Welcome aboard! We too are avid audiophiles and look
forward to your contributions which I am sure will be as informative and entertaining as
those in the past. Best regards and good luck!!
...Lou Tumolo
President, L A T International, Inc.
Audio-Video cables
I just want to wish you congratulations and best of luck.
Over the years I have read, enjoyed and learned much from your articles. If I can do
anything to help you, please feel free to contact me.
...Barry Kohan
President, Bright Star Audio
Somebody's gotta kick off the interactive offer on your new
site [congratulations by the way] so here's a question for you. In a live acoustic music
environment, direct sound reaches the listener only from the stage front. During playback,
the listening room characteristics impose their own reflections and artificial ambience
that cannot be the same as that of the original venue. Music surround sound pundits claim
that the surround speakers can recreate the original ambient cues better than traditional
stereo. This is different from bombarding the listener with "main" information
from all sides which is obviously artificial since no direct sound reaches a listener from
behind in a live environment.
How is the ambient information extracted from two-channel
music sources, to be routed to the surround channels in a music surround sound format?
...Srajan Ebaen
SoundStage! columnist and die-hard two-channel dinosaur
In a music context, you're right that the direct
sound is almost always up front and that the material coming from other directions
constitutes reflections. Very few of the rooms we listen in are large enough to simulate
the ambience of a concert hall, so two-channel listening at home is frequently very
different from a live experience. It comes closer when the ambience of the larger space is
included in the recording and reproduced by its own dedicated speakers. Ideally, this is
done intentionally at the mixing stage, but even with recordings not specifically encoded
for surround, very realistic effects can be obtained by using a Pro Logic decoder. Much of
the ambience is out of phase with the main signal, and it is this out-of-phase material
that is fed to the surround channels.
Bombarding the listener with "main"
information from all sides, as you put it, is often desirable with movie sound.
...Ian G. Masters
How come my nice new Dolby Digital receiver doesn't give me
proper tone controls? My old Pro Logic amp had the greatest tone controls, and a remote to
change them with.
...Joe Torbay
Purists have always held that tone controls should
not be necessary, and if present should not be used. A certain number of equipment
manufacturers have subscribed to this notion over the years and left such controls off
their gear. All of that assumes, however, that speakers are linear and rooms don't induce
spectral anomalies in the sound, either of which can be helped by a judicious tweaking of
tone controls. Multiple speakers do tend to randomize acoustic problems, however, and even
very modest speakers come much closer than they once did to flat response, so my guess is
the manufacturer of your receiver simply dispensed with a feature it felt was no longer
necessary.
...Ian G. Masters
I have read numerous guides on where to put surround
speakers and they are still sitting on the floor. My home theater is a fairly big room
located in the basement. The couch sits three feet from the rear wall. Could you please
point me in the right direction.
...Jack Parker
The positioning is a lot less critical than lots of
experts would have you believe. Placing them to the sides of the listening position is
usually recommended, especially if they are dipoles, but I've had very good results with
the surround speakers behind the listening position, so if you were to mount them on the
wall behind your couch, they would probably sound just fine. Placing them high on the wall
helps, so I'd get them up off the floor.
...Ian G. Masters
I have a friend who is a serious audiophile who will only
use old tube equipment with very efficient speakers. He will only buy used gear. On his
recommendation I purchased an integrated amp three years ago that I figure is about ten
years old by now. I plan on purchasing a cheap receiver/amp for a second system in my
basement. With innovations in technology and circuitry does it make sense to buy
ten-year-old equipment, or will new equipment perform equally well?
...Glen Cain
The idea that second-hand equipment is inherently
superior to current models is new to me. There's terrible old stuff out there, and
wonderful new equipment. . . and vice-versa. A new model will probably be cheaper than an
equivalent ten-year-old component was when it was new, but the oldie is likely to be
cheaper if you buy it today. It's also likely to be more prone to oxidized connections and
noisy controls, but if that doesn't happen in the case of what you buy, you're likely to
get as good performance from old equipment as new. But not necessarily better.
...Ian G. Masters
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