Specialty audio format for those with lots of disposable income !

It's the 3D BluRay of audio.

I doubt the majority of any particular group have or listen exclusively to 5.1. Besides, hasn't it been replaced by 7.1?

Now it's the Gillette Fusion 5 of audio.

Besides with a well setup 2-channel system, optimal speaker placement you can experience 3D soundstage as well very wide soundstage. On my system, the "running man" on DSOtM starts in the middle, moves to 180 deg to my left then back to center. Effects, echo, reverb on traditional stereo mixes are more than enough and are more natural than thru 5 or 7 speakers.....We only have two ears for cryin outloud.

You can have a very good sounding 2-channel setup, digital or analog for very reasonable prices. It seems prog music is losing its 5.1 audience, the fad is over.

You may as well ask "Why do they still make lava lamps?".

Because it's 'cool' and someone will buy it.

This.

Because it allows him to charge more for a CD box set. I don't think people are buying a separate 5.1 mix disc, it comes in a CD deluxe box set, so you get it by default.

You are an audiophile too. Which only means you are looking to hear music as best you can achieve given whatever your budget is. People who spend uber (define uber) money are no more an audiophile than someone who does not spend uber (define uber) money.

I prefer LPs because that media gives me the most natural, dynamic and revealing experience with my music and its highly engaging.

Just go find a hi-fi audio store (not Best Buy) and go and listen to their systems, both digital and analog.

My music room, like probably 95% of most is in my home where there are things like sofas, carpet, drapery, door opening, hallways, windows and such so trying to treat a room is almost impossible. If I had a 4 sided equal room with no windows you can treat a room effectively with first reflection points.......I won't tell you how much I spent, that's between me and my spousal unit and bank account, it's a hobby so I pay cash for everything, never finance or credit that is cra-cra! Plus it's very very rare I pay MSRP, but I have no issue giving you a gear list of what I have.  

Parasound Halo Integrated Amp

Music Hall mmf-7.1 Turntable, upgraded tonearm Project 9cc all carbon fiber

Music Hall Cruise Control 2.0

Lyra Delos MC Cartridge

Musical Surroundings Nova II Phono Preamp

NAD C545BEE CD Player

Teac X2000R R2R

I think that's all of it....

Holy crap!!! I don't know what any of this gear is but I Googled some of the prices. Even below MSRP price - congrats! What do you do for a living to afford this stellar equipment? Your cartridge alone costs more than my entire set-up, it must sound stellar. Does your spousal unit approve of your hobby?  Does she listen to those Lee Morgan LP's with you? 

There is only one hi-fi audio store in my area and I'm sure they won't have any music I'm familiar with to play on their system, so it does me no good. And I can't afford it. They would probably kick me out for having long hair, wearing blue jeans, and beat-up Chuck Taylors. 

Just for you to get a laugh out of my system. This is what I have....

Dennon 2801 Receiver 

Oppo BDP-93 (Blu-ray player)

5 Paradigm Legend Speakers 

She buys me records...so yes. You don't build a high-end system in a month unless you have uber money, like many it takes several years to build what you want. 

I coach HS lacrosse and do lacrosse camps in the summer and that funds my habit, my job pays the mortgage and taxes and buys food and worthless krapp like cars.

Nothing wrong with what you got, its wayy better than what I had as a teenager in my room, gotta start somewhere.

.....word....

I have a different take on this.

For me, when I found "Tangerine Dream" 50 years ago, I immediately went to a store that had all kinds of stereo crap in it, and had them put on the album (Phaedra). 

I ended up with a super nice Pioneer Turntable that lasted 40 years (had to replace the belts twice), and 2 ESS Heil AMT 1 speakers. The speakers alone were $750 for both of them, and we're talking 1972 or 1973. Theses speakers have been re-conned twice here in Portland by a man that does speakers (JaMac) and has done this for many bands for a long time. The cartridge for the turntable was a Stanton that cost $200+ dollars at the time, and it lasted for 30 years!

