2. amps-preamps
  3. 187345-150037

Why don't they record in ‘surround stereo’?

Surround sound can sound wonderful on your home theater system if the recording is done well. Unfortunately, a quality home theater movie soundtrack recording streamed at home is not so good due to bandwidth problems and not a top priority from movie creators unfortunately

And maybe for stereo listening connoisseurs, via records or streaming, it may be nice to hear Music delivered to rear speakers in  the room rather than just from the two main speakers. And yes main speakers can do an excellent job spreading pressure amplitudes evenly throughout the room with good amplification and room acoustics but maybe it could get better.

Possibly might it be more interesting if current stereo recordings could be recorded in surround stereo. Not sure how taboo or how awful this would be if done well. Stereo is a relic of the past it may be worth upgrading a bit, and maybe rethinking how music is recorded and delivered in current Times might be worth exploring. 

emergingsoul

Showing 4 responses by emergingsoul

emergingsoul OP
944 posts
 

@kr4 

Thought everybody knew that

emergingsoul OP
944 posts
 

Fascinating comments above. I guess another huge obstacle is all the Cable connections would have to be increased coming out of the back of the components if you expand from two channel listening to more channels. Vastly complicating the cabling and connectivity issues of the components.

If you have a good speaker system and great amplification, I guess the benefits are marginal. But there did seem to be openness in comments that there is potential it could be actually better.
 

Because I have nice speakers and amplification, including lots of tubes, I tend to listen to my home theater with two main speakers, eliminate the center channel and leave in the surround rear speakers . Often times this is a lot better. But other times you need the center speaker so the dialogue is more discernible and doesn't disrupt what's going on in the main speakers. This configuration can be handled toggling back-and-forth between two settings settings on the home theater remote. Ie. Super easy to go back-and-forth.

 

So at least on the home theater side I have the flexibility and it is working out really well

emergingsoul OP
944 posts
 

@lynn_olson 

Yeah I mostly see uncompressed PCM which my NAD processor calls ‘Direct’ and that’s mostly what I see these days. And I’m fine with that.

YouTube videos with music tend to be better in stereo as it mangles things when some of the signal flows through the center speaker at times. A lot of the music through YouTube is pretty darn good. That’s interesting Apple allows you to change formats but I’ve never drifted into Appleland. Unfortunately roon does not do that as far as I know. Or maybe it does in some of their DSP crap which I tend to stay away from.

 

emergingsoul OP
944 posts
 

@dean_palmer 

That's nice you can listen to stereo and surroundsound and it sounds good. I'm not a big fan of two channel through an AVR. Although maybe it's good for certain AVRs. 

More to discover