Is surround sound for music and home theater on its way out?

[dfergie]

Steve Guttenberg

Now, in 2014, multichannel home theater sound is on the wane; today's buyers are opting for single-speaker sound bars in ever increasing numbers. Multichannel sound at home is fading fast, and multichannel over headphones never took hold. The future of home surround for music and movies looks bleak.

cnet.com

 

[gadgtfreek]

IMO its the same crowd that buys certain things of the low end tier or only uses tv speakers. Sound bars with subs have allowed them a cheap and easy way to "upgrade", not going to replace the rest of us that realize what a real movie experience sounds like. I dont think home surround sound has ever been "huge", I do not know a single person that has a setup like mine. Seems like a drama queen article to me, or Cnet needing some hits.

 

[dfergie]

I saw this at AVS and had to post... this guy must party with Rob Ford.

 

[jayn_j]

I read his article and have to agree in part.

One of his main points is that nobody ever figured out what to do with surround FOR MUSIC. I remember those early quad days and it was either sitting in the middle of the orchestra and having the horns out of one speaker and the violins out of another, or it was sitting in a live theater with the surrounds reduced to ambiance, or worst of all, it was sound bouncing around from speaker to speaker.

As far as movies are concerned, I have seen a sharp drop off in quality surround sound editing. Sure, the action adventure stuff will sometimes use the rears, but even there, most of the time sound is simply coming out of the center. Surrounds are only used when they blow stuff up. Comedies, dramas and the rest don't even use the right and left mains very often. I am actually quite disappointed, not with the technology, but with the laziness of the productions.

 

[Tampa8]

Agree, and indeed more to do with production quality and/or the non use of the right/left mains. And more often then not the rears are an after-thought. When done correctly those rears can make certain sounds seem to come from your home, like doors closing or dogs barking. When done wrong you hear it but makes no real impression.
For Bluray it adds tremendously but for TV actually dialog is often better in Stereo/Soundbar.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I haven't seen any MultiChannel Audio only DVD's or Blurays out in a long time.

I think the last one I purchased was the Blue Man Group.

 

[Teehar]

I sure hope it isn, t considered just a fad, gotta have at least 5.1 full surround for a great movie experience.Nothing like hearing bullets sound like they are whizzing by your head, or a helicopter sound like its landing in your yard.Sound bars just can't duplicate that.


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[gadgtfreek]

I dont see 5.1 going anywhere. When I do a man cave Im not sure I will worry with 7.2 though, may just go 5.2 and be done with it.

 

[osu1991]

We really only turn any of our systems on if it's football, racing or movies, the rest of the time for general tv stuff we use the soundbar or tv speakers.

 

[Pepper]

This thread made me laugh, I wonder how many of the people here crying a river about the potential demise of their favorite technology, surround sound, are the same ones who berated and ridiculed those of us whose favorite technology is the "gimmicky" 3D TV.

All sarcasm aside, I hope this rumor leads nowhere, as I immensely enjoy both technologies.

 

[dfergie]

The livingroom is the only room (out of 3) I don't have 5.1 sound in, for most of my watching I use surround sound...

 

[Ronnie-]

I did previously enjoy my surround system, but once we had our child six years ago I used it less and less just because I didnt want to "wake the baby". Three years after we moved, and I still have not unpacked it to install it at the new house.....

 

[harshness]

I was under the impression that >2 channel engineered audio titles numbered in the low dozens to begin with. Is that not the case?

While I see a surprising number of mono bluetooth speakers and "whole house Hi-Fi" out in the marketplace, I wouldn't dare lump them in with surround sound bars.

I don't think we're headed anywhere near the Hi-Fi with reverb that we visited about 50-60 years ago (although some of the economy "sound systems" are little more).

 

[jayn_j]

I did previously enjoy my surround system, but once we had our child six years ago I used it less and less just because I didnt want to "wake the baby". Three years after we moved, and I still have not unpacked it to install it at the new house.....

You are now reaching the point where the 6 yo will start to appreciate the surround. However, you still have younger ones, right?

 

[jayn_j]

I was under the impression that >2 channel engineered audio titles numbered in the low dozens to begin with. Is that not the case?

While I see a surprising number of mono bluetooth speakers and "whole house Hi-Fi" out in the marketplace, I wouldn't dare lump them in with surround sound bars.

I don't think we're headed anywhere near the Hi-Fi with reverb that we visited about 50-60 years ago (although some of the economy "sound systems" are little more).

There were hundreds of true surround mixes in the mid 70s. Most poorly done.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Most of the time we only turn the surround sound on when we are watching a Movie or a special, but the rest of the time it is off.

 

[mikew]

I would guess the increase in sound bars is due to the crappy speakers nearly every TV comes out with.

 

[Hall]

I have a 5.1 speaker system and an older Sony AV receiver. It was all set up in our old house and we used it less and less over time.... When it was used, it was only for movies too. We moved about 6 months ago and I only unpacked it and set it up because we finally got a flat-panel for the living room (had a 57" rear-projection HD). I set it up with center, left, right, and subwoofer. No rears at this point. Two reasons.... 1) I can't find them !! and 2) no clean way to run wires.

I looked at sound bars. I always thought they were a surround-sound-in-a-box type thing or a lazy-man's surround system. It never occurred to me that typical speakers on a flat-panel are so small. Anyway, back to the sound bars, I'm guessing that most are simple 2-channel units. Some are 2-channel + subwoofer, I think. All they're doing is taking the place of the TV's built-in speakers in most cases.

 

[harshness]

There were hundreds of true surround mixes in the mid 70s. Most poorly done.

Even Quadrophenia was never released in Quad.

The problem wasn't so much the quality of the mixing but the problems in getting things to work with the decoders. Quad was doomed but the motivation behind it arguably remains.

 

[John Kotches]

The guy that wrote the article (if you've read his stuff) is an audiophile purist, who is predisposed to a stereo world. He's making the wrong point anyway. The real point is that we don't sit

Surround music failed, in part because of the dumba$$ format war between DVD-Audio and SA-CD. Some of it was the mixes, and some of it was the format war and the final part of it was iTunes.

jay:

I don't see a lot of ways to mix other than immersive (in the middle of everything) and audience perspective. I don't know if you have it or not, but Jackson Browne's Running on Empty was a great example of using both, sometimes mixed together in a single track. This disc was a mixture of auditoriums and small spaces.

All of the auditorium mixes are from a perspective of sitting in the audience and listening to the performance. The immersive segments is meant so that you as a listener are listening to the performance almost as though they are isolated instruments. This is very effective on The Road which starts off with the immersive perspective, with acoustic instruments and closes with the audience perspective and a mixture of acoustic and electric instruments.

It's too bad really, because the immersive mixes engage me in a way that the audience perspective doesn't. It harkens back to my days as a musician when I was immersed in the process.