I'm curious why we don't have consumer-level multichannel audio widespread? Did the failures of DVD-Audio and SACD formats doom the idea of multichannel music?

Granted there would be some more work for the content/mixing/mastering professionals, but I don't think it would be that much more work on the surround channels and height/depth channels. Are there some technical hurdles to 3 - 9 or more channels for music?

I have never heard someone play a guitar above me, but I have heard room reflections/reverb off the ceiling. Would this not be more immersing?

It's scarce because there is not much of a market for it. The technical barriers should be obvious, you need at least 6 discrete speakers and a receiver capable of driving them independently for surround sound. Pretty much the only people who have this in their homes are the ones with expensive home theater systems. Also, it would be more work in production.

Multichannel audio is great, but I just don't see it ever becoming mainstream. It has existed since the 70s; Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was released in a quadraphonic mix in 1973. But it seems that the general public doesn't have the patience, money, or desire for multichannel audio.

Not to mention that the main driver behind music is the portable environment. Portable devices (iPods, Zunes, Zens, etc.) simply don't have the necessary hardware to playback multichannel audio. One that could send out a multichannel signal through its headphone port would probably be expensive. Also, I believe that surround sound headphones require quite a bit of power to drive them.

All-in-all, there just isn't the proper portable hardware to back it up. Just remember now that many people put their music on their iPod and go. They also hook their iPods up to their cars and use them quite regularly around the house. If multichannel audio was to ever catch on, it would need the support of a major (ie Apple and their iPod) company and their portable player.

Would you really want to listen to music in surround sound? Personally I'd find it anoying having sounds of different intruments coming from all different directions.

I agree with many posters here: the market is in portability of music, the average user would have to buy more equipment, and it would be extra production steps.

It does not surprise me that Pink Floyd releases a multichannel soundtrack. That would be really cool. I was considering this the other day: which artists would best utilize multi channel productions. I can't really imagine a typical band using multi channel. Unless the artist wanted certain to move around the listener, what is the point to having the drum beats coming from different locations? This would however be a real benefit to electronic music. If you have ever listened to Tiesto's In Search of Sunrise series, I bet you can imagine those albums would be wicked great to sit in room and have the sounds cascade around you.

Answer is easy: we have two ears, not 5.1. Recording stereo records all the information necesary for our brains to 'upconvert' the signal to a spacial spoundimage. Recording (and mixing) 5.1 is more tedious, doesn't really gain us anything, and is no use to the 99.99% of scenarios people listen to music in: iPod or homestereo's, with, of course, only two speakers.

Surround sound is mainly a marketing gimmick and a toy for people who like audio equipment.

And to throw in a few cents about the driving force of portable audio, perhaps binaural recordings make more sense.

Maybe it's about what the intention of the piece is?

DSOTM seems to be more a composed soundscape than a simple recording of a musical performance. It uses stereo quite aggressively, and I can well imagine it being extended to a much larger number of channels.

OTOH, I don't really see it adding much to Live at Leeds, or any recording which aims to create something like the normal concert relationship of audience to performer(s). Hmm, would you actually want to be inside Glenn Gould's piano? (Yes, if that meant you couldn't hear him singing to himself.)

With movies, I guess it's part of the 3D/Cinerama impulse, to make the experience of the audience immersive. The first movie I saw that used rear speakers was Dr Zhivago. It wasn't a success, for me: I could tell when a wolf was about to howl because I could hear the rear channel coming on, with a fairly loud hiss. By the end of the film I was like "Oh noes, here comes another fscking wolf." Not a bad flick, but not improved by 4+1.

I have listened to several albums in surround mixes (Dark Side of the Moon & Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots & The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips) and I can attest to how awesome they are and how much they offer over the stereo mixes. It's like the difference between mono and stereo. For some types of music there may not be much of a benefit, but for lush, psychedelic, multilayered music like the albums I listed, it makes for an awesome experience. And these were all listened to on a lackluster set of 5.1 "computer speakers", mind you.

I've really wanted to listen to some surround mixes, in fact I bought a bunch of DTS CDs when they were on sale, just to try them out with Dolby Headphone. My problem that is most of the cheap surround systems I hear sound horrible with music. A decent stereo is almost cost prohibitive for me; it took me a few years to build up a nice one for a reasonable price. Adding 3 more speakers and a subwoofer to that would just be insane price wise. I'd like to do it someday, but it seems like most people get the choice between a good stereo, or a bad surround system that music shouldn't go anywhere near .

