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Old 27th May 2004, 10:08   #486  |  Link
Eye of Horus
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Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: The Netherlands
Posts: 326
Quote:
Originally posted by ursamtl
My speaker system sounds quite good. It's a combination Infinity/Polk Audio system. While it's not state-of-the-art, it provides a nice balanced sound with crisp, transparent highs, a smooth midrange and tight, solid bottom end. My PC speaker system is also nicely balanced for music without the overwhelming super subwoofer sound that's so prevalent for gaming fans.

Your point is valid but only somewhat. After all, if my system were skewing my impressions of the different bidule results, it would do likewise to my impressions of movie soundtracks, DVD-As, etc. I don't get what you and a couple of others mean when you talk about the "Dolby stuff." Do you mean movie sound effects? If so, then that's not at all what I'm aiming for. I want something like Kevin Shirley's wondeful mix on the Led Zeppelin DVD last year. He mixed the surround to sound as if the listener were sitting about five rows back from the front center of a Led Zeppelin show. The rears mainly provide the ambience of the hall and the audience and serve to reinforce the front, which is presented as an accurate soundstage of the band from the vantage point I just mentioned. If this were done with the Ambisonics bidule as I've heard them so far, the entire band would be cramped into a thick middle that's repeated in the rears. It would sound something like the old Motown remasters that have been released in mono. They might sound punchier than a stereo mix, but only 1 speaker is necessary for such reproduction and 4.1 speakers are being completely wasted on such material.

I'll retry some Ambiophonics testing this evening to see if the results are better, but certainly Ambisonics by itself seems to be an utter disappointment.

Ursa
A few IMHO's wouldn't hurt !!

Ever thought of that it can be yourself ???

I have had friends listening here to the Ambi mix of War of the Worlds. 6 out of 7 : I didn't know this was available in surround.
The 7th reacted like you : I don't hear it !

OK, as you probably know : I did a listening test. I took 10 stereo songs with all kind of styles of music. I converted these 10 songs with 10 different methods to surround. I made a poll online where people could fill in which version they liked the most. I didn't say before the poll what the used methods were.
End result : 70 % preferred the conversions with Ambisonics !

So obviously a. you're doing something wrong (BTW did you convert the stereo first to 32 bits ?) or b. you just don't (want to ?) hear it.

But keeping on saying how thrash Ambisonics is without adding a few "IMHO" gives me indeed the impression you're behaving like a troll. Eespecially since your own published bidule didn't give 3 people a good result. And believe me : if it was better than anyting already published, people sure would let it know here !

So come up with something better (your MM bidule was definitely worse). If not, than please stop all this whining and groaning !
Thanks.

EoH
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