The difference was, and is ... that even the 5.1 stuff does not sound as good as the LP did on those speakers and superlative stereo system. Folks today, I don't think, have any idea of what "quality" really is, how to find it, and most just listen to mp3's off some website and its level is so bad that it makes the music sound very poor, by comparison.

Also available in those days, something that was far better than the 5.1 overdone and over rated stuff, was the RCA RED LABEL of music in the late 60's and early 70's that had the very best recordings of a lot of music ... that folks today, STILL have not heard, to have any idea of what "quality" was, and is, specially today in the cheap sell market of mp3's and every thing else out there. Downloads at Apple are not good quality and have never been. Same for many other music serves, and that is why they "offer" a different level for the money! But spending money like that won't matter much, because you do not have the system for it, and the headset through a cheap player or smartphone, won't give you a better idea of what the sonic qualities of it all really are like!

It's just difficult to discuss this, unless you have a super system that still stands. I did get a nice Stanton turntable, but the cartridge for it is crap, and they want an obscene amount of money for a cheap cartridge to replace the crapper that came with it. And I have not, yet, replaced the cartridge, specially as my LP collection dies down and I replace it with CD's. The space, the size and the heavy nature of carrying it all around, is not something for an old man!

All in all ... if folks heard a lot of this "top music" in that other stratosphere of listening, they would realize how much some music is important, and how much some folks knew how to work with those elements, specially someone like Edgar Froese! And few people will EVER give them credit for that, because of the fame nature of rock music, and the lack of listening by many folks here, and elsewhere. Hearing some things on mp3 is nowhere near the real thing, on a superlative system, and even 5.1 is full of it, and just more wasted money, time, and over rated setups trying to get your money.

The one thing about these 5.1's ... they are clean ... that one is for sure, but the instrumentation of things, specially SW's is "changed" somewhat to make it look like these are not in the same room or stage, or area, and sometimes, I think it takes the best side and parts of the music away from the original. However, I won't criticize this ... how do we rate The Firebird Suite, by one Bernstein, or The Firebird Suite by Kharajan  ... they were that different in approach, not the actual music itself.  

And SW has done the same thing. But to me, it did not help the music any ... sometimes the music itself is the SOUL of it all, and regardless of how it is done, it always lives ... bigger than anything else. AND we must remember that about all these supposedly magical things that make the music better! FOR YOUR MONEY, FOOOOO!!!!

Hi,

One of the hardest thing to teach actors on a stage, through rehearsal and improvisation, is the LISTENING capability, which will, in the end, help you learn your lines and reply correctly to the moment on the stage. 

It won't do much good to listen to 5.1, and you go outside and you can only hear 2 birds, and there are 300 of them all around you, for example, not to mention some traffic, some planes, some wind, and many other things, and if you can pickup at any second 10 of these separately, then 5.1 will be a good experience for you, with one very important and vital element ... you do not get to see the "concept" and the "design" of the LIFE around you, which in this case would be the music itself as opposed to the life right in front of your senses ... you are hearing separate instruments (more or less) and that's about it, but their cohesion and playing together which is best suited to being together in one room, ends up becoming separate (and to ME), less clear about the music. 

AND, this is one of the issues I have with SW. I don't think he sees the whole idea and concept ... he just sees what he wants to do, regardless, which is fine and he's done well with it, but in the end, it is not as valuable and important an experience for the music itself.

There is a sidebar here. In one Klaus Schulze DVD (one with Lisa) there is an extra bit about some of the engineers discussing a moment in his music, that you and I can not find if we look for it ... and he shows how to make it better, and Klaus agrees to it ... it didn't hurt the completeness of the work, regardless of the fact that you and I will never find it or notice it! THE BEST MIX is like that ... you can't find "details" and the music just lives on onto levels and visuals that are out of this world and universe ... so, strictly hearing 5 distinct instruments, for me, will tend to break up the whole-ness of it all, when it was designed to be together.

Might be different for some of the older and less simpatico and melodic music of the early electronic days, but for a rock band, I think it hurts more. Even jazz ... they are "together" and yet "apart".