(FYI, I have tried setting up a few random speakers I had sitting around my house and making it into a 5.0 system...it really didn't sound too good with unmatched speakers)

The problem generally is the consumer doesn't want to upgrade their equipement to play SACD and DVD-A. Plus not everything is released in both formats or in just one alone. The whole idea of the Dualdisc with DTS 5.1 mix on one side still get's my vote for multichannel audio except not everyone is doing it. . I heard a CD mixed in 5.1 DTS and I was really impressed of course this is an electronic CD so it very much depends on the style of music. A plain old rock band might not sounds as good in 5.1, but a duo with a string section would definitely benefit by it.



I still think there is a niche market for it one way or another and it would be good to see more stuff released in it.

Ha! Yes, we have only two ears but we hear in all directions. Unless we are strapping stereo speakers directly to our heads we can hear sound in 360 degrees. On a purely theoretical basis it makes sense that in order to reproduce a 360 degree listening environment the more speakers the better.



Surround does not necessarily mean instruments coming at you from all angles, e.g. most classical surround releases use the rear channels for ambience only.

Most pop and rock surround releases do use the rear channels for some instruments. I have my rear channels to the sides of my listening position and I quite like it for multi-channel rock. I'm not so fond of hearing sounds come from way more behind me.

... Which is perhaps the major reason of them sounding "awesome", together with a possibly suboptimal listening room acoustics.
A good hi-fi stereo set and a tuned listening room may already give you a great music sensation (perhaps much greater than your 5.1 lackluster set).
And also - on a concert, you usually stand in front of the performing band, not among them to need instrument sounds coming from behind.We "hear the direction" by analyzing the phase shift/amplitude difference between the two signals from our ears, if I'm not mistaken. So one might conclude that you should need nothing more than (ideal) in-ear headphones to hear everything as it is. The problem here is that you need to make one universal CD to be listenable on a broad range of equipment and a pure-headphone CD would probably sound awful on stereo loudspeakers.
I don't know if all the 5.1 tracks are made with reference to some ideal loudspeaker positioning (listening room) but if you place your set slightly off the ideal placement (and you have undamped room walls etc.), you're probably wasting the sound already and could be better off with headphones (which, if nothing else, preserve the signal phase/amplitude difference between left and right ear).

You know, for convenience's sake the only version of Zaireeka I really listen to is a Stereo downmix I threw together.

Sure, defeats some of the purpose of that recording, but yet convenience wins many more times than not.

So the fact that I used poor speakers could have contributed to the mix sounding better? How does that work?

Besides, it is not hard to differentiate between the linearity (or lack of) of a speaker's frequency response and how the album's mixing utilized surround channels, which is what I was referring to.

And after someone mentioned Dual Disc, I remembered that I have also listened to the 5.1 mix of David Bowie's Reality, which I found to offer nothing over the stereo mix.

If you compared to the same set and the same listening room reproducing just stereo content, the surround speakers might actually improve the otherwise wasted localization of instruments.
Try listening to some REAL stereo set in some serious listening room and then compare... If there was such a need for surround music I believe someone would have been pushing it hard already.
It is already a challenge to set up a stereo set and a whole listening room properly and it is even harder to do so using 6 speakers instead of just 2.

Two-channel stereo is inherently limited in what real spatial information it can accurately reproduce. This has been understood since the earliest days of home audio reproduction (where the more optimal 3-channel configuration used in theaters was rejected in favor of the more user-friendly two-channel format)




Recording and mixing a live event for surround sound, will certainly offer more opportunity to accurately reproduce it at home.

Could you cite something here? This claim is setting off my nonsenseometer. We have two channels of audio input. Asserting that you need more than 2 channels of audio to provide spatial information seems nonsensical to me.

It may, but it certainly won't give an accurate rendition of the 'sound' of the original recorded space.

Of course, on a pop/rock studio release, there probably is no real 'space' to render -- the parts may well have been recorded in different rooms, or run directly into the board. But for 'live' acoustic events, such as orchestral concerts, two-channel stereo simply cannot capture the 3D information.




But at a live event that isn't amplified, the sound is not only coming from *two points*,as it would be at home. An orchestra is spread across the stage. And the reflected sounds are coming from behind and around you.

And again, you guys are misconstruing 'surround sound' to only mean, mixing instruments to rear speakers.
It doesn't. A well set up surround system playing an acoustic event can practically make your room *disappear*, replaced by the 'other' room where the event was recorded. Stereo cannot do that.





