Is 5.1 Surround Sound Dead?

Mono is the best option. Clear as a bell.

ATB from George

2.1 is fine for movies but I do enjoy my surround setup much more for movies than just 2.1. 

Strange that the $5k+ cinema receivers are pushing 7.2, 9.2, 11.2 + Atmos then.   

Maybe it is a case that less boxes are more for the Audiophile Hifi fan, but 5.1 or 7.1 is needed to enjoy the experience of a space ship whizzing room your living room. 

Even the latest Apple TV just went from 5.1 to 7.1 audio support with a recent iOS push.

I'd say that's probably as much true as saying that iPod / portable players replace proper HiFi, Just because a lot more of them is being sold, does not mean that HiFi is dead.

I've actually set up my living room system for a 5.1 surround sound playback, using Oppo 105 as a source (connected via 6 analogue outputs, so that the processing is done in Oppo. For watching movies I use a conventional HDMI route). Front L and R is handled by Naim of course There are quite a few BluRay audio discs, which sound fantastic in multi-channel e.g. Tommy by The Who.

Not from where I sit! You'll inevitably see umpteen posts from folk who think you can get away with stereo (or, worse, mono!) to somehow capture the cinematic experience. You can't, and as long as your 5.1 or 7.1 setup is done properly, there is no substitute for it, and it isn't just for the loud, flash-bang type movies. A lot of time and effort goes into encoding and mixing films in to their discrete channels so if you genuinely love movies then multichannel still rules. 

"does not mean that HiFi is dead."

Hi-Fi is not dead...it just smells funny...

tonym posted:

Not from where I sit! You'll inevitably see umpteen posts from folk who think you can get away with stereo (or, worse, mono!) to somehow capture the cinematic experience. You can't, and as long as your 5.1 or 7.1 setup is done properly, there is no substitute for it, and it isn't just for the loud, flash-bang type movies. A lot of time and effort goes into encoding and mixing films in to their discrete channels so if you genuinely love movies then multichannel still rules. 

+1

I bought an Arcam AVR850 in December to replace my Naim AV2.  Still waiting for the dealer to come and finalise the DIRAC setup (there have been several delays - none of them his fault), and hopefully he will be here next week to do that.  When he does, I'll report on the Arcam's performance (excellent, so far)

I much prefer listening/watching films in surround format.

I cannot think of all that many cinema films that depend for their message [rather than flash-bang impact] on multi-channel sound. Multi-channel cinema sound is a silly gimmick in the domestic setting.

Mono rules!

ATB from George

Whilst it is entirely possible to thoroughly enjoy and become immersed in a good film on even a small black and white screen with crummy speaker, just as it is possible to do the same with good music on a 2inch speaker on i tiny (and tinny) pocket radio, the experience with a screen bigger than you, as intended by most feature film makers, and with the sound as also intended by the film makers, can enhance the experience just as a good quality music supystem (more than single channel for most, sorry George) can with music.

Although my 7.1 surround is very modest in SQ compared to the hifi (I dont mix the two even though they are in same room), it does add weight and depth to films that have more than simple dialogue. I sometimes think I'd like to improve the surround system, but the main equipment money to date has gone on the hifi, music being my first love. (i use 7.1 even though often synthesised from 5.1 because of an awkward room)

On a different subject, my screen is 3.6m wide, and I sit just under 3m away, which gives a reasonably authentic full size cinema experience...from the comfort of my own home., but I still enjoy swatching films on the 32" TV in another room, with its built-in speakers.

I used to have a 5.1 surround sound system several years ago and would agree that for some films it does make it a more immersive experience. However, my TV watching takes place in the same room as my hifi the speakers of which fire in the opposite direction to the TV. SO short of having a 7.1 system set up in the same room as the hifi, and it's not a very big room, it's unfeasible for us to have surround set up.  I have a cheapest soundbar and will upgrade that at some point to something better (would be nice if Naim did one) and I find I can live with that pretty well.  Most of the time, if the family are in bed, I have music on with subtitles on TV anyway.

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

I cannot think of all that many cinema films that depend for their message [rather than flash-bang impact] on multi-channel sound. Multi-channel cinema sound is a silly gimmick in the domestic setting.

Mono rules!

ATB from George

You must hate going to the cinema George.

Yes and no... I think the market for budget/entry level systems are probably being replaced by sound bars (and the best ones can sound pretty good) but there is a market for the mid to high end 5.1 (and 7.1 and 7.1.4) systems.  The message being that cheap 5.1 is just that ... Cheap and you are trying to spread things thin so a cheap 2.1 or sound bar will sound better.  But good 5.1 is much more immersive.

