When did you get involved with your first 5.1 disc & equipment (this also includes mods)?

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fizzywiggs41

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My first 5.1 discrete disc was Steely Dan -Gaucho DTS CD ! Quickly followed by Steve Miller's Fly Like An Eagle DTS CD HDS label,
and the DVDA Classic Rock disc from 5.1 Entertainment/Siverline. And many more DVDA discs folled mostly Warner's/Rhino DVDA's.

Played on my system which included a Hitachi DVD player and a Yamaha Receiver 4 JBL'S and a Nikko center speaker.

So this was purchased from Ken Cranes digital surround discs , which wee mainly laser discs and a few from DTS Entertainment.

THIS happened around 1998 . And continued with Sony SACD and later Bluray all multichannel 5.1 or 5.0. Did not get a DVDA SACD Combo player until 2003 with my Pioneer 563a , later upgraded to a Pioneer 588 combo player 2005 or 06 , and first bluray player by Sony in about 2010 .

-FIZZIO
 
Early to mid 90's for me. Started with a Pioneer Dolby Surround Pro Logic AVR (might have been the vsx-403) and Pioneer Laserdisc player with the speakers all piece meal together (I think maybe the left and right matched, everything else not timbre matched). I even had an M&K high pass filter for the sub which only covered the main L&R speakers. But back in Pro Logic days there wasn't that much of a need to roll off low freq from the center and surrounds since it was matrixed and the surrounds were capped on freq.

When DTS came out, I upgraded to an Onkyo with all channel analog bass management and 5.1 inputs so I could daisy chain and run the Millennium 2.4.6. The Onkyo also had an add on module for Dolby AC-3, which you'd connect using a computer cable. My first 5.1 discrete laserdiscs included Jurassic Park, Timecop, Star Wars OT, and for music - Eagles Hell Freezes Over, Gaucho, Steel Rails Under Thundering Skies, Telarc Movie Soundtrack disc, and some various audio and video demo discs from DTS entertainment. I would order from Ken Crane's, and there was an awesome local store for me on Long Island, called LaserLand that I'd frequent.
 
Wow there's some really good titles mentioned here!
My first 5.1 discrete disc was also one of the first produced: Alan Parsons, On Air. I never liked the track 1 intro.... starting off with extended vocals in one rear ch just seemed cheesy to me. But when the disc played on, it truly brought tears to my eyes. From the earliest days of Hafler and to the point of DTS, it seemed this was what we were all waiting for.

Like @EricKalet I had a LD player with AC-3 RF output. So unlike many others I did not opt for a Millennium unit. It seemed just too basic to me & really at that time the situation was clear, you needed DTS & Dolby AC-3 to be set up right.

So I purchased a Marantz DP870 with a DTS mode added by a company called MSB. It worked great, sounded great, but like much else it now lives in my Closet of Quad:

MARANTZ DP870_2.jpg
 
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My first processor was the Lexicon CP-1 purchased back in March 1989. It had Dolby Pro-Logic, the first unit to ever have Pro-Logic completely in the digital domain. It was also a 7.1 processor with all sorts of DSP modes. Remarkably, I used Pro-Logic on this device for 17 years only with video tape movies...And no center channel speaker! I finally got my first audio 5.1 discs in 2006 when The Moody Blues reissued their classic seven quads on SACD.

[Edit: Correction: six quads]
 
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Prior to my Yamaha AVR I was mucking about with 5.1 matrix surround. I kept in contact with Roger Dressler of Dolby Labs (very helpful btw).
I had a Yamaha basic Dolby Surround processer , no pro logic.
Also I was collecting Ambisonics UHJ CD'S , in the 80's ..... this was prior to DTS CD , and during The start of DVD . Also in the 80's and early 90's I had both BETA HIFI and VHS HIFI , Hooked up to my Fosgate 101a for SQ , and for Dolby surround , Ultra surround , Chace SURROUND stereo , and Shure HTS Surround ...tapes and CD'S. Movies and Music plus music CD'S in Circle Surround.

Mr Chace informed me in his promotional material , that he made a birthday (or Chrismas) gift for Clint Eastwood of some CHARLIE PARKER jazz music tapes in Chace surround.
These were a gift from Clint's wife digitized from mono to surround from Clint's large collection of Charlie Parker music.

And in the late 90's I bought my first DVD player , Toshiba , so I could finally hearsome of the DTS CD'S and DVD Music , and Movies in DVD , I had collected. I also had a few of the new Warner/Rhino DVDA's which were also Dolby Digital 5.1.




Edit :... in the late 80's early nineties I could obtain a lot of Shure HTS , and Dolby Surround CD'S and was supplied with catologs from Intersound and BMG/RCA with plenty of 5.1 CD'S .
 