5.1 tracks are supposed to adhere to ITU surround mixing soundstage recommendations. Some DVD-As (including the Flaming LIps') even provide a diagram of the intended speaker setup.

What's nonsensical is the idea that you can accurately reproduce a 3D sound field using only two loudspeakers. And that you can have stable imaging with only phantom sources.


Anyway, please recalibrate your nonsensometer. I'm not making this stuff up:


http://www.axiomaudio.com/history-of-home-theater.html

http://www.tvtechnology.com/pages/s.0065/t.1349.html

see also section 3.1.1. of this book

http://books.google.com/books?id=0kVx_JjFI...ary_r&cad=0

Only after I mentioned anything did you mention loudspeakers. In the loudspeaker case, I can understand easily that what you say is true. However, headphones are a completely different story. I've yet to see any proof that given a proper headphone set up, there is any loss of spatial data.

I think this is the point others are mentioning, and the one I was getting at: There is no need for more than 2 channels if one channel goes directly to each ear.

Exactly! As said in my OP, reverb/reflections/echoes come from all around as well as up and down. Also for recreation of a live event, applause/audience noise would sound very realistic coming mostly from surround speakers.

I did originally listen to the music on the same set, but also on headphones... headphones would preserve the localization of instruments more than any set of speakers.

People have been pushing surround sound music, since at least the 1970s. There were several competing quadraphonic matrixing standards for vinyl and reel tapes, and more recently there have been DualDisc / DVD-A / SACD releases with surround mixes. The reason why it isn't in widespread is because most people don't have the equipment to play it, and/or don't care.

I can get the same affects from my system using a stereo signal. All I do is turn it to a stereoX2 setting in which the front right and rear right speakers play the right channel while the left front and rear left speakers play the left channel. I can't count the times that I have been fully immersed in my music whether it be studio releases or live releases. I have one DVD-A disc that I played (Linkin Park's Reanimation, it was free for being a member of their street team) and I prefer playing the mp3 files through my stereo on the stereoX2 setting over the DVD-A mix. I actually feel more immersed with the stereo files than the 5.1 mix. I guess I just don't like the vocals coming from the center channel as it isn't that way at concerts as the vocals are played through the small center monitors (along with the other band members and their instruments) but, when you are on the floor or in the stands, you can't even hear the center monitors and it all comes from the left and right speakers.

Edit: I am not trying to argue for or against multi-channel audio. I am just saying that from my experience, stereo music is perfectly acceptable. Not only that but I can play surround sound audio only in one location: my living room. I hate limiting myself as to where and how I can playback my music. So I enjoy the freedom more that stereo CD/digital audio files offer. That is why multi-channel audio will probably never catch on. It has been pushed since the 70's and still hasn't caught on. I doubt that it will ever catch on at this point especially considering the mass amount of stereo only portable devices (ie iPods) that are out there.

Here's my take.

The truly "killer app" for surround sound is vastly improved spatialization. That sort of thing is incredibly useful for genres that benefit from clear and "understandable" masterings - classical, jazz, live music? 2BDecided posted a while ago about an experience with a surround demo that was apparantly absolutely marvelous. But with so much rock produced nowadays, clear mastering is explicitly not what is considered ideal. To get the loudest and most in-your-face mixes, you need to max out the power across all channels with as many instruments as you feel appropriate. The whole notion of placing single instruments in single locations in the mix is simply contrary to those requirements. Hell, I'd venture an estimate that a lot of the mixes nowadays are mostly mono, and more mono than they were 10-20 years ago.

So to a large degree I believe that surround hasn't become popular because popular music does not want it (or even explicitly rejects it).

Holy cow. That's not even good 'synthetic surround' practice. And it's absolutely not accurate reproduction of the original soundfield (assuming there was any)

You could do much better just using Dolby Pro Logic II.










Only if you use special recording techniques -- e.g. binaural. You certainly do not routinely recover accurate soundfield from a two-channel recording simply by virtue of listening via headphones.

How many of those 5.1 music recordings are actually made by placing 5 microphones around the performing band? In the movies, it is just some studio mix of electronically 3D-positioned monaural samples. And this is also the case with majority of the stereo studio recordings. Mostly, there is no genuine sound field to reproduce.

This only means that some projects don't utilize the full capabilities of the format. Gee, does that sound familiar?


It doesn't mean that surround is not better at reproducing the sound field than two-channel.

