Multichannel Endangered?

23912 Views 188 Replies 15 Participants Last post by bigshot, Jul 1, 2017

Triplets

Discussion Starter · Feb 26, 2015

Kalman Rubinson in the current issue of Stereophile:

" It seems that the rising popularity of downloading of music files is going to affect not only the distribution of high-resolution recordings but also the availability of mutlichannel recordings."

The point he then goes on to make is that with physical media dissapearing, so will recordings on SACD, DVD, and Blu Ray, the prefered way at present of decoding multi channel recordings. That will leave multichannel fans at the mercy of DACs that can decode in multichannel, which at present are few on the ground and may never achieve a critical mass in the market place.
One can debate the merits of multi vs two channel and there are reasonable claims to be made on both sides. However, as a devotee of multichannel, i think I am going to snap up al the SACDs and Blu Rays that I can, before they dissapear as an option. I just don't think that downloading will ever be successful or profitable in multichannel.

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G

· #2 · Feb 26, 2015

I think its days are numbered. There are too few labels that produce such recordings, and for classical music, at least, to my ears it often isn't properly implemented: there's often too much direct sound in the rear channels, which muddies the imaging.

I've recently reverted to stereo and won't be looking back! By the way, I'm selling off my m-ch gear--I'm down to a Marantz 8801 processor and a DALI Epicon center speaker if anyone is interested!

Albert7

· #3 · Feb 26, 2015

I never saw the need for multi-channel recordings and I'm so used to stereo AAC files from iTunes that I don't see the need anymore. I have one DVD-Audio disc and that's it left in my collection.

bigshot

· #4 · Feb 26, 2015 (Edited)

Currently, downloads are primarily for portable use... playing on a smart phone usually. Obviously, multichannel isn't going to have any place on a smart phone. External DACs are primarily for portable rigs too.

By defnition, multichannel is for playing back in the home on a speaker system with a disk player. There's a LOT of multichannel content on blu-ray and DVD. Even more available on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. But that stuff has video content along with the music, so he isn't counting it. The multichannel audio file formats are firmly established in the video realm and aren't going anywhere.

It isn't that multichannel is going away... It's that multichannel AUDIO on disk is fading out. I think we are just moving beyond the old "record album" concept to a media age where it is more focused on shuffled "songs" for portable audio on the go, and A/V in the home. That doesn't mean that there won't be DVD-A and BD-A disks. But if they want that to catch on as a format, they have to price it more competitively and give normal people a reason to buy into the format, not just audiophiles. A good way to do that would be to utilize the massive amount of storage space on a blu-ray disk and release box sets and collections as single disk BD-As. The Solti Ring has been released like that, and Classic Archive has released a series of standard def blu-rays with 18 hours of TV concerts on a single disk in place of a 10 DVD box set. I'd really like to see more stuff like that.

Imagine all the Living Stereo recordings on one blu-ray disk... Or the Philips Bayreuth Wagner opera set on a single disk with on screen librettos... Or every one of Bernstein's Young People's Concerts...

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Triplets

Discussion Starter · #5 · Feb 27, 2015

bigshot said:
Currently, downloads are primarily for portable use... playing on a smart phone usually. Obviously, multichannel isn't going to have any place on a smart phone. External DACs are primarily for portable rigs too.

By defnition, multichannel is for playing back in the home on a speaker system with a disk player. There's a LOT of multichannel content on blu-ray and DVD. Even more available on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. But that stuff has video content along with the music, so he isn't counting it. The multichannel audio file formats are firmly established in the video realm and aren't going anywhere.

It isn't that multichannel is going away... It's that multichannel AUDIO on disk is fading out. I think we are just moving beyond the old "record album" concept to a media age where it is more focused on shuffled "songs" for portable audio on the go, and A/V in the home. That doesn't mean that there won't be DVD-A and BD-A disks. But if they want that to catch on as a format, they have to price it more competitively and give normal people a reason to buy into the format, not just audiophiles. A good way to do that would be to utilize the massive amount of storage space on a blu-ray disk and release box sets and collections as single disk BD-As. The Solti Ring has been released like that, and Classic Archive has released a series of standard def blu-rays with 18 hours of TV concerts on a single disk in place of a 10 DVD box set. I'd really like to see more stuff like that.

