Pick your poison...2-channel or multi?


This post is just to get a general ideas among audiophiles and audio enthusiasts; to see who really likes what. Here's the catch!

If you were restricted to a budget of $10,000, and wanted to assemble a system, from start to finish, which format would you choose, 2 channel or mulichannel?

I'll go first and say multichannel. I've has to opportunity to hear a multichannel setup done right and can't see myself going back to 2-channel. I'm even taking my system posting down and will repost it as a multichannel system.

So...pick your poison! Which one will it be, 2-channel or multichannel.
cdwallace
So ThomJohn...where were we?

"did you do much listening of 2ch CD's in surround? How did you like it?"
"How do you get surround sound from 2 channels. By synthesis?"

Actually Metralla every stereo disc has surround information on it, all you need to do is study a little about the pick up patterns of microphones and mic arrays.

Also realise that all reverb, and delay algorithms are modeled for 360 degrees, not 180, which is all two channel has to offer.

This to me IS the big issue with digital and why it has a noticeable brightness to it when played in 2 channels, there is information compressed onto the soundstage, and since it is room reverberation, or 360 degree delay processing, or just out of phase noise, this information when not moved to its rightful place in the soundfield (rear channels) will negatively impact the spectral balance of playback. A good example is any live albome with an active crowd, most of these recordings are edgy because the crowd is not mic'd and the off axis response of the microphone and the quantity of them, plus room tone and on and on, gets placed between you and the subject, click on surround and the subject (singer etc) smoothes out immensely, your emmerssed in the crowd and all that "noise" is no longer smashed into the front stage, messing up the performer.
Metralla...Glad I could help. If you do have a MC question, or even something that you've been wondering about MC, feel free to ask away. However, this forum was intended to help demistify MC, and enlighten 2CHer in the area of MC.