The Ultimate Battle : Stereo Performance of AVRs ?

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sterling shoote

Audioholic Field Marshall
The stuff I’m familiar with is in the ambient/IDM category... dunno about other stuff out there. As manufactured music, this presumably created for the DTS 5.1 protocol, it is fun to listen to as you really are in a bubble of sound. Unlike my limited SACD collection where they remixed and created the environment as an effect.
Yes, Dark Side and Wish Wish You Were Here do it well enough, and I have little complaint in that regard, but there’s an uneven quality to them too.
Can you give me the step by step to download anything "ambient/IDM"?
 
ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
Can you give me the step by step to download anything "ambient/IDM"?
Only have found it on disc. Check out the Namlook-Montana labyrinth series (5 volumes): one disc is DTS 5.1, the other is stereo. Haven’t found any 5.1 downloads yet of any of his stuff.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Hey let’s drag this thread out into the rhubarb!
NIN is a lot of fun in 7.3.4. Also, try svens sub candy play list In Spotify. Some really trippy stuff all around the room. And some deeeeep bass(not all tracks have equal depth obviously)
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Hey let’s drag this thread out into the rhubarb!
NIN is a lot of fun in 7.3.4. Also, try svens sub candy play list In Spotify. Some really trippy stuff all around the room. And some deeeeep bass(not all tracks have equal depth obviously)
Searched sven's sub candy, svens sub candy and sven sub candy and Spotify found nothing....
 
highfigh

highfigh

Seriously, I have no life.
Still. As neutral as possible. Say you have a 250 sq. feet room and you want stereo (for some bizzare reason), I'm sure it would be possible to find an amp that can push any type of decently built speaker to 103db peak and still have a negligible distortion.
Does 103dB have some significance? That's dangerously loud if someone is exposed to it for more than a few minutes. In Milwaukee, we have an annual music festival, called 'Summerfest'- they require that the people operating the audio maintain a maximum output of 95dB at the mixer and that's plenty- I NEVER go there without ear plugs and that's all outdoors. In a 250 square foot room (the height is important, too) 103dB should be pretty easy for almost any AVR with almost any recently made speaker, but it may not be full-range, which should probably be described as the range of the speakers without a sub. Adding the sub, it would be even easier because the low frequencies have been removed from the input to the amp.

I don't know why people dislike stereo- if the original format of a recording was stereo, what's the problem with listening to it in that way? Multi-channel is just as much of an illusion as stereo when the music was recorded in discrete tracks at different times, or even if they were recorded at the same time but completely isolated from each other for the sake of total control over the sounds and the recording. Nothing that conveys a sense of space to the sounds on a recording are real, other than the natural reverberation of the room where the track was recorded with at least one microphone. Everything else is fake.
 
B

BriReeves629

Audioholic
Good point , but the death of most brands carrying stereo amps seems to say . Avr is king in sales , even if they suck for music.
Aren’t avr king?? The only way you can get stereo is often separates.
If music is recorded for stereo it’s always going to sound better in that mode then
Surround sound .

On my onkyo I only like music on all channel stereo . Everything else usually sounds buzzard or overly processed, surround and music only mix in a overly big room .
My vote goes to vintage stereo receivers winning this battle as new ones are rarely made or cost a small fortune.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
That’s funny, on my Integra I prefer all channel stereo. I have a rather large space and it fills the room much better than just 2 channels.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
I don't know why people dislike stereo- if the original format of a recording was stereo, what's the problem with listening to it in that way? Multi-channel is just as much of an illusion as stereo when the music was recorded in discrete tracks at different times, or even if they were recorded at the same time but completely isolated from each other for the sake of total control over the sounds and the recording. Nothing that conveys a sense of space to the sounds on a recording are real, other than the natural reverberation of the room where the track was recorded with at least one microphone. Everything else is fake.
I don't dislike 2.0 stereo particularly, but with the right stuff, prefer the multich stereo, as it's a better illusion, depends on what you're listening to. IMO. Of course a real performance in a particular venue is a different experience altogether.
 
S

sterling shoote

Audioholic Field Marshall
I don't dislike 2.0 stereo particularly, but with the right stuff, prefer the multich stereo, as it's a better illusion, depends on what you're listening to. IMO. Of course a real performance in a particular venue is a different experience altogether.
Yes, it's a better illusion. To think anything else demonstrates little experience with multi-channel music.
 
killdozzer

killdozzer

Audioholic Samurai
Does 103dB have some significance? That's dangerously loud if someone is exposed to it for more than a few minutes.
Maaan, I gotta draw your attention to this; you always ask questions that are already answered in the very comment you're quoting. I appreciate everyone's answers, but what is the need for this? I didn't say more than few minutes or any longer period of time, I said peak, 103 db peak, and even that's not necessary, it's just to make a point about the amp, an amp that wouldn't struggle to stay clean at 103 db for short bursts of noise.
 