Imagine all the Living Stereo recordings on one blu-ray disk... Or the Philips Bayreuth Wagner opera set on a single disk with on screen librettos... Or every one of Bernstein's Young People's Concerts...

I think you summed it up pretty well. My only quibble would be that DVD-A has been a dead format for a while, although many of the recordings have reappeared as DSD downloads.
I have a lot of SACDs, Pentatones and BIS leading amongst them, and I really enjoy the tasteful application of multichannel. Very little music is directed to the rears but what is there definitely provides an increase in room ambience and sometimes will do agreat job approximating what I hear in the Hall. I hope they continue to be issued.
About your space saving observations...before I started burning discs to a hard drive I fooled around with trying to burn them to a Blu Ray. It turned out very poorly.

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Albert7

· #6 · Feb 27, 2015

There are 5.1 channel FLAC so digital downloads can be done in multichannel.

However, they charge more for those files and so no point for me to go beyond iTunes quality.

Triplets

Discussion Starter · #7 · Feb 27, 2015

albertfallickwang said:
There are 5.1 channel FLAC so digital downloads can be done in multichannel.

However, they charge more for those files and so no point for me to go beyond iTunes quality.

Players that can do multichannel downloads are thin on the ground and bug ridden.

bigshot

· #8 · Feb 27, 2015

The mistake is to market multichannel to audiophiles with interests in niche areas of music, like PentaTone, instead of aiming right at the middle of the market with mainstream music that home theater folks would be interested in.

If they knocked out lots of 5.1 mixes of rock like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and The Beatles in BD-A at the same price as a CD, people would buy it, just like they bought Dark Side of the Moon for the umpteenth time when it came out on SACD.

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bigshot

· #9 · Feb 27, 2015

A 5.1 FLAC is an entirely different animal than a 2 channel iTunes download. If you have never heard 5.1, you might say that, but one listen to any of the 5.1 Elton John releases or Donald Fagen The Nightfly or Gaucho, or Beatles Love would convince you that there's something there you are missing.

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bigshot

· #10 · Feb 27, 2015

Triplets said:
About your space saving observations...before I started burning discs to a hard drive I fooled around with trying to burn them to a Blu Ray. It turned out very poorly.

I'm not talking about burned disks. I'm talking about commercially replicated disks.

Albert7

· #11 · Feb 27, 2015

bigshot said:
The mistake is to market multichannel to audiophiles with interests in niche areas of music, like PentaTone, instead of aiming right at the middle of the market with mainstream music that home theater folks would be interested in.

If they knocked out lots of 5.1 mixes of rock like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and The Beatles in BD-A at the same price as a CD, people would buy it, just like they bought Dark Side of the Moon for the umpteenth time when it came out on SACD.

Problem is why aren't the companies pricing 5.1 audio discs at the price of regular CD's?

Triplets

Discussion Starter · #12 · Feb 27, 2015

bigshot said:
I'm not talking about burned disks. I'm talking about commercially replicated disks.

I know you are, but I was recalling a failed effort at saving shelf space.

Triplets

Discussion Starter · #13 · Feb 27, 2015

albertfallickwang said:
Problem is why aren't the companies pricing 5.1 audio discs at the price of regular CD's?

Good question. There is a tendency to charge audiophiles more because they tend to pay it.

bigshot

· #14 · Feb 27, 2015

albertfallickwang said:
Problem is why aren't the companies pricing 5.1 audio discs at the price of regular CD's?

Because remixing for 5.1 release is expensive and they want to recoup the costs immediately, instead of seeding the market to prime the pump. So they market it at the audiophile crowd. The irony is the home theater crowd are the people they should be aiming at, audiophiles have invested so much money in their 2 channel systems, they are reluctant to upgrade to 5.1. The home theater folks already have systems capable of playing it.

It's kind of typical for Stereo Review to be kind of clueless about multichannel.