I'm talking about multichannel audio music as it's often used in experimental musical practices. I find that it much enhances how immersive the listening experience is, and that it can recreate or imitate a sense of acoustic space in a way that simply can't be matched with stereo audio.

Also, I've studied improvisation, both acting and musical. I've spent a lot of time learning about listening.

Hi,

I totally disagree, and specially when what is suggested here that ones listening can not possibly be clean and clear. That is NOT the sign of a musician and artist that is clear on his attempts to express his own feel of things through music.

There are, no words, to describe the sensation of the clarity of the wholeness of everything, specially around you and I. However, we are so damn selective about what we hear and what we want to hear, and how we want to hear, that the ability to be able to listen to it all, is nearly impossible, and the suggestion that your sense of the acoustic space which can't be matched ... is but an illusion, because regardless, the real thing in front of you is always the very best ... maybe for your taste and mine, in the right hands of course.

Stereo/mono and even 5.1, are IDEAS that have been added since the beginning of time ... let me change that ... the beginning of "sound" in the 20th century from movies and recordings on to today ... that were/are a great attempt at making the real thing sound better than it really is, and all that is saying is that it is filtered and touched up to sound cleaner and better than the real thing.

YOU HAVE NO FILTERS, if you are outside and trying to pick up as much as you can for each specific second in time. And the ability to pick up more than one thing for us, is nearly impossible since our senses are defined by our culture from day one. NOW, there is something else here. Take a blind person, and they are taught from day one to use their 4 senses to make up for the missing sense ... and what do you get? Blind musicians can hear more than you and I do, and they show it all the time, although some folks in older days did not have the ability and the studio ability that someone like Rachel Flowers does today ... but when you hear her do some KC (the Bill Bruford versions) you can hear that she added the little touches that Bill had in the music that almost no mixes of KC had shown ... and it makes the music richer ... and all this showed me, from my experiences on stage, was how much more was there that even we can not see, or hear or experience.

tempest_77 wrote: ... Also, I've studied improvisation, both acting and musical. I've spent a lot of time learning about listening.

My studies in this will include a book I'm working on, about improvisation in many artistic disciplines. The hardest part of it all is learning its history, since it can go back to many "occult" studies and how so much was used, and experimented with. And, in the end, this all reminds me about don Juan in the Castaneda series when Carlos asked about the drugs. "You were so plugged up that we had to distract you, so you could learn about one little thing or two!" 

The day we stop being fooled by "imaginary" processes that supposedly show an instrument better than it really is, is the day that music will die! Because in that day, you are no longer needed, and neither are "listeners". A sort of Arthur C. Clarke Overlord thing, if you will!

I am sorry, but I am not one that thinks that all of us humans do not have the ability and that some technical invention is better than what you and I have. That's for robots, not people in my book!

Hi,

This is sad for me and my ears.

It's like saying that the music itself is not the "soul" of it all, and that some manipulation of the sounds, makes the experience better than it really is ... or was!

I saw them live, doing TFTO at the Long Beach Arena, and even though the one SW mix I have heard is really nice, I can not compare the feeling and appreciation of it all then, to what I am hearing now. It maybe "crisper" and "cleaner" than before, but to me, that was not "the music" that was the elements and everything else interfering with the complete feeling.

Even sadder, is thinking that if you check out 3 different versions of The Rite of Spring from 3 different conductors, that they can't possibly be good, because one of them was done on the RCA Red Label (the best recording before rock music took over with Beatles and Stones) ... and that is simply not true. The experience and the soul of the music is all there, despite what seems to be a different level of attention to different portions of the music.

To me, that manipulation tends to DISTRACT from the original. There is a purity of vision in the original, that can not be removed, or replaced, and if you see it, you will never think that a mix of this or that, or a bit more salt, or less sugar, or the different placement of the orchestra instruments (Stokowski), made the music sound different ... and yet, it's its soul that makes us remember it!