It's still the best audio I've ever heard, even though I've heard much more expensive systems...
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ost&p=96338

Two channels is enough for accurate binaural reproduction if you don't move your head, and if you ignore the differences between the shape of your own outer ear, and that assumed by the recording.

Given that two crucial cues to sound localisation are the shape of your own outer ear, and head movement - and an even bigger cue is what you see, it's no wonder it has remained a "trick" rather than a mainstream format. Binaural also benefits from all the things that make any reproduced audio sound more realistic - flat frequency response, low distortion, realistic levels etc. It doesn't work very well at all (and so can sound worse than normal stereo) if the system is really bad.


The answer to the OP is simple: 5.1 for music is a hassle and doesn't usually sound very good. Sometimes it's somewhat better than stereo. Unfortunately the insanity which has swept the subjectivist led audiophile world over the last two decades means that the very people who would previously have been happy to pay for even a small improvement are now convinced that two channel playback from vinyl is the best thing ever.

Good surround sound is a different matter - anyone who heard it would be convinced IMO, but apart from those few discs from Chesky and similar "experimental" work, it simply doesn't exist. As it is still experimental, the results range from truly breathtaking to truly awful. (I've been out of the audio world for a while though - someone somewhere is probably doing it very well, consistently, by now - check the sursound mailing list).

Cheers,
David.

Now I'm persuaded there could be a real advantage to multi-channel, I'd like to ask how difficult it is to set up a room for listening? A pair of speakers in roughly OK positions is compatible with normal use, but it sounds like you'd need to be very precise with multi-channel, which I fear might mean a dedicated room (which audiophiles have, but not the mass-, or even upper-mid-market).

In my personal experience, it's easier to set up a 5-speaker system (that is, 5.0) for acceptable results than a 2.0 system.

My parents wanted an installation in their (large, 1750s) living room to watch DVDs *and* listen to music. Without (re)moving any existing furniture. We used inexpensive but quality equipment, laid it out in an approximate ITU manner, and the results are quite listenable. We did bury the speaker cables in the wall for neatness.

We get a good stereo image *and* ambience without even trying - the front speakers aren't even on their spikes or filled with sand! In this room, two speakers simply wouldn't have been enough - with five, we can put them quite far apart without making a big hole in the middle. In my opinion, this makes our £600 or thereabouts 5.0 system superior to a £6000 stereo system.

We simply leave the receiver in Pro Logic II mode, and it switches itself to discrete mode when we introduce an AC3 or DTS signal from the computer. We've fitted a good FM antenna in the loft, and just haven't bothered with "digital radio". TV is a bit more of a problem; their antenna isn't quite pointed right and they haven't got a Freeview box yet, but those things are fixable.

The whole idea of room treatment is to neutralize bad effects of the room; that's the best one can hope for with two-channel. In a multichannel setup if anything you want to do that even more -- you want to substitute a whole 'new' room for yours. But luckily the nature of the format helps do it for you. Let's assume a multichannel recording where the rear channels are used for ambiance (i.e, most 'classical' surround releases). So now, instead of relying on rear wall room reflections (which will only supply 'unreal' ambience), these are being overwhelmed by actual 'direct' signal, taking the room further *out* of the picture. So if anything a dedicated room is *less* required. Also, if you have full-ranger speakers, you are distributing bass sources around the room, which will tend to ameliorate modal problems compared to just two sources in front of you, colocalized with the mid/treble. If you don't use full-range you are using a subwoofer, which lets you position the bass source optimally, freeing it from the other drivers. So again, a typical multichannel setup lets you get away with perhaps LESS room treatment.

But room treatment is always recommended. If you can't treat, it's still very important to get speaker positioning, distances (delays) and level correct at the main listening position (and ideally, more positions). Most AVRs can do this for you. And happily for us who can't afford extensive room treatment, virtually all modern AV receivers now include DSP for 'room correction'. The best of these (it appears from my reading that Audyssey MultEQ is the best 'mass market' room correction software out there, packaged with AVRs; there are dedicated hardware units that are better [more compute power], but also far more costly) . These actually give the listener more leeway in positioning the speakers too.

Automatic speaker distance , room correction etc setting also benefits two-channel setups.

Ideally, for any setup (unless you happen to have an acoustically 'perfect' room) you want

1. proper speaker setup (positioning, distance compensation, and levels)
2. room treatment
3. room correction DSP

in that order. But just #1 and #3 can give pretty amazing results.