Early 2000 for me.
I had just been forced to quit my career as a front of house live mixer due to injury & set up a small home studio. Because of the DAW we chose (Nuendo 1.01) and the fact we were literally one of the first in the UK to adopt it we were signed to an artist deal by Steinberg, and soon after came their first 'surround plugins' bundle. This seemed like fun, so I bought another 3 monitors and a Sub (configured as an LFE not a subwoofer) and went DVD-Audio player shopping around the same time and discovered there was very, very little content to buy and what was sent to the London stores (in those days we had Tower Records, Virgin, HMV and a LOT of independents) all of whom had left their new stock up in the stockroom because - and I quote the Virgin Oxford Street superstore manager here - 'we don't know where to put it in the racks' so it was all returned unsold.
So the next thing was 'how hard can it be to make my own content' and the rest is now history
 
Wow there's some really good titles mentioned here!
My first 5.1 discrete disc was also one of the first produced: Alan Parsons, On Air. I never liked the track 1 intro.... starting off with extended vocals in one rear ch just seemed cheesy to me. But when the disc played on, it truly brought tears to my eyes. From the earliest days of Hafler and to the point of DTS, it seemed this was what we were all waiting for.

Like @EricKalet I had a LD player with AC-3 RF output. So unlike many others I did not opt for a Millennium unit. It seemed just too basic to me & really at that time the situation was clear, you needed DTS & Dolby AC-3 to be set up right.

So I purchased a Marantz DP870 with a DTS mode added by a company called MSB. It worked great, sounded great, but like much else it now lives in my Closet of Quad:

View attachment 68180
The Fosgate unit, top of the stack, was a pretty formidible decoder for RM/QS, as well as creating a great surround effect from stereo. I had their "Gavotte II", which was the mobile version of that same decoder. It sounded great in the car; I can imagine how good your home unit sounded with good speakers.
 
My first venture into 5.1 came when I won a Denon AVR-3300 receiver in a points-for-product promotion at the store I was working at. We'd accrue points for selling Denon products that, at the end of the promotion, we could redeem for product. As this was over 20 years ago, that receiver was SOTA at the time. It also had 6 channel analog inputs, so my first DVD-A/SACD player was easily connected. I still have that receiver today, although it could use some TLC at a service center. I also won some Infinity speakers to go with that receiver. The Infinity speakers were eventually moved to the bedroom system, which has a Marantz ZR-6001 receiver (also won, but in a drawing), and replaced with Polk Audio. Working in the industry had its perks!
 
I have never owned anything that was discrete 5.1 unless some of my DVDs have it.

I have owned three setups with Dolby Surround.

The first was an addition to my quadraphonic system. I added a Dolby Surround decoder to it (4.0) through a discrete input in 1983.

The second was a TV Dolby Surround amp with one input. It was used in another room.

The third is a Pro Logic II receiver in 1997 with a 6-channel input that I feed with the matrix decoders.

I still have all three.
 
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I first got involved around Y2K. I had been intrigued by quad back in the day, but I was a little too young (born in the mid 60's) to get in on the game. In the 90's I had a couple of times where I was lucky enough to hear some of the Floyd quad mixes (and a few others) and thought it was really cool, but knew that trying to acquire a quad setup and then a decent catalog of titles would be a difficult and costly exercise, so I never attempted to do so. Then some time around Y2K I read an article about DTS CDs. I was hopeful that this was the start of a new revolution. Not having a great paying job at the time, I held off a bit on a system upgrade. But then I read about the DTS CD of The Police's Every Breath You Take - The Classics. The article that I read stated that the 5.1 mix of "De Do Do Do De Da Da Da" was a completely different performance of the song. The article also stated that including this alternate version of the song on the disc was a mistake, a remix of the version we all know would be included on future pressings. (As far as I know, this never happened). Being the financially irresponsible music lover that I was, I tended to be a completist with my favorite artists. I had to have every note that they committed to tape. So, despite not having a system to play it on I ran out and bought the disc, fearful that if I did not buy an original pressing I would miss out on owning the alternate version. It wasn't before long though that I couldn't stand being taunted by this disc that I couldn't play. I couldn't afford a decent upgrade so I went with a cheap surround receiver and some small satellite surround and center speakers. (To this day, I have never owned a sub. I live in a high-rise condo, I am already testing my neighbors' patience with the grand piano!). This sufficed for a while, but eventually better paying jobs came a long and I was able to treat myself to some better equipment. But it all started with the most profound song lyric ever: "De Do Do Do De Da Da Da'.

R-8897614-1494752276-1522.jpeg.jpg
 
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