Soundbars of course came in with skinny TVs having no internal space for speakers to be other than rubbish, making more people buy something, but not necessarily wanting surround, so the proportin of people buying 5.1 will have decreased, but maybe not necessarily the number.

Meanwhile I am moved to wonder if choice for or against surround depends on whether combined with a projector or a TV? And on a TV, does it depend on the type of programming most watched - eg surround more likely for people frequently watching films, and less likely if most watching is not of films?

My 5.1 is with projector, only use now being films or my sons occasionally enjoying big screen for video games with friends. Before the projector it (surround) was on a 50" TV, maybe 50:50 split between film watching and other programming. Smaller 32"TV in another room used for general programming and unplanned film watching (e.g broadcast), TV's own sound adequate.

.

tonym posted:

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

I cannot think of all that many cinema films that depend for their message [rather than flash-bang impact] on multi-channel sound. Multi-channel cinema sound is a silly gimmick in the domestic setting.

Mono rules!

ATB from George

You must hate going to the cinema George.

Films I went o in the cinema in the last five year are two only. Imitation Games, about Bletchley, and the Theory Of Everything about Stephen Hawking. It may come as no surprise that I have not been going to the Bond films!

Even then the cinemas still play the sound tracks too loud!

I much prefer a DVD at home with a single ESL for for sound track duties. There really is nothing finer, and until you have heard this arrangement, you need to be careful of poo-pooing without actually experiencing it. Two ESLs in stereo is quite fine, but one as mono is a revelatory improvement in all important aspects over all other film sound track replay sytems!

ATB from George

tonym posted:

Not from where I sit! You'll inevitably see umpteen posts from folk who think you can get away with stereo (or, worse, mono!) to somehow capture the cinematic experience. You can't, and as long as your 5.1 or 7.1 setup is done properly, there is no substitute for it, and it isn't just for the loud, flash-bang type movies. A lot of time and effort goes into encoding and mixing films in to their discrete channels so if you genuinely love movies then multichannel still rules. 

Sorry Tony, but that's rubbish. The vast majority of movies (99%?) have only ever been in mono. In fact, for the first 30 years, when the grammar of cinema and most of the innovations were created, there was no sound at all. A film regarded by some buffs as the greatest ever made, Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc, has no dialogue and  (in its director's original conception) sound of any kind - not even music.

Film is a viual medium, not an aural one, and a good screen and source is much more important to creating the cinematic experience than 5.1. or 7.1 or whatever. In most cases, good-quality stereo or even mono is good enough.

Although there have been experiments with stereo (Fantasia in the early 1940s)  and multi-channel sound (The Robe and other turgid sword-and-sandal epics of the early 1950s), multi-channel sound as we know it is really a 1970s invention.

Star Wars in '77 of course provided the boost surround needed, and multi-chan sound is now ubiquitous, but it is an enormously abused tool in the cinema's box of tricks, used mostly to create panning effects (Oooh! That whizzed across my head!) or to make explosions louder or to render most modern movies' execrable dialogue [fortuitously] inaudible.

The best use of surround in a (non-musical) film I've ever heard is Walter Murch's stunning sound design on Apocalypse Now, which obviously makes the explosions and gunfire louder, and gives a frisson to scenes like the helicopters riding out to Wagner, but the secret of the film's sound success is the use of multiple channels to create overlapping dialogue, and a deep, rich ambient background that actually aids Coppola's visual storytelling.

La Regle Du Jeu, A Matter of Life & Death, Citizen Kane, Wild Strawberries, Tokyo Story, Vertigo, Badlands, The Colour of Pomegranates etc blah blah do not need surround to be appreciated, but then they are not vacuous superhero/war/modern Hollywood wank. They do need a good telly and DVD/Blu-ray transfer/print though.

I love movies, and I just don't give much of a shit about multi-channel.

You mean, you love old films Kevin. If surround sound had been developed earlier do you really think the best film makers of old wouldn't have used it to their advantage? I'm content to enjoy certain older films but some of the so-called "classics" are just horrible old relics which some seem to think they need to appreciate to show their trendy credentials. As there are lousy films, so there are lousy surround mixes. Some of the best are music concerts, of which I've got loads. Listen to something like Jeff Beck Live at Ronny Scotts. In mono? Give over.

