On 11/29/03 2:24 AM, in article WQXxb.250854$275.924491@attbi_s53, "Andre
Yew" wrote:

Bromo wrote in message
...
Keep in mind you have 2 ears, and you tend to sit in the audience, not
amongst the instruments.

Yes, but the critical radius (the distance from the sound source where
the reverberent sound's energy is equal to the main sound's energy) in
most concert halls is 3 meters. That means the audience is mostly
listening to sound from all around them. You may have only two ears,
but those ears and your brain react differently to sounds arriving
from different directions. It's the sum effect of sound arriving from
all over, and not just the front, that gives one the acoustic
impression of a space.

Agreed - however, as we all do not sit in anechoic chambers whilst
listening, our room acoustics will predominate in all cases, be it 2, 6 or
10 speakers!

Stereo in a room with decent room acoustics ought
to be enough to be drawn in in my opinion - unless we can show that people
who normally listen at high SPL's turn down their stereo system when
multichannel music is playing.

Two speakers may draw you in (as a mono recording of an especially
captivating performer could also), but they are not necessarily
representative of what the sound is like in the hall.

Given real world experiences, and real setups (I have a 5.1 system that
plays great stereo -- Thiel) I have found your actual room acoustics will
tend to add or subtract far more from your "being there" experience than the
number of speakers. This was a rather expensive conclusion to come to as I
could have saved a lot of money by just getting the stereo system.

I would agree that you can get a better semblance of the room acoustics with
surround speakers - and mimic that acoustics - although it will be further
colored by your room.

In my
experience, two speakers turned up to measured in-situ SPL levels tend
to sound shouty, whereas a good multichannel presentation is much more
relaxed and natural, closer to the real thing.

I have not experienced the "shoutiness" you are complaining about - perhaps
room acoustics are to blame here - or perhaps speakers/amps being overdriven
- or perhaps you ears are being overloaded - I noticed that during rock
concerts in my younger days.

My setup can play very comfortably in the 85dB-90dB range - though I rarely
go above 75-80dB since I feel most comfortable at these softer levels and
can easily be drawn in to the music at those levels.

At the end of the day - if you are really happy with good 5.1 presentation
of music - then that is all that really matters - after all, this is a
passion and entertainment for most of us, nothing that would make the
difference between life-or-death.

And despite our best efforts so far - the ultimate "being there" experience
is -- being there!