On 5/29/2013 5:43 PM, William Sommerwerck wrote:
"You know nothing about what you talk about, either technically or
aesthetically. I've been involved with surround sound for 43 years,
probably
longer than you've been alive. ..."

I've snipped correct or generally correct statements.

When I was a kid I discovered something, that when you connect a
speaker between the two hots (+ or red) of an amp you get the
difference signal. That is how the el cheapo method worked actually
to get the rear channels but they used a resistor to common to allow
some of the L+R, but only a portion of it. This does not work with
amps that run the two channels out of phase, but those are kinda rare.

This is called DynaQuad. It was first officially proposed by David
Hafler. The difference signal has a higher ratio of
reflected-to-direct sound, so with the speakers to the sides or rear,
there is an enhancement of ambience.


Now they use OP AMPs pretty much for the basic surround.

Actually, matrixed surround is handled by DSP.

Digital delay is added for the effects like "hall", "auditorium" and
so forth. It is all in a chip but if you look back in the prints of
older equipment that used discrete components you can figure it out.

Figure out what?


Along came a guy named Bob Carver who tried to do some tricks with
digital delay and called it sonic holography. that baby was supposed
to enhance the stereo image by sending a "null echo" for lack of a
better term, to the opposite speaker. IIRC you were supposed to have
them a certain distance apart for this "magic" to work properly.

Sonic Holography did not use digital processing. I had one of them,
and with my own live recordings, the results were much closer to what
I heard at the mikes.


All junk as far as I am concerned. That is an opinion. In movies, the
effects and ambience are excessive to the point wherte you can hardly
understand the dialogue and you have to crank it to hear it, and then
a car blows up or something and it happens to be three AM. This
annoys enough people that the TV manufacturers started equipping TVs
with audio compressors, calling it "Smart Sound" or "Level Sound" or
a few other names.

Not a valid opinion. When surround is used to record or synthesize
hall ambience, it is a huge improvement.


You made a mistake. I said I think stereo is it, and all this
surround **** is junk and you failed to realize that is an opinion.
That is my opinion, absolutely.

It might be an opinion, but it is verifiably an invalid opinion.
Anyone who's heard good surround knows otherwise -- because surround
brings you significantly closer to what you hear at a live performance.
Let me strongly affirm William Sommerwerck's comment above. I have also
lived in the world of Carver Sonic Holography (or4iginal and 2
subsequent redesigned and improved versions) as well as many discrete
true 4 channel surround sound systems on open reel, CD4/Shibata LPs,
derived surround from Dynaquad, CBS SQ Quad, Dolby, Ambisonics, and
synthesized surround from Advent SoundSpace, , Yamaha DSPs, Sound
Concepts bucket brigade CCD processor, and quite a few others.

Used with discretion these have profoundly improved the reconstruction
of a very credible and most enjoyable sound field vastly superior to the
collapsed image which remains when only the front system is employed
without surround.