Hey there OxfordDickie and everyone else. Some passionate chatting in this thread. Possibly the defamatory title is part of the reason.
The first thing we did was listen to the files you've submitted. I'm assuming you're using the same source as the DVD-Audio torrent file of the Involve Decode of that album that has appeared around the various music-sharing sites, given that they are multi-channel MLP files. I don't know who put it out there but I'm all for extra publicity at the moment
As it stands, I'm not sure why you think the modified file is more distinct or accurate. We are using electrostatic speakers to do our listening tests - as you know they are much more unforgiving, and therefore suited to this type of listening test. The original file from our decode is (to our ears) much sharper and clearer at the rear. After a bit of checking, I can see that you've inverted the phase on the rear right channel. I can't understand why you would want to do this. One of our older pre-production prototype versions did have an issue with the rear channels being out of phase, however we fixed that problem quite early on, and well before the final version went into production.
The only other difference I can see visually is that your file has an introduced DC offset on the rear right channel as well as the phase change. We don't have a DC offset on our outputs.
The front channels in your modified file seem unchanged
As it stands, we're still taking this issue seriously. This Friday we will have access to the original QS vinyl recording of "Photographs and Memories" by Jim Croce (which is where this decode came from) and we will also have access to a Sansui QSD-1. We (Well, that's the royal "we" - knowing Charlie it'll be me) will record all the channels, analyse the separate channels and side by side for any destructive differences (such as phase or directionality) between the QSD-1 and the SM, and also do a vectorscope comparison, which is the easiest way to visually illustrate phase coherency.
In the meantime, here is a comparison of Surround Master vs QSD-1 on the Vector 4 Quad demonstration LP that we did last week. If we had a rear phase issue, rear signals would appear to go to rear left and right, instead of straight back, as both decoders do properly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5axJdfVrCY
(It's not in HD yet, give it another few hours to finish processing, but the 360p res is still more than adequate really)
Cheers
David
Involve Audio