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bigshot

· #15 · Feb 27, 2015

I was thinking about this, and discrete 5.1 for classical music isn't as important as it is with popular music. I use a stereo to 5.1 DSP with two channel classical recordings and they sound as good as native 5.1. In fact, I suspect a sizable number of classical music and opera is quickly and cheaply remastered for 5.1 by doing the exact same thing. You really don't have to remix to just fill in the phantom center channel and add hall ambience to the rears.

However, although there are popular music albums that seem to be run through a DSP, they are few and far between. Most popular music sports entirely new mixes when they are released in multichannel. Those really take advantage of the medium better.

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Albert7

· #16 · Feb 27, 2015

bigshot said:
I was thinking about this, and discrete 5.1 for classical music isn't as important as it is with popular music. I use a stereo to 5.1 DSP with two channel classical recordings and they sound as good as native 5.1. In fact, I suspect a sizable number of classical music and opera is quickly and cheaply remastered for 5.1 by doing the exact same thing. You really don't have to remix to just fill in the phantom center channel and add hall ambience to the rears.

However, although there are popular music albums that seem to be run through a DSP, they are few and far between. Most popular music sports entirely new mixes when they are released in multichannel. Those really take advantage of the medium better.

I know that my hip-hop and electronica albums don't take advantage of the multi-channel stuff but then again, the nature of the music doesn't lend itself well to such techniques.

Triplets

Discussion Starter · #17 · Feb 27, 2015

bigshot said:
I was thinking about this, and discrete 5.1 for classical music isn't as important as it is with popular music. I use a stereo to 5.1 DSP with two channel classical recordings and they sound as good as native 5.1. In fact, I suspect a sizable number of classical music and opera is quickly and cheaply remastered for 5.1 by doing the exact same thing. You really don't have to remix to just fill in the phantom center channel and add hall ambience to the rears.

However, although there are popular music albums that seem to be run through a DSP, they are few and far between. Most popular music sports entirely new mixes when they are released in multichannel. Those really take advantage of the medium better.

based on the multichannel remixes of Sgt pepper and Dark Side, which arethe only two non classical 5.1 recordings thatI own, I agree with that.

Vaneyes

· #18 · Mar 1, 2015

Re multi-channel writing-on-the-wall (lack of consumer sophistication and extra expense of hardware), Kal Rubinson had his head in the sand for years before downloading took off. Downloading is slowing down some now, so what then?

The key tag is niche. There will (in our lifetimes) be a niche for multi-channel shoppers.

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Triplets

Discussion Starter · #19 · Mar 1, 2015 (Edited)

Vaneyes said:
Re multi-channel writing-on-the-wall (lack of consumer sophistication and extra expense of hardware), Kal Rubinson had his head in the sand for years before downloading took off. Downloading is slowing down some now, so what then?

The key tag is niche. There will (in our lifetimes) be a niche for multi-channel shoppers.

Downloading will be supplanted by streaming. Most people won't actually own a physical copy of anything in the future.

I agree that there will always be a niche for the multichannel consumer, but I get concerned about how well that niche will be served. Hopefully Physical media such as SACDs and Blu Rays will continue to be issued. If, on the other hand they dissapear in favor of High Res Multi Channel downloads, then I see a real problem. Most Decoders can't handle multichannel, and I don't see the niche being big enough to justify the capital expenditure required to develop and mass produce affordable consumer technology.

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Vaneyes

· #20 · Mar 1, 2015

Triplets said:
Downloading will be supplanted by streaming. Most people won't actually own a physical copy of anything in the future.

I agree that there will always be a niche for the multichannel consumer, but I get concerned about how well that niche will be served. Hopefully Physical media such as SACDs and Blu Rays will continue to be issued. If, on the other hand they dissapear in favor of High Res Multi Channel downloads, then I see a real problem. Most Decoders can't handle multichannel, and I don't see the niche being big enough to justify the capital expenditure required to develop and mass produce affordable consumer technology.

Niche is nothing to sneeze at these days. Mass production and subsequent deep discounting not needed. A slightly higher price point's still okay for discerning buyers. Win win.

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