Funny you should mention that. I played the other half last night and 5-channel stereo gave way too much to the rear surrounds. PLIIx was way better.
Vocals are sounding better too since I reran Audessey. This was on a FLAC rip of the CD remaster of the White Album. I should compare the LP and see what PLIIx does for that.
I remember that audio engineers used to use phase tricks for simulated surround. Some quad receivers would decode the phase differences for simulated surround since true quad recordings were rare when those quad receivers first came out. I wonder if studios still employ those phase tricks today?
We listened to Crowded House - Temple of Low Men afterwards. I really like the way their albums are engineered. Beautiful sounding recordings. PLIIx was interesting. Some songs like Into Temptation kept most of the audio LCR with little in the surrounds, but the drummer uses brushes on that song and it sounds like I loose a little clarity in surround mode as the brushes get harder to pick out. Sister Madly, on the other hand, had the instruments all over the room in surround mode. I may turn down the surrounds a bit and play with this some more. It's certainly sounding a lot better then when I had the older center speaker with different Audessey settings.
