Immersive Audio and How to Achieve It

I'm immersed in the music with just 2 tannoy speakers....

@audioguy85 

Saw your profile, nice stack of gear, how long did it take to curate it?

So I dug into the "New Atmos Arrival" Playlist on Tidal tonight, the jaw dropping, face melting, heart stopping tracks (so far) which (if you have a system that is capable and a subscription) are:

1) Tubular Bells - Incredible

2) Let’s Stay Together- Al Green- Listening to this I understood why God gave us center channels. Anything less for Reverend Al is heresy.

3) Chicago- 25 or 6 to 4- OMG, the horns! Incredible depth, tone, separation, the guitar solo, beautiful.

4) God Only Knows- Beach Boys- The harmonies in stereo are a bit squished, in atmos, each voice as an object, breathing in their own distinct location, breathtaking.

5) Englishman in New York-Sting- The woodwinds, the strings, the tone, it is like you never heard it before.

6) Linus and Lucy- Vince Guaraldi- The piano, crystal clear in the soundstage but the percussion, WOW, its like you never noticed it until now.

New drops by the Stones, Pink Floyd. McCartney, Clapton, Luther Van Ross, and sooo many other. Oh yeah, Sinatra, incredible, breathtaking, dare I say...priceless??

Link to the Tidal playlist:

https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/842c6d95-a332-48dc-af28-92c573bd4fdc

I do enjoy my music ’live, and in person’...

...until recently.

3 venues: In order, a symphony hall, a medium club, and a larger hall.

The symphony: Not ghastly seats, but the performance came off as weak....in an acoustic level of quality....but an enthusiastic response from the audience, in a polite fashion (typ. for the crowd...) = 😎

The club: ’Meh’ acoustics, but they’ve been around long enough to play to the strengths of the venue....a rambunctious crowd that seemed to go off at a cough, not so much.... = 🤨

Larger hall: Loud lousy mix, and a crowd that was able to drown out the performance at will, and they definitely had enough of one. The performance and performers intrigued, but not enough to make me tolerate the audience.... = 😖

I think I’ll invest my ’entertainment $s’ at home....when ’we’ can drown the performers in sheer spl....

I’m out.

....and so much for ’live immersion’.....

At home, be it ever so.... I can Immerse self easily, happily, and painlessly.

Linkwitz once commented on ’ignoring the room’ with his dipoles in the 4 ’corners’; made a lot of sense to me, and still does.

Esp. with omnis....such as the Walsh format, which Yes, one can play loud enough to thrill (or whatever you need to experience.....) with 2, L & R.

Funny thing about them....4, L,R, F & R....’perceived loudness’ increases nicely, and doesn’t lead to frying the coils or creasing cones....or both. *S*

This doesn’t mean that they’re the only things I listen to, no.

But...they are the ones I prefer to do so.

Surround myself....and give up. *L*

Happily yours, J

I think I’ll invest my ’entertainment $s’ at home....when ’we’ can drown the performers in sheer spl....

and you don’t have to travel, stand in line, and have people coughing on you LOL.

Linkwitz once commented on ’ignoring the room’ with his dipoles in the 4 ’corners’; made a lot of sense to me, and still does.

That is exactly what the new Sony HT-A9 does, 4 speakers and instead of dipoles they use proprietary tech to map the room.

You can't replicate the "object based" experience with channels, no way, no how. For consumers to dump $$$$ into channel based tech without ever having compared to an object based experience is lunacy, given the growing amount of content available in apple music and tidal. Yes, object based has tradeoffs too, but the experience is stunning in my room, stunning!

https://www.ibc.org/features/object-based-audio-immersive-experiences-and-personalisation/9214.article