Kevin-W posted:

tonym posted:

Not from where I sit! You'll inevitably see umpteen posts from folk who think you can get away with stereo (or, worse, mono!) to somehow capture the cinematic experience. You can't, and as long as your 5.1 or 7.1 setup is done properly, there is no substitute for it, and it isn't just for the loud, flash-bang type movies. A lot of time and effort goes into encoding and mixing films in to their discrete channels so if you genuinely love movies then multichannel still rules. 

Sorry Tony, but that's rubbish. The vast majority of movies (99%?) have only ever been in mono. In fact, for the first 30 years, when the grammar of cinema and most of the innovations were created, there was no sound at all. A film regarded by some buffs as the greatest ever made, Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc, has no dialogue and  (in its director's original conception) sound of any kind - not even music.

Film is a viual medium, not an aural one, and a good screen and source is much more important to creating the cinematic experience than 5.1. or 7.1 or whatever. In most cases, good-quality stereo or even mono is good enough.

Although there have been experiments with stereo (Fantasia in the early 1940s)  and multi-channel sound (The Robe and other turgid sword-and-sandal epics of the early 1950s), multi-channel sound as we know it is really a 1970s invention.

Star Wars in '77 of course provided the boost surround needed, and multi-chan sound is now ubiquitous, but it is an enormously abused tool in the cinema's box of tricks, used mostly to create panning effects (Oooh! That whizzed across my head!) or to make explosions louder or to render most modern movies' execrable dialogue [fortuitously] inaudible.

The best use of surround in a (non-musical) film I've ever heard is Walter Murch's stunning sound design on Apocalypse Now, which obviously makes the explosions and gunfire louder, and gives a frisson to scenes like the helicopters riding out to Wagner, but the secret of the film's sound success is the use of multiple channels to create overlapping dialogue, and a deep, rich ambient background that actually aids Coppola's visual storytelling.

La Regle Du Jeu, A Matter of Life & Death, Citizen Kane, Wild Strawberries, Tokyo Story, Vertigo, Badlands, The Colour of Pomegranates etc blah blah do not need surround to be appreciated, but then they are not vacuous superhero/war/modern Hollywood wank. They do need a good telly and DVD/Blu-ray transfer/print though.

I love movies, and I just don't give much of a shit about multi-channel.

Personally,, other than a handful of masterpieces, and for their curiosity and heritage value, I find most fims eralier than the last two or three decades distinctly unenthralling to watch, whatever the sound system... So to me most good films were made with sound, and indeed with more than one channel, and some with special effects (though I agree latter often abused).

meanwhile, I disagree about blu-ray and good TV being any more essential than reasonable SQ: to me, for film thatbis, bigger screen is more improtant than ultimate visual quality: a good fim can envelope and engross far more effectively approaching its intended relative size, rather than on even a medium sized TV box. I have vivid recollection of watching the Bourne trilogy using a 640x480 projector on a cream coloured wall that had three picture light protruding, with image about 10ft wide, sound fed into stereo hifi system. Far more involving than the same film on a 42inch HD plasma with inbuilt speakers.

5.1 very much alive and being enjoyed in this household. Apart from the movies, I think it adds to HD transmissions of cricket and football matches. The noises of the crowd coming from the side or behind adds to the atmosphere of the event for me.

For being totally absorbed into a film of any genre, 7.1 or 5.1 is definitely the way to go.
Badly set-up and they can make the dialogue disappear and woolly but, properly set-up, films are just simply magical.

I am however, not a fan of 5.1 audio only recordings (or "remasters") which to me, are mostly just gimmicks.

blythe posted:

I am however, not a fan of 5.1 audio only recordings (or "remasters") which to me, are mostly just gimmicks.

I agree there are some pretty dreadful mixes out there, but there are also some good ones. I can recommend the Steven Wilson albums & most of his 5.1 remixes; Hand. Cannot. Erase. is particularly good and I prefer the multichannel to the stereo on this recording.

Dungassin posted:

I bought an Arcam AVR850 in December to replace my Naim AV2.  Still waiting for the dealer to come and finalise the DIRAC setup (there have been several delays - none of them his fault), and hopefully he will be here next week to do that.  When he does, I'll report on the Arcam's performance (excellent, so far)

Excited to hear your impressions of the 850. I've asked for a 550 acting as a processor in my system to see how it stacks up against my  existing Marantz 8802. I've just had a Classe Sigma processor on loan for the last week and it is a big step forward for music and film over the Marantz, possibly the first AV processor I've heard that rivals a Naim 2-channel system for involvement.