Jon AA

Jon AA

Audioholic
So, I take it you don't think multi channel is really needed for POP or EDM. I'm not much in these genres, but I'm asking out of curiosity.
Sorry for the delay, I haven't been around for a while. While there are certainly exceptions, the answer is pretty much yes. When the idea is to convincingly recreate a live music event, that's hard to do when there was no event in the first place. Most popular music is studio recorded with mono mics pan-potting various elements center, left or right. Don't get me wrong, most will have some amount of reverb, etc, mixed in with the vocals just to make them sound better and the upmixers can extract that and put it in the surrounds which can give some tracks a bit more depth...but when there's not much to work with the effect an upmixer will have is going to be minimal.

Contrast that with a live classical or jazz stereo recording. While some are mic'd more "far-field" which will naturally pick up more realism of the space, many of the best will use a dozen or so mics. A couple of those mics will be located to pick up ambiance/reflections. This will be mixed into the track out of phase to try and "fool your brain" into thinking those effects are coming from around/behind you when played through two speakers.

An upmixer will extract those sounds and actually put them around/behind you which is much more convincing to the brain (reverb coming from in front of you only doesn't fool the brain very well).

Take this song for example:

This would be an exception, and I actually like it because of the lady's singing and all the drama created with such a simple tune. It is intensly dramatic, sinister and ominous but with just a few sounds. But, from what I read in your comments, something this simple wouldn't really profit from multichannel equipment, right? Or have I missed your point entirely?
I would say that track is somewhat of an exception. There is a lot of spaciousness in that recording (real or simulated). I found both DSU and Auromatic added a lot to it.
 
Jon AA

Jon AA

Audioholic
trying to capture the illusion of the ambiance in a performance space. The problem is that it can only be an approximation because the room or space where the recording takes place will be different from the room where it will be heard.
Everything in this hobby is an approximation…the goal is to make that approximation as good as possible. With an immersive recording, the goal is to replace the ambiance of your listening room with the ambiance of the performance space.

It'shard to make 73mS of delay mixed with the other delays that make up the reverberation in a large hall sound correct in a room that's 8' high, 12' wide and 19' long.
Not really. Those reverberations being played directly at your ear by a surround speaker will generally overwhelm the reverberations caused by your own room enough that your brain will focus on them instead. Yes, your room’s acoustics will always be there and a better room will sound better, but in general you want to treat a room for multi-channel more than one would for pure two channel listening. Even if the room doesn't allow it to be done perfectly, it's certainly done a whole lot better than two speakers at the front of the room playing them out of phase can accomplish.

The number of speakers needed for that would be incredible because of the many reflection points and paths in a larger room.
Again, not really. Humans don’t resolve the direction of sounds from beside/behind/above nearly as well as they do from the front. When you’re in a concert hall you aren’t hearing thousands of individual reflections individually. You’re hearing “summations” of them coming from various directions. When you point microphones in those directions, record those summations, then play them back from speakers from those same directions, the result can be quite convincing indeed. And it’s “as real as it gets.”


To flip that around, if you don’t think 5, 9, 11 or 13 speakers is enough to pull it off, you certainly can’t think 2 speakers can do it? Two speakers playing all those reflections out of phase from the front of the room is just no match for additional speakers playing them back from the direction they came from in the original performance space.

And to quote Dr Floyd Toole on the subject of the limitations of Stereo….

Why doesn’t it sound “real’? Because it can’t. A small number of microphones cannot capture the 3D sound field around performers, and two channels and two loudspeakers of any design cannot reconstruct a realistic sound field. It is the daunting task of recording engineers to do what is possible to deliver a semblance of something real, if that is the goal, or to create an artificial “stereo” variation that is stimulating and entertaining. We need multichannel.
 
davidscott

davidscott

Audioholic Ninja
More channels mean more sound processing and less power per channel all things being equal. Better for home theatre and most music but theoretically a 1 channel omnidirectional speaker would be better for a solo singer for instance. Probably for one acoustic guitar and maybe a piano also. Remember I said theoretically as I have never heard such a system but it would be interesting. Sorry I forgot that it also needs to be full range...
 
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C

CoryW

Audioholic
Hey Gene and guys,
How about an ultimate test of "The Stereo Performance of AVRs?"

Same segment, same ranked AVRs battle on the best stereo reproduction ?

A bloodbath of the giants...:eek:
Yamaha vs. Denon vs. Marantz vs. Pioneer vs. Onkyo on the same Stereo Floorstanders SetUp !
That will be a hell of a review and a definite youtube hit for sure. :cool:
Dont let them give you a hard time. Two channel is 75% of my listening. My fav of all time was my Nakamichi AV-10. It was wonderfu and I miss it.
 
G

Gmoney

Audioholic Ninja
Analog units sound better than SS, in stereo. :p
Oh wait, by the time the waves get to the speaker’s it’s all analog anyways never mind. :D
 
B

Boorock70

Audiophyte
Dont let them give you a hard time. Two channel is 75% of my listening. My fav of all time was my Nakamichi AV-10. It was wonderfu and I miss it.
Thanks for the comment... but about the hard time; duh... how less do I care ?
This is a typical forum with too much knowing people full of BS, experts that really know what they are talking about and people who are simply lost while searching for info...
My question was simple.
Who is the best stereo performing AVR of the current brands/models & why ?
Did we reach any conclusion ?
- No !
Surprised ?
- No !
Had fun ?
- Yes !
 
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