Is Digital actually better than Analog?

Queg,

Your altruistic "its all personal" outlook, is simply lip service I just thought I'd point out that you might want to stop saying it because its obvious you don't believe it.

You should say "If I approve" reference your statement below.

"High quality 2 channel (which, like Ozzy, I suspect you've never actually heard)"

BTW, how do you like my ATC system? Good enough for you?

Here's my favorite comment;

"exceptional emotional quality that (for me) became discernable only after many, many hours of alone time (rather then show off time) in my listening chair."

If you would actually follow up on the information I gave you or ask for more specific info to find it, you'd find that 2 channel is inferior in this emotional aspect to multi-channel. You rebuttle me like you know the facts and done the research, but you have not. Your idea of knowledge is consensus here and satisfaction resolved by sitting on your butt listening to old jazz records. Awesome research methods! If you refuse to learn and still maintain a differring opinion, that's ok but understand yours is an uninformed position.

Pawlowski;

Why do you think I would accept any compromises when listening to surround?...is this assumption extrapolated from your extemely limited experience with surround systems?

The effects of the surround are directly related to the quality of sound, ie much better for digital sources in all areas.

Which was my original comment. But all these arm chair guru's who have all owned and operated state of the art surround equipment in their homes like Lexican't...seem to have their minds made up.

Paw, here's the quickest way to make my point. The guy who designed your speakers, agrees with what I'm saying, so maybe you should sell your speakers or better yet buy a Meridian processor and 3 more Jr's and get rid of the tubes. You'll never look back. I never did, and when I did it surround was hardly what it is today.

Look I would love to have a discussion with you guys instead of deflecting your baseless comments. But it appears still this is all I can expect from you.

Nsgarch, have you looked for the MIT surround research, it was done in 1965, but I will have to go to a good library to find it again. Did your work ever get published? I wonder if I read it?

Gentleman, been the usual pleasure.

Did your work ever get published? I wonder if I read it?

Ouch!!!

Ded_wards, I haven't searched MIT's archives lately, but I'm sure you'll find it under the Dept. of Physiological Psychology, ca. 1964-1966. The title of the paper is "Controlled Studies in Human Stereophonic Perception."

We had hundreds of volunteers (S-T-E-R-E-O was everywhere!), and more important, the first computer system large enough to crunch statistics and probability -- at the same time! So, no study of this type was even possible any time earlier.

Although my little project wasn't specifically concerned with re-producing virtual sonic environments using only two loudspeakers, in 1997, a fellow at MIT named Bill Gardner did his PhD thesis on that very subject. You can read it (150 pages) at:

http://sound.media.mit.edu/Papers/gardner_thesis.pdf

For those of you too busy to read it in detail, it describes a way for producing a "sweet spot" anywhere in the listening room through the use of a procedure called "head tracking." But it leaves no doubt that full re-creation of a sonic environment is possible using only two loudspeakers.

Thanks for the lively discussion ;--)
.

"The effects of the surround are directly related to the quality of sound, ie much better for digital sources in all areas."

LOL, yep we gathered you thought that.

Psychicanimal,

and all who may feel the same.

I am simply curious if Nsgarch research was published, it is not a slam, because getting your work published is a very big deal and hardly automatic, unless you have a job as an audio reviewer :). In the mid to late 1960's MIT and a few other Ivy league medical schools in the New England area engaged in behaviour research with audio, and much of this research is more medical or psychology related than for pure audio performances measures.

I have read many of the MIT Journals and New England Journal of Medicine articles on these experiments (Tvad).

So I was just curious if his work was in the journals somewhere. What were the results? Why can't we discuss these things and build on real data, not just on what we "feel" is right.

I am dying to learn something on this forum, Nsgarch has superb credentials but my assertions that his speaker system represents a crude multichannel system goes unchallenged and there's no technical explanation on how he believes that two channel systems can recreate a true soundstage relying on room reflectivity and absorbtion, if he refers me to the studies that back this up, I'll go read it.

I want to know, because maybe part of my idea and part of his idea = the best solution.