We've lost touch of what "sound" is, and we think that when it is cleaned up and not interfered by something else it makes it better ... and every time I go outside my door in my yard, and hear the birds, the trees, the squirrels, the planes, the cars and the wind ... that separating it so I can hear only three of those things, will make it unreal and not "LIVE" as it needs to be, and for me, music has to LIVE ... and its soul is the primary important part of it, not its cleaned out this and that on a 6.9 mix or 5.1 mix!

I think you misunderstand my thoughts on 5.1 and other forms of multichannel audio. I'm not saying they are inherently superior, I'm not saying that stereo audio isn't "enough", I'm not saying that stereo sucks, and I'm not saying that 5.1 is the only way to listen to music. I'm just saying that there's something it can do that stereo audio can't, since it's 5 speakers and a subwoofer instead of two speakers. But 5.1 and stereo can coexist as mediums of sound presentation, and I think there's value in both. 

Additionally, the idea that stereo audio directly recreate the way we hear things in the real world (two ears) is completely inaccurate. Speakers do not correspond to our ears, they correspond to sources of audio. Sounds in the real world come from all different directions, not just two places on either side of us. If you step on a leaf outside, it's going to sound like it's coming from underneath you, because it is. Just because we only have two ears doesn't mean we can't interpret the directional source of the sounds we're hearing. Dismissing 5.1 because it isn't a "true representation" of how we hear things is pretty inaccurate. Sources on this include the fact that I study experimental music at a music conservatory and have spent multiple years studying techniques on recreating environments and acoustic spaces, among other things.

Plus multichannel has been an idea far before the advent of amplified sound - composers as far back as the late Renaissance era (1500s) were writing music for multiple orchestras placed in different parts of a church, which can be seen as a predecessor to multichannel audio techniques.

Also, I have no idea how the experiences of blind musicians has anything to do with speaker layouts, although you are right that they can hear much more than we can. Just not really sure why you decided to bring it up. 

Hi,

I don't look at "reality" as being defined by stereo, mono, 5.1 or 6.9!

There is no such thing as a "true representation", and for me, the 5.1 mixes are simply another INTERPRETATION of the whole of the music, which, for most folks here, has a tendency to show something about the music that was not there before, which could be nice in a lot of ways, but at the same time distracting.

I can not say, having directed in theater a lot, that every night is the same, or that everyone was the same. One night they were 5.1, the next 1.5, the next stereo and so on ... that's PEOPLE. However, in my experiences, these "new" interpretations are strange, and for my ears most of them simply separate the instruments and fool around with the "placement" of the instruments, which has a tendency to change the focus of the music. I'm OK with that, actually, since so many conductors did just that on so many pieces of music, and unlike a lot of rock folks here, this is something that classic music displayed for many years, when so many conductors became well known for their versions of things. To me, these are not any different than the 5.1 thing ... it merely changes the focus of one or two things, and it does not quite change the over all picture of the music, but it does come to your imagination differently ... with one really difficult issue ... if you hear this now, and then go back 50 years and hear something out of the 5.1, you probably not going to like it because it was dirty, and not clean and you could not hear details and so on. 

tempest_77 wrote: ... Also, I have no idea how the experiences of blind musicians has anything to do with speaker layouts, although you are right that they can hear much more than we can. Just not really sure why you decided to bring it up.

Simple. What they hear, often has more in it than we can grab, and SPECIALLY are used to as we tend to over listen to the hits and things that we are familiar with, and rarely spend more time on material that we do not know or understand, because it is not always "good", or "famous" or a "hit" in the top something of many websites. 

In some ways, what 5.1 does, is a nice idea, but one that should/could have been done at the start if folks had thought about it, but the timing and era defined how well music was recorded, and other than the Beatles and Rolling Stones, not very many bands had access to the best recordings done, which were specifically designed for classical music. It was after that, when record companies saw the money they could make with it that all things changed. And of course, only paying 4 or 5 musicians beats an orchestra any day of the week, plus the bizarre antics of the unions that prevent the musicians from working better, and not lose their concentration. 

