Why "High End" almost hates multichannel?

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At the local shops I've run into those people. I really think if you sell $10,000 speakers getting somebody to buy 5 is a hard sell. The shop I went to did not like SACD and pointed out he was playing a reg CD on the shops Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy speakers. And yes it took weeks to recover from hearing those speakers.
 
I am just finishing an all-Quad weekend. My view is that multi-channel recordings with instruments and vocals all over disctracts from the music. Not that it is not enjoyable, but the emphasis is on gimmicks.

I believe that if you listen a lot of Quad pop music eventually it may not be distracting.

I do listen to all my mono/stereo recordings with ambiance recreation (Lexicon).
 
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I believe that if you listen a lot of multi-channel music eventually it may not be distracting.
I believe that if you listen to the better multi-channel music recordings, it is not distracting and is, in fact, salubrious. (I always wanted to use that word!)

I do listen to all my music with ambiance recreation (Lexicon).
I prefer real ambiance. :banana:

Kal
 
I prefer real ambiance.
Hello, Kal.

I find that a pair of side speakers reproducing synthetic ambiance provides a very natural and envolving listening environment, even in my highly sub-optimal room and with my poor equipment. Quite nice for popular music recorded in studios, which is 90%+ of what I listen to.

I can only imagine how a real ambiance-recreation setup (Ambiophonics) with top gear sounds.
 
I believe that if you listen to the better multi-channel music recordings, it is not distracting and is, in fact, salubrious. (I always wanted to use that word!)
Kal
At this point, I am only able to listen to the Quad mixes of Dark SOTM and To Our Children's Children's Children and not perceiving the rear sounds as intruding (and so much fun!).

I'd guess I'd be comfortable with other Quad albums if I listen to them a lot, although I've listened to Aqualung and 461 Ocean Boulevard (the Lp) in Quad many, many times and still find them distracting, but again, fun.

I do feel quite nice and healthy after the Quad weekend :D and full of gumption (I too do love to use a fancy word once in a while :rolleyes:) re improving my system with an eye to Quad.
 
At this point, I am only able to listen to the Quad mixes of Dark SOTM and To Our Children's Children's Children and not perceiving the rear sounds as intruding (and so much fun!).

I'd guess I'd be comfortable with other Quad albums if I listen to them a lot, although I've listened to Aqualung and 461 Ocean Boulevard (the Lp) in Quad many, many times and still find them distracting, but again, fun.

I do feel quite nice and healthy after the Quad weekend :D and full of gumption (I too do love to use a fancy word once in a while :rolleyes:) re improving my system with an eye to Quad.

Well, there's quad and there's multichannel. Traditional quad, the favorite of many here, intentionally distributes the instruments and voices around the channels in, imho, an entirely artificial and annoying way. Ambience, as such, is either irrelevant or artificial. As I say, some do really prefer this.

Modern multichannel, as practised with most classical and jazz recordings, uses the additional channels to attempt to capture the true ambience of the performance. For pop/rock, anything goes.

So, one cannot equate all of these nor is it reasonable to tar all due to your dissatisfaction with one.

Kal
 
Modern multichannel, as practised with most classical and jazz recordings, uses the additional channels to attempt to capture the true ambience of the performance. For pop/rock, anything goes.

So, one cannot equate all of these nor is it reasonable to tar all due to your dissatisfaction with one.
Hello again.

Quite right. I meant pop recordings. I'm not either into the recent crop of multi-channel recordings af any genre, nor plan to be.

I'd guess that recordings with true ambiance in the surround channels (I don't have any) would be very satisfying without requiring any user intervention other that a correct 5.1 setup. Ambiance recreation requires tweaking, specially when switching from the Kinks to the 9th and then to opera. I rarely bother but eventually will.

In my particular case, most of the recordings I enjoy were recorded in stereo so the only way to get some real acoustic environment from them is via recreation or extraction.

And it is so cheap to get there! And you get Quad/M-Ch capabilities in the bargain!
 
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