5.1 audiophile listening with repurposed home theater into a Sound Stage using VLC
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For those who are true believers in stereo and may have invested a great deal in the best equipment and speakers, here is an alternate point of view: http://www.anstendig.org/Stereo.html we have two ears, but there is only one trumpet playing.... |
Two stereo tracks have been mixed....5.1 has five channels - centre, left, right, outside left, outside right.... so if you put the stereo L and R channel into the 5.1 L and R you get back what you started with....the channels may be more separated but not the individual stems....if you were to take the stereo L and R and put them into L and R and also both into Centre, that might be interesting but it would merge them rather than separate them....I will try it but don't think there will be much difference....can report back |
OK I did the mix of the Eagle's "Peaceful Easy Feeling" a few ways - I used Audacity to split the stereo into a mono left and a mono right, then placed them into a 6-speaker 5.1 configuration just to the L & R channels. Another mix was to take the mono L and R and put them into the 5.1 left, outer left, right and outer right, with the L/R also going to the subwoofer. Final mix was to add to the mono L and R tracks a duplicate stereo track at -10dB intended for the center 5.1 channel - #3.... The end result....no significant difference, except that five speakers plus a subwoofer produces more midranges than 2 speakers....and when I listened to them in stereo earphones, no difference at all, showing that 5.1 stereo is not so different from 2-channel stereo. However, 5-channel discrete mono certainly has different placements from 2-channel stereo. It's not possible to isolate each instrument from the melange that a mixed stereo track represents. Not by me, anyway, and I think AI will be a long way from doing that cleanly. BTW, in order to use Audacity for AC3, you have to download the FFMPEG library dll, and then in Audacity's preferences for mixing, choose CUSTOM mix. Otherwise you get just stereo. This is well known, and any search on the Internet with the terms "Audacity AC3" will lead one to the exact details of how to and where to download. |
Well you have cleared my doubts. I have been playing with stem songs for assisted singing and performance on stage when I experimented with surround sound and had this idea you called Soundstage. The surround we have on sacd and blu rays are mixed and not discrete and the technology tends to bring the listener in the middle of the stage... whereas all the recording studios and audiophiles try to reproduce the song as a live event or something played live as in a studio. If we truly reproduce as it were recorded then your concept of soundstage is truer than surround tech. Like you mentioned, the number of speakers may not be limited to 5.1,..theoretically, the number of speakers should be equal to the number of instruments and voices recorded discretely. This concept is REVOLUTIONARY as you have termed and I am joining the bandwagon. Thanks a lot. |
