HiFi+ goes digital and multichannel!

That's OK for the privileged few who have a listening room big enough to be able to do that

 

I achieved it in a small room, admittedly with a very small speaker, by raising it to the ceiling.

 

IIRC Dolby Surround was basically Hafler with rear delay, 'Pro Logic' added some 'steering' process for left/right at the rear. All analogue....

I don't see any point to surround systems except for gimmickry. I agree with TonyL that the money would be better spent on competent two channel.

Stereo adds a substantial amount of information to mono, although even then we don't need more than 20-30dB of separation. However adding rear channels gives us very little extra information, a bit of audience noise on live recordings, perhaps the opportunity for some room equalisation. (As yet I'm completely unconvinced about the practical point of the latter.) The centre channel is good for mono off axis with poor stereo speakers and sub-woofers are a bizarre solution to not wanting full range main speakers....

Paul

 

Now wait just a minute there. Some people (myself included) are of the view that the best speaker position for soundstage and mid-band is not generally the best for bass. There are sound reasons for having a separate sub.

 

I disagree - it can make all the difference to faithfully recreating a musical event.

Now you're stepping on quite a few toes... Here I strongly disagree. The principal speaker positioning/room interaction/equalisation problems are from 20-200Hz. If you have a dedicated listening room where you can place your full range speakers where you like and there's nothing like pesky sofas and coffee tables etc around to cause problems then they might well be the best solution. However, for those of us whos listening rooms double as living rooms monitor speakers with a subwoofer (or two) offer by far the best solution. Placement options are vastly increased. When I added a sub to my (music) system I was able to get a much flatter room response from 20-200 than I could ever achieve with the speakers alone.

Michael.

 

On the SACD/DVD-A thing. DVD-A certainly will be dead in the water if they can't make it backward compatible with CD players. It doesn't matter that people are increasingly buying DVD players only because CD players for music will be around for a good long time still in mini systems, cars, portables etc and it would only take a couple of people to buy a hybrid DVD-A that was the wrong thickness and knackered their player to really kill it off.

SACD discs on the other hand can happly be sitting on the 'CD' shelves at HMV and the customer may be none the wiser. Just the fact that they can be sold as if they were CDs is a huge advantage. Most punters probably wouldn't care about getting the SACD benefits but it would give it huge market penetration and audiophiles would be able to take advantage. Gradually, mini systems and car players would read the SACD layer aswell and then domination would soon be complete.

The real question though is how long there will be a mass market for any physical music medium. IMO the mass market will soon be dominated by computer/downloadable formats (probably compressed ) and it will only be audiophiles who still buy quaint little silver (or large black ) discs. It probably isn't even that long before net bandwidth increases to the point that it becomes feasible to download hi-rez uncompressed multichannel "audiophile" music.

Michael.

 

Actually Paul, full range speakers are a bizarre and inefficient solution for those who want proper bass

 

Cant see people using computers as their favorite source of music mate.

Thats just because people arent going to have computers in their living rooms, kitchens etc though.

I agree about an upward spiral in downloaded music - especially with broadband and ever faster connection.

I think people will use the PC to download and keep though -

playback on a computer has all the restriction of DVD-A (i.e. youve got to go through your telly - in this case PC)

 

Someone just invented double sided discs with DVD-A and PCM, see Stereophile...

 

Subwoofers are actually a very smart solution when you think about them - they are designed to do a specific job and (at least the decent ones) have all the ingredients required to do a better job at producing deep bass than main speakers.

On top of this, how many main speakers are actually full range (20Hz - 20kHz)? - answer: hardly any and the ones that do generally cost mega-bucks.

I would concede that, notwithstanding the good points Michaelab made, you can usually get away without a sub for music duties - however, for movies it is a different matter altogether.

Matt.

 

It's not immediately obvious to me that moving your sound sources apart in space is sensible, especially if you want your system to sound good everywhere in the room/house. In terms of a real 'sound' most involve a wide frequency range. Try listening to a bass without the mids or tweeters, or female voice without the woofers.

Anyway you're not talking about a 'subwoofer' rather a 'woofer'. Thuds, bangs and rumbles seem to be the domain of the 'sub' and they have very little relevance to music. Except for bored violinists kicking music stands...