The idea, of the blind person, is more about the "potential" for listening, than the clean thing you hear in 5.1 or any other process. It needs to be more about the MUSIC and not so much about the technical side of it, since the technical side IS NOT the artist, although since the 60's a lot of the technical side has become the artist and made a lot of bands sound better and stronger ... and I suppose that we can say that 5.1 is a continuation of that ... although it is my opinion that we should concentrate on the music itself, and not on the recording process and manipulation thereof. It wasn't too long ago, that some folks fell into disarray because it was a studio thing, and not the actual named singers/artists, who all of a sudden were disgraced, when the studio and recoding company took the money home, and laughed their way to the bank.

We're getting stuck on the wrong motive, is sort of the way I think. We need to get back to the music, not exactly the recording process.

Hi,

I don't mean to make it sound bad ... but in the end, the suggestion is that something mechanical and created by a "machine" (or at least manipulated by a machine), is not, to me, something that makes our ears better and supposedly adds to the feeling in the music.  You could say that it helped Tangerine Dream, but at the time, it was more about learning to control the new instrument than it was anything else, and they made it sound pretty!

It can, and there were a lot of conductors that changed the form of the orchestra in concert, so they could get a better "accent" on various parts of the music, so in that sense, it's nothing new, but to suggest that it is what makes the music "good", or "better", to me, is almost the same thing as saying that you are only hearing the technical side of things, and not listening to the music and its flow itself! It's like, the music is not as important as how good the studio was ... that helped the musicians.

In this sense, Tom Dowd, George Martin, and some others, really hurt a lot of the musicians, because their magic was about the cohesion of the music, and then, of course, the bands did not sound as good in concert, although some were different enough and strong enough to do their own thing and sound just fine, and the high level studio stuff did not hurt them ... The Allman Brothers Band is a great example of that. And in the end, the Beatles on the rooftop sounded as good as any GM characterized piece they did!

To help "elevate" the quality of the progressive movement, we have to understand and appreciate that it was NOT about the engineers, but about the music itself and how the youngsters worked it, and they were all YOUNG when all this came about, not the seasoned veterans that many of us seem to anoint them with!

I'm OK with these mix things cleaning it up ... but I'm not OK with them thinking they are just another conductor taking the music's feeling into a different sphere and idea. Which to me, is just what most of these mixes are really all about! AND THEY ARE NOT! The music is already "there" ... 

I mean, sure. That's a valid opinion to have on 5.1 mixes, though you can't really treat it as the end all be all answer to the question.

moshkito wrote: We're getting stuck on the wrong motive, is sort of the way I think. We need to get back to the music, not exactly the recording process.

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Hi,

And that means that we should make an effort to explain to folks that it does not change the music, although comparatively speaking it sounds better ... heck, to you all (unless you saw it at the Cinerama Dome), 2001 sounds like merde! Because the recording is not as clear as we think it should be now that we have "found" a new standard for it, one that is manipulative and not about the music and its feeling ... in other words, THE REAL THING.

tempest_77 wrote: ... If you really want to "get back to the music and "not exactly the recording process", you should eschew recorded music all together in favor of live performance. If that doesn't sound appealing to you, then it's not exactly the recording process you have a problem with; it's just the fact that it's being used in a way that's unfamiliar and different.

My point is that the "recording" side of things is taking away the true force and element of the instrument and giving it a false sense of identity. This will work for electronics, since there is no "standard", but it will change the way you and I feel about guitars, basses, drums, violins, and any instrument that is older than you or I! And the majority of bands will not be good because of it, I bet ... another reason to give the top 5 even more commercial backing!!!!!

(For a better idea and feel about this in electronic music, check out Klaus Schulze's DVD with Lisa and see if you can find the bit that he and his engineer work on ... you won't, and neither will any of us more often than not!) ... but it also tells you, even though in this case not quite significantly, that the feeling for the whole thing LIVE becomes a weeny teeny bit different ... that we would not normally find or see at all!