I have a general question about surround sound.

This is like one of those questions about "the best" or "who is right" it's all Apples and Oranges to me. I've kept my stereo system in the ex-family room and placed my surround in the living room with the TV.

Multi-channel sacd's can sound phenominal (Roxy Music "Avalon") or horrible (The Police - any). The classic's have the same problem. I would never give up my multi version of Orff but there are many others where the ambience is mixed ridiculously low.

Yes, I listen to "Dark Side ..." on the stereo system BUT I also enjoy the quad type mix on the surround every now and then.

I detect the fundamental knee-jerk reaction to anything but two channel stereo. The ambiance of the recording venue is not very well reproduced by two channel. A number of audible cues are present on stereo recordings, but to reproduce this "other dimension" of sound, added channels are required. How many and what to pump through them is another issue, but the fact remains that to come out with the two statements that music only comes from the front of the hall and that we only have two ears so why more than two speakers is simply wrong.

Jkphoto wrote: "The thing is, when you get your 2-channel right, you do feel enveloped by the music - in the correct way."

It may be satisfying but it can never be correct. The reflections generated by your listening room are not anything like the reflections/ambience of the performance site.

Here is what I wrote for a previous posting.

Multichannel discs, and why.

There is a limited selection of Multichannel discs, and some controversy regarding the merits of multichannel. Certainly there are some inferior discs, but there are also a few that are superb, and demonstrate the potential of the medium to far surpass stereo.

Here are my thoughts on the subject, and I hope that others will offer similar info, perhaps with regard to pop/rock music where I am completely ignorant.

1. The most suitable type of music for multichannel is a small group of musicians like a classical quartet, or a jazz band. The recording can place one instrument, more or less isolated, in each speaker. This has the effect of transporting the musicians into your listening room, rather than projecting you into the performance space. The result is striking. The best examples are Tacet DVD-A discs of chamber music (Mozart Flute Quartets is a good one) and Warner DVD_A "The Bluegrass Sessions...Bela Fleck.

2. "Antiphonal" music is composed with two or more separate groups of musicians in mind, and is a natural for multichannel. A Sony disc of E. Power Biggs playing four separate organs at the same time in a cathedral in Freiburg is a good example. The music is Bach Toccatas and Fugues, and his performance, where the musical phrases are answered back and forth between instruments puts an interesting new twist into these old war horses. The music is very antiphonal, but we never realized this because you usually get to play only one organ at a time.

3. A Telarc SACD, "The Sound of Glory" illustrates another aspect of multichannel. This is a performance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, 400 voices strong, and backed up by what must be the mother of all organs. It's a huge soundstage, and it takes at least five speakers and several powerful subwoofers to do it justice.

4. The Sony disc of Mozart Sinfonia Concertante (Midori, violin and Nobuko Imai, viola) is an orchestral piece which places a significant part of the orchestra (not just ambience)in the rear speakers. This troubles some listeners, who are used to hearing music from a distance of 100 feet or more. However, for anyone who has played in an orchestra, or sung in a choir this perspective is very realistic, and certainly more "involving" than straight stereo.

5. Polyphonic music, where there are about ten musical lines going on at the same time benefits from multichannel which permits better isolation of the different parts. Teldec DVD-A Chanticleer Magnificat (Gregorian Chants) is an example.

6. Last but not least there is some music that just asks to surround and roll over you like a wave. Of course the example is PentaTone SACD of Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2, famous as the world's most effective seduction music.

It's a big deal in that, it may offer the same amount of upgrade to the soundstage that stereo offered over mono. Does it do that at this point and time?, on some disc's yes.

I think that down the road (could be a good while), your going to have many new disc's come to market that use the multichannel format to it's fullest potential..that is: music that should have sounds that come from everywere in an unreal manor as you mention..A lot of new-age/trance/rock and that type of stuff will use the format with great results. Recordings that only need to maintain their up-front soundstage with only hall/room ambience will benefit from a discrete center channel, not the fake one we must use in our two channel setups. The rear/side speakers will provide the reflections for these recordings.

All that said, I have been playing around with different multichannel setups for a couple of years now and have formed a few opinions. My first try in a 12X17 foot room only worked to some degree if I used the long wall. The short wall setup always placed the rears in poor positions. The long wall setup (my listening position had to be against the rear wall) was much more real sounding but did not allow for the rears to be behind me so was still not first rate.

My second system try was in a much larger room 23x27 feet, this room is a dedicated room and is setup friendly with little to no WAF..now I was getting some place as far as speaker placement with no need to tweak speaker distance/delay/height and types used for rears. Still had a small problem though, I also wanted to watch Dvd's on my large RPTV in this system..this stuck the tv in the middle of things up front with a large center speaker on top of it which was to high IMO but did allow vertical placement with a tilt down towards the listening position. I used it this way and liked it a lot for a short time.

Then I had a brainstorm, get rid of the RPTV and get a projector..kill two birds with one stone, no large TV to muck the sound up and I could place the center speaker on the floor, I'm happy to say that if you have a large room, no WAF and don't mind spending a ton of money you to can reap the benefits of multichannel music.

Now if all those recordings would just hurry up!!!

Dave