IMO most sub-woofers are not designed from the pov of making good bass, they're designed to be relatively small and loud with electronic fiddling to give the appearance of 'flat'. An ugly solution to the problem. But very trendy.

Paul

 

The point is that because subs are generally operating down at low frequencies (<50Hz) then there is the freedom to move them around. Bass down here is non-directional so even if you move the sub around, the bass will still sound as though it is coming from the main speakers.

Thuds, bangs and rumbles are more the domain of poor subs with high distortion. However, if a movie soundtrack contains thuds, bangs and rumble then the sub should reproduce it.

Little relevance to music? I'm not so sure. Again we come down to how low your main speakers go. A lot of people's speakers probably don't do a lot below 35Hz. That might be fine for bass/drums but what about concert pianos? They go down to 27.5Hz. Then there are pipe organs - okay maybe not everyone's cup of tea - but a 32ft pipe will drop to 16.4Hz. I don't know of any main speakers that will go flat to this depth - in fact many subs will struggle with this.
We won't even mention the very rare 64ft pipe organs that can drop to 8.2Hz!! Synths too can of course go very low indeed.

Talk of specific frequencies aside, a lot of people have found, once they have successfully implemented a quality sub, that there is more depth/realism to the music - you don't notice the sub is there but when you switch it off something is missing.

There are a lot of poor ones about (even some of the award winning ones aren't that good) but there are some very good ones about too. It's the same with main speakers - there are poor, average, good, very good and excellent ones around - you generally get what you pay for (but not always) and if you want the very best you're talking thousands rather than hundreds.

Matt.

 

Paul, I believe many explanations wouldn't make you change mind. I would suggest you to go around and hear good systems with seperate subwoofers. The best would be to hear loudspeaker systems, where all loudspeakers (incl. subs) are made to fit together. Listen well from different positions and then hear if there is any sort of sound a part effect. You need to spend lots of time for this but the experience you will get will be great.
If you still have after that the same opinion as now, I would be pleased to invite you here (half of the costs for me).

Sorry I don't understand what you mean.

Sometimes I have also this impression but I wouldn't generalize. On the other hand lots of people love to fiddle around. Why don't letting them do it? They find the music with such subwoofers much better than without and that's good. I am not even convinced that they want to have a flat appearence. In many cases they want excess in low frequencies. Why not?

 

If everybody wanted the same, life would be very boring. This even applies to speaker designers. I'm arguing my intuition, I also know what speaker I want to design, and they don't have a sub, or any cones at all...

Anyway I use speakers that are bigger than any subwoofer I've ever seen, the active crossover allegedly produces 'time alignment' and bass equalisation down to subsonic.... Anyway I'd like to hear a system that plays music well with a sub, I've only been exposed at shows and to an 'AV installation' at a friend down the road.

Paul

 

Paul,

You should get to hear Merlins Fricking Awesomes (his purpose designed subs). These babies are very musical IMO, and are definately not about thuds, bangs and rumbles. I would venture they are bigger than your briks too.

 

This is not relevant with low bass, as we hear it from walls etc, not source first as other frequencies...

 

Surely we hear it first along the shortest path from source to ear?

If low frequencies had no directionality then I wouldn't be able to tell it was my power amps buzzing at 50Hz...

Paul

 

Probably you can tell it is your amp buzzing at 50hz, because it produces harmonics at higher frequencies, otherwise you would have to touch it to know...

 

So now 50Hz is inaudible?

Coincidentally I once created a PC program to generate waveforms for driving synchronous turntable motors. 50Hz being the basic (but it can do 45 and 78 too). I played this through my speakers to see what it sounded like. It's definitely audible and 'clean'.

http://www.kilmory.demon.co.uk/bin/TTWaveform1001.zip if you're interested. To actually drive a turntable you'll need a power amp (possibly a laptop has enough go? A speaker output anyway) and a pair of suitable mains transformers wired in reverse to step the voltage off. You want to end up with between 50 and 100vac.

Paul

 

Paul, you are a clever bunny, I just use a signal genny