real, discrete surround sound”. In my opinion, ‘
Pet Sounds’ falls clearly into the first category, there’s nothing discrete about the surround mix, content is ‘leaked’ across all adjacent channels similar to what one would hear from a primitive passive ‘DSP’ mode. I’d urge folks to listen to the surround channels in isolation in order to prove that point.
Everyone has his or her own opinion on what a good or bad surround mix might be, but in this case I think the importance of the music and the prominence of the release is clouding everyone’s judgement somewhat. A site correspondent today reminded me of all the fuss concerning Silverline’s historical surround “creations”, and she suggested that the ‘
Pet Sounds’ multi-channel mix is no better or worse. I can see her point.
By the way, the front L/R channels are used to carry the mono track, so it creates a phantom centre image, rather than it being delivered by the centre channel alone.
