On 13 Apr 2012, at 13:57, John Leonard <[email protected]> wrote:
> A long time ago, I asked how many people on this list actually had any sort > of surround systems, let alone properly set-up home-cinema 5.1 systems, in > their homes and I think about three people said they did. I wonder how many > there are now? I have a ULN8, as well, and a 2882 and a couple of ULN2, and they are all great in their own way, but that's not anywhere close to what a typical user might have. In the living room, I have an ancient Onkyo 808, which produces pleasant surround sound from UHJ encoded stereo, super stereo from regular recordings. The only problem it has, is the same issues all sorts of early digital gear have (clocking, "digital" sound, etc.). So I have the choice of listening to stereo that's clean sounding (e.g. ULN2 to an NAD stereo power amp) or listening to surround that's perfectly acceptable, except for sound quality issues that have nothing to do with UHJ or 1st order, and which are there even if I use the rig for stereo playback. I have four budget, but high-quality bookshelf speakers paired with a Sunfire TruSubwoofer. By and large, except for the early digital sound quality issues that modern gear could easily do away with, this is utterly enjoyable and perfectly adequate setup for a living room, and in any case much better than running stereo on the same gear; which to me proves that for little extra the musicality and realism of the listening experience can be increased by using super stereo and UHJ Ambisonic playback. Two more speakers and a four instead of two channel amp is all that's really required, the rest, this day and age, is software. I have no doubt that a properly calibrated 6 or 8 speaker setup with HOA would sound even better, but there is no material to speak of available in such a format, and the costs are simply prohibitive for regular users, which makes this whole idea a pipe dream. Ronald _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list [email protected] https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
