Dolby Surround CD's - What's Your Latest?

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Andreas Vollenweider
Discogs has several described as multichannel Dolby surround CD. Anyone heard these?
I remember liking one of his 80's releases.
The 3 Andrea's CD's I have seen that list dolby surround were issued in only one country which makes me suspicious. Check the Dolby surround discography
 
Bruford's Feels Good To Me & One Of A Kind are the latest DVD Music with Dolby Surround discs in my collection and I'm enjoying both of them. I think the 5.1 & stereo remixes (while very different from the original mixes) give both albums a "warmer" sound than they've ever had.
 
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Tomita “The Planets”.


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This is the first title that I have run through my new Fosgate Model Four that sounds truly discrete. Yes, other titles have a lot of stuff moving around and there is a definite “Surround” effect going on, but if you isolate the back channels you can hear that what you are getting is just a blend from the fronts and maybe the odd instrument or two moving to the back(s). With this one the backs are truly discrete with very little if any bleed from other channels.
 
These RCA / Victor Dolby Surround CD's seem to sneak by. I was totally unaware of them until a month or two ago when I was alerted to the Mancini ones. Now I know what to watch for with regards to spine art. But, I didn't know about these Tomita's too! Another batch of discs to watch out for now ;).
 
My latest Dolby Surround CD (purchased 1993ish) - I suppose you could say it was my first Surround album purchased :yikes:

The Symphonic Music of Yes
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It only took me a decade to get a system to play it in surround ...;)

I have this and listened to it quite a bit when I first got it when it came out. I have hankering to listen to it in surround again. My current AV receiver thinks it's just a CD. I still have the old Onkyo 4 channel AV receiver that I used to play it with. Do I have to hook that back up or is there some way to convert it? I've read most of this thread, and it seems the answer is no.
 
I have this and listened to it quite a bit when I first got it when it came out. I have hankering to listen to it in surround again. My current AV receiver thinks it's just a CD. I still have the old Onkyo 4 channel AV receiver that I used to play it with. Do I have to hook that back up or is there some way to convert it? I've read most of this thread, and it seems the answer is no.

if you play the CD as normal and manually select Dolby Pro Logic II on your receiver it should decode ok.
 
if you play the CD as normal and manually select Dolby Pro Logic II on your receiver it should decode ok.

Second that, assuming @riskylogic has an older AVR with a Dolby Pro Logic circuit. But as for the recent discussion about whether anyone had ever come up with a good, open-source script for decoding/converting Dolby Surround (previous page of this thread): it seems like the answer was indeed...no?
 
if you play the CD as normal and manually select Dolby Pro Logic II on your receiver it should decode ok.

I had already tried that, but it seems that my newest receiver (a Yamaha A780) doesn't do Prologic. The good news is that I bought it for a different system (I have 3 😳) and I will hook the old one (a Yamaha V673) back up as soon as I'm done hiding out from the virus. The manual for it says it will do prologic.
 
I had already tried that, but it seems that my newest receiver (a Yamaha A780) doesn't do Prologic. The good news is that I bought it for a different system (I have 3 😳) and I will hook the old one (a Yamaha V673) back up as soon as I'm done hiding out from the virus. The manual for it says it will do prologic.

i've never used that model but looking through its spec sheet it has a "Dolby Surround" upmixer as part of its Atmos capabilities which should fit the bill.

what happens when you playback the Dolby Surround CD and engage Atmos on the AVR?
 
i've never used that model but looking through its spec sheet it has a "Dolby Surround" upmixer as part of its Atmos capabilities which should fit the bill.

what happens when you playback the Dolby Surround CD and engage Atmos on the AVR?

OK, I'll feed it to system #1 next time I go back to the townhouse. It has a Yamaha A3080 with "AI"; that should figure it all out, right? So, a couple more questions:

1) Since prologic was designed for analog systems, do I have to use analog connections or will an HDMI connection suffice?

2) Will a stereo flac still have the prologic endoing? If so, I can just play it with the receiver without the external player, right (assuming it works at all).
 
OK, I'll feed it to system #1 next time I go back to the townhouse. It has a Yamaha A3080 with "AI"; that should figure it all out, right? So, a couple more questions:

1) Since prologic was designed for analog systems, do I have to use analog connections or will an HDMI connection suffice?

2) Will a stereo flac still have the prologic endoing? If so, I can just play it with the receiver without the external player, right (assuming it works at all).

HDMI is fine, and Dolby Surround-encoded stereo is Dolby Surround-encoded stereo, no matter what the format (as far as I know).

I would only caution that post-2014 Dolby Surround (i.e., the "Dolby Surround" option on AVRs manufactured 2014 and after) is a totally different animal than old Dolby Surround (which is what was used to encode those Dolby Surround CDs). A Dolby Surround CD might or might not sound good when played back via post-2014 Dolby Surround (which is essentially an Atmos upmixer), but it almost certainly won't decode as the original mixing engineers intended.

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/dolby-surround-2014-vs-dolby-pro-logic-ii.26126/
 
HDMI is fine, and Dolby Surround-encoded stereo is Dolby Surround-encoded stereo, no matter what the format (as far as I know).

I would only caution that post-2014 Dolby Surround (i.e., the "Dolby Surround" option on AVRs manufactured 2014 and after) is a totally different animal than old Dolby Surround (which is what was used to encode those Dolby Surround CDs). A Dolby Surround CD might or might not sound good when played back via post-2014 Dolby Surround (which is essentially an Atmos upmixer), but it almost certainly won't decode as the original mixing engineers intended.

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/dolby-surround-2014-vs-dolby-pro-logic-ii.26126/
Yes, I'm a little worried about what would be considered "successful". I want the decoder to produce 4 channels and only 4 channels. If it lights up all the other speakers too, then I'm thinking it can't be a legitimate reproduction of what the sound engineers (freaking Alan Parsons in this case) intended.
 
OK, I tried feeding Symphonic Music of Yes to my 5.2.2 system with a new Yamaha receiver with "AI" on and I got the black hole - it just made a mess of it. I turned it back to stereo and it sounds great. Rick Wakeman is good, but the London Philharmonic is better. I'll try an older receiver one of these days and get back to you.
 
Bruford's Feels Good To Me & One Of A Kind are the latest DVD Music with Dolby Surround discs in my collection and I'm enjoying both of them. I think the 5.1 & stereo remixes (while very different from the original mixes) give both albums a "warmer" sound than they've ever had.

Those aren't Dolby Surround for CD, which is an old, pre-Pro Logic II technology for encoding and extracting 4.0 to and from two-channel. The surround content on the Bruford discs (DVDs) are 5.1 Dolby Digital (AC3). The stereo content on the DVD and CDs are just plain...stereo.
 
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