@devinplombier
It sounds like HT and SACD have made immersive sound possible for quite a number of years, yet the uptake seems to have been minimal and you hardly ever hear about it. I wonder why? It does sound like a good idea.
This is something I am trying to change! In a way, it seems like another North America versus the rest of the world thing. Arguably, it took Dire Straits to kick-start CD in Europe. They have just re-released Brothers in Arms in surround on SACD and I think the sound is just brilliant. Dark Side of the Moon has just been released on Pure Audio Blu-ray using Dolby Atmos encoding - absolutely mind blowing!
It is not helped when the two major audiophile magazines don't look beyond two-channel. Why are high-end SACD players incapable of playing more that the 2-channel content on SACDs which also have the same music as 5-channel content? Why persist with an antiquated 2-channel digital standard, I2S, designed without error detection or recovery, for transferring digital music between boxes?
On a side note, wouldn't the recording / mastering / processing issues that already plague two-channel media be compounded / complicated by an order of magnitude by multichannel?
The classical view
Well, I think you can be sure that any classical recording team that goes to the trouble of setting up for surround or immersive recording will be highly focused on sound quality, to justify the extra setup time and expense. By and large, they find the right microphones and the right locations for them, and let the conductor and the players balance the sound, like Mercury did with Living Presence.
To me, SACD releases declare that "We cared about the sound". Further, as orchestras take control of their recordings, it makes sense for them to invest to permanently equip their venues for surround. The Berliner Philharmoniker has a major investment in its Digital Concert Hall, which encompasses multi-channel, streaming and automated video facilities including remote programmed cameras.
LSO Live similarly releases all its new recordings on SACD, and at low cost because the performances are regular concert performances.
2L.no seems to have a standardised microphone tree and places the musicians around the microphones, rather than positioning the microphones to suit the orchestra.
The multi-mike, multi-track, mixed-later view.
No extra expense or difficulty during the recording sessions, and I would have thought a lot more delivery flexibility afterwards. There's money to be made re-mixing for multi-channel and if the original tracks are good, the re-releases can be superb. They can also be terrible if the guy doing the mixing is near deaf, Rolling Stones!
