I've been playing the various surround formats in my kitchen system and comparing them, as applied to two channel sources, primarily FM radio, classical and jazz stations. I have an outdoor antenna, an ultimate state of the art Kenwood L-1000T FM tuner, and a Yamaha HTR-5790 receiver from 2005.
Contrary to other self-appointed experts like Stacy Spears, so far I find DTS Neo 6 to be the most pleasant sounding of the 30 or so available options. All the various Dolby options like PL IIx Music, add some kind of hashy grain to the front stereo channels if not the rear channels as well. I do not use a center channel speaker, I believe that is unsuited for music and refer to people like Siegfried Linkwitz to back me up. I set in the proper listening spot for stereo, and a center channel speaker would block my video monitor too.
I suspect this is because Dolby surround processes use various complex "steering" and "feedback" algorithms to force sounds to particular speakers. This "works" as reported by Stacy and others in moving movie soundtrack sounds to the correct speaker better than other systems. (It might be helping that movie sound is basically made for if not by Dolby processes in the first place.) Dolby also applies non-linear compression to the surround channels and perhaps elsewhere, so they don't "stick out."
Well, that may be fine for movies, but it's crap for music.
In contrast, it seems, and I haven't looked at the Wikipedia article yet (one of the few places where you can often find information instead of just hype and opinions) but it seems like DTS Neo 6 may be pretty much leaving the front channels alone. Well, it would make sense that would be an appropriate thing to do for stereo music sources, especially if you are not using a center channel speaker, and you care about the sound of the music.
Actually, DTS may not be leaving the front channels alone, in the Wikipedia explanation it claims to have 12-19 channels of steering. Well I don't hear much more than ambience, I think somehow it's less "forced" than Dolby PLIIx, and may use less audio-quality-corrupting steering processes, or simply use them less. DTS the company was established as a "higher quality" competitor to Dolby and is occasionally recognized as such though not by all.
This is a preliminary finding, but I felt moved to get it out there because it has always seemed to me that Dolby is taking over the world, not necessarily because they are the best, and they have endless sycophants to back them up. So I want it to be known that there are some who don't see it this way, even if their critique is not yet fully validated.
I wish someone would make a surround system that simply maps, using only phase information as primitive matrixes do, any number of input channels to any number and placement of output channels. Without any nonlinear processes such as steering, feedback, bucket brigade delays, or Dolby Noise Reduction.
I see now that in competition with Dolby Atmos, which gives hemispheric presentation but "requires" certain layouts, DTS has DTS X, which is more flexible, lets you set up speakers anywhere within the hemisphere, and encoded sound objects in the datastream are mapped to them using an open and license-free framework. This is great, and would be what I want for discrete...AND for simulated surround from 2 channels. But does it also process 2 channel inputs to add simulated surround? It appears not. I may still have to do that myself. But there is apparently Neuro DTS X which can translate "legacy" sources into DTS X, so maybe they have all the pieces for this now.
Contrary to other self-appointed experts like Stacy Spears, so far I find DTS Neo 6 to be the most pleasant sounding of the 30 or so available options. All the various Dolby options like PL IIx Music, add some kind of hashy grain to the front stereo channels if not the rear channels as well. I do not use a center channel speaker, I believe that is unsuited for music and refer to people like Siegfried Linkwitz to back me up. I set in the proper listening spot for stereo, and a center channel speaker would block my video monitor too.
I suspect this is because Dolby surround processes use various complex "steering" and "feedback" algorithms to force sounds to particular speakers. This "works" as reported by Stacy and others in moving movie soundtrack sounds to the correct speaker better than other systems. (It might be helping that movie sound is basically made for if not by Dolby processes in the first place.) Dolby also applies non-linear compression to the surround channels and perhaps elsewhere, so they don't "stick out."
Well, that may be fine for movies, but it's crap for music.
In contrast, it seems, and I haven't looked at the Wikipedia article yet (one of the few places where you can often find information instead of just hype and opinions) but it seems like DTS Neo 6 may be pretty much leaving the front channels alone. Well, it would make sense that would be an appropriate thing to do for stereo music sources, especially if you are not using a center channel speaker, and you care about the sound of the music.
Actually, DTS may not be leaving the front channels alone, in the Wikipedia explanation it claims to have 12-19 channels of steering. Well I don't hear much more than ambience, I think somehow it's less "forced" than Dolby PLIIx, and may use less audio-quality-corrupting steering processes, or simply use them less. DTS the company was established as a "higher quality" competitor to Dolby and is occasionally recognized as such though not by all.
This is a preliminary finding, but I felt moved to get it out there because it has always seemed to me that Dolby is taking over the world, not necessarily because they are the best, and they have endless sycophants to back them up. So I want it to be known that there are some who don't see it this way, even if their critique is not yet fully validated.
I wish someone would make a surround system that simply maps, using only phase information as primitive matrixes do, any number of input channels to any number and placement of output channels. Without any nonlinear processes such as steering, feedback, bucket brigade delays, or Dolby Noise Reduction.
I see now that in competition with Dolby Atmos, which gives hemispheric presentation but "requires" certain layouts, DTS has DTS X, which is more flexible, lets you set up speakers anywhere within the hemisphere, and encoded sound objects in the datastream are mapped to them using an open and license-free framework. This is great, and would be what I want for discrete...AND for simulated surround from 2 channels. But does it also process 2 channel inputs to add simulated surround? It appears not. I may still have to do that myself. But there is apparently Neuro DTS X which can translate "legacy" sources into DTS X, so maybe they have all the pieces for this now.
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