What I learned at AXPONA

[Lissnr]

I enjoyed my trip into the big apple on opening day of the Axpona...fortunately I was able to get there in the early afternoon, before any major crowds started making the rooms heavily congested. I'm sure there will be a lot of discussions about favorite rooms, surprises and disappointments but before I add my 2 cents on all of that (On another post I guess) I wanted to mention the one thing that had always had me wondering and was now finally put to rest. Which is the "More than 2 speakers playing in your listening room" situation, based on 2 particular rooms.
One was the Totem speakers, 3D - glasses, 5.1 or 6.2 or 7.1 or [whatever the hell combination there were]   surround soundy MOVIE room (Avatar excerpts on a big projector screen and some little birds flying around after that)... I will attest to being mightily impressed on how cool it is to watch a movie in a  surround theatre environment...the difference between 19" black and white tv and that room is as pronounced as a $30 tabletop AM radio and a $1/4 million room found in a place like Overture or Sound by Singer or something like that; there's simply no comparison to how far watching at home has come.
On the other hand, the other room that was also very impressionable upon me was the Thiel speakers room, with the full surround sound set-up including an Oppo multidisc player and a Bryston based processor through a JVC projector onto what looked to be about a 92" screen?? or thereabouts??    They were playing MUSIC videos in this room ... a very impressive picture of a variety of live recording sessions in full-featured surround sound.
And you know what I can honestly say about it was that even though the  guy seemed really nice, said all the right things about all the care taken with the processing and attention to maintaining the naturalness of the recording, etc...I found the results truly UNnatural and completely bizarre to what I felt "being there at the listening venue should have sounded like". Way too weird having instruments coming at me from all over the place, even with the main player generally front and center....  what any good 2 channel system can do with imaging and a good broad and hopefully deep soundstage....is all I need to feel "THERE"...any other speakers just sounded SO strange, I absolutely could not join the  surround sound MUSIC Pied Piper. 
BUT the home theatre ...sign me up.
Any opinions?

[tmazz]

I could not make it to the show, but I have come away with the same impression of concert videos don in surround. It is one thing to use the surround channels to provide ambiance or a larger soundstage, but all to often the engineers use the surround channels as the primary source for parts of the music tracks. Ant the end result of this is that it usually causes a large disconnect between the visual cues from the video and the audible cues from the soundtrack. It is bad enough when sounds come from a place where you think the don't belong in an audio only surround presentation. But it drives me right up the wall when parts of the soundtrack are place in the audible soundstage in a place that does not agree with there they are on the screen. I remember watching a HT demo using a one concert video where you could see the backup singers standing behind the lead vocalist on the stage, but the sound engineer routed the backup vocal channels to the rear surround speakers so the sound was coming from behind my seat. After about two minutes I couldn't take it and had to leave the room.

[richidoo]

They played music videos at our local hifi shop open house last fall. I was sitting in the far back corner, but I enjoyed the experience very much. One track was the Clapton / Winwood concert at the Garden 2008, which was pretty good.  Another was a Talking Heads concert, I loved that one. Can't remember the third clip. The host of the demo is the founder of the store, now retired, and is a 2 channel music guy, so I think he chose carefully the DVDs that would make the best impression at this 2 channel open house with half dozen other rooms filled with excellent stereo music. I forget what equipment it was, but I do remember it was JBL pro in wall speakers, and a projector.  The mixes seemed like they were coming from the stage in front. It was easy to forget about the technology and enjoy the music. But I did still come away thinking that I would rather hear the music as stereo recording on a great system, even without the video.

But for movies, which is a whole different artform, surround can be awesome and enhance the feeling  of immersion when done well.

[tmazz]

Rich, don't get me wrong, I am not against surround sound as a technology and I think it have a lot of potential if done right (and it sounds like the demos that you heard fell into this category.) Unfortunately there are quite a few people out there that are more enamored at playing with the new toys as opposed to using them as a tool to advance the art. And I guess there is a pretty steep learning curve to getting surround sound music done right.

And the more I think about it the more I realize that there are tons of new music released on 2 channel CDs that are engineered poorly from our perspective as audiophiles. So it may not be unreasonable to have to expect to wade through a whole bunch of crappily made Surround videos before finding the few gems that have that musical magic.

[Lissnr]

Tom, Very well said and to add I would think that there should be less concern about losing experienced 2 channel owners as "converts" to 'the dark side' but more for those who never immersed themselves deep enough into 2 channel to realize its merits fully. These are the ones most likely to be coaxed into believing that the only way to achieve that "you-are-there-experience" is through multiple speakers and multi-channel electronics. We must spread the word "It's just not so!!!".   
Now all go forth.....and demo their 2 channels to the unbeknownst masses!!!!

[tmazz]

We have to keep in mind that the electronics are (and all the formats) are nothing more than a means to an end. And the end game is the recreation of a musical experience. I have nothing against multi-channel formats per se,  the problems come from how they are used. Remember, the systems were designed primarily for movie soundtracks and they excel when used for that purpose. Now when used for music IMO the stumbling block is finding someone who can figure out how to use all of those channels in a coherent way to reproduce the illusion of being at an actual musical performance. Let's keep in mind that we have been doing stereo recording for close to 60 years and over that time have spent a lot of effort trying to figure out how to do it right. Let us not forget some of the  horrible early stereo efforts with their overblown ping-pong stereo effects that sounded nothing like live music. But over time we learned from that and got to the point where we have stereo pretty much down pat. However, in those days recorded music was one of the primary forms of home entertainment so there was a good reason to put forth the effort to get better and better at it. Unfortunately, in today's environment in music in little more than a niche market competing with movies, video games, internet, etc. And in may cases sound is an afterthought in one of those other things and not the primary vehicle 9like the music in a concert video which doesn't have to sand on it's own since people are buying the DVD and not the CD, and many of them will be played through a cheap HT in a Box type system anyway.) I only hope that there is enough concern  in the industry over SQ to put in the effort to perfect  multi-channel recording and mixing techniques the way they did for stereo.