Is Digital actually better than Analog?

"The Esoteric, you can make out every detail with ease but I really feel that such a detailed machine takes away from the enjoyment in music."

If you listen in two channel only, you are not getting the best digital has too offer. Infact you're getting the nasty end of the stick.

For years I have been listening in trifield and now PLII two channel is purgatory. ie. Digital is too good for two speakers, and no amount of EQing and sound shaping with tubes and cables will overcome that.

You want to love the music and be swept away by detail and emotional involvement, its scientifically proven adding rear channels is the best way to do it. :)....and ten years from now you will actually believe what I just said.

You want to love the music and be swept away by detail and emotional involvement, its scientifically proven adding rear channels is the best way to do it. :)....and ten years from now you will actually believe what I just said.

Ten years from now?

Ever heard of quadraphonic?

Ever heard of the evil of rear speakers in car audio?

***

“its scientifically proven adding rear channels is the best way to do it.”

Really? By whom?

I have listened to many an opera, recitals and live jazz/rock performances. Never had anybody walk off stage to sing/play an instrument behind me.

Seen Stars Wars and that had sound emanating from all over the theatre. Very impressive if you actually want Star Wars. Me, I’d rather have Stravinsky.

Regards
Paul

There are secondary (reflected) sound waves which come from the sides and rear of concert halls and other large venues that do get recorded onto two channel formats. And with proper processing can be extracted and redirected to additional channels/speakers, even though in an actual concert hall setting, I never noticed sound as coming from anywhere but the stage -- reverberation is all enveloping; only echos seem to come from "somewhere" and are greatly frowned upon in the design of concert halls ;--)

Nevertheless, a good two channel system in an acoustically adjusted listening room will produce all those secondary waves accurately and from the (seemingly) appropriate directions using only two speakers, and it's not clear whether the necessary information is captured any better by analog or digital recording techniques. With a purly digital recording/playback process (DDD), my sense is that it's a tough thing to achieve using plain ol' Redbook, and maybe that's the attraction of SACD or DVDA for some. However I have several (Redbook) HDCDs and XRCDs whose sonics equal my best LPs.

So anyone who has really great gear of both kinds really should try some of the XRCD releases -- especially the orchestral ones made from the old RCA and Colombia mastertapes which you can (if, like me, you have them) compare with their original LP counterparts. I think you'd be very surprised at how much great sound never made it onto the original vinyl ;--)
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Interesting observations Nsgarch. I gave up on multichannel attempts at recreating a concert hall at home many years ago. I also agree that there is a lot of information on the disc's to be recovered, much of it is the out of phase information present in the recording venue, which unfortunately is hard to reproduce at home unless you have a perfect acoustic.

In a less than perfect acoustic, there is an old fashion method of getting that 'hall sound' which is cheap and easy to set up (so long as your not too anal about absolutes). I can't recall off hand the name of the designer, but the idea was to place two small speakers in the rear of the room, or preferrably one on each side of the listening seat. Connect the speakers in a loop with one wire connected from the positive post of an amp to the speaker A, then from speaker A to speaker B then back to the hot positive post of the other channel in the amp. You insert somewhere into this loop and attenuator so you can balance the sound with the main system. The side/rear speakers output is kept very low and only produces out of phase info but the room sounds energized and more like a concert hall. Using a seperate amp you can turn it on and off at will, but its possible to wire this into the main amp (I'm to anal to do that).

This type of ambiance extraction existed before Yamaha and some 'other outfit long gone' (I had one of 'long gones' units) produced a unit which did the same, but added digital delay's so you could select hall size and all that other stuff. I think the extraction you are referring to comes from equipment made by suceeding manufacturers. Got to be too fussy for me and actually never sounded as good as the cheapo way. Although from all I've heard maybe ARC got it right in their unit.

Fun stuff if you've got the space, and I think I'd find this much more interesting that the new multi channel recordings and the replay requirements.

FWIW.