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Bill
Kensington, NH
Posts 117
Joined on 03-15-2010
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Post #:
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51
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Post ID:
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26243
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Reply to:
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26239
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Will try to answer all questions here.
Romy: I understand why you do not wish to use the term “surround sound”, but it is the accepted term for what we are discussing. You may add other terminology, but it only muddies the debate until others accept it.
Romy: Pretend we have a “perfect” and ideal reverberation/delay processor that generates all needed reverberation and do not crew up main sound. Then we would not even need the surround channels and all necessary “room enhancement” would be produces by ONLY main speakers. Would you call this installation as Surround Sound installation?
We would still need the surround channels as unless phasing distortions are add, the false room information would still be stuck in the front dimension. One can do it with headphones using a Smyth Realizer, but I think not with speakers.
Paul: If I can split my front channels without screwing up gain or messing with the front channels (not a given!), then I will give this a go. And I will probably never learn more than necessary to "get the job done"
Romy has done this by feeding the front channels their normal information then feeding his processor the same information which is the given a reverberation field. While this allows the main channels to not be negatively affected, This is not optimal for two reason. In a perfect two mike recording, one still has the reverberant field mixed in on the main channels which will affect the reverberation field. On multimike recordings, there is no correct sound field for the reverberant field to work with.
As for getting the most and best from your thousands of recordings, I’ve also had thousands of master tapes, vinyl, cd's, DAT's, etc., and find over the years I've narrowed down my recording I’ve kept to several hundred, and listen usually only to what I consider to be the best performances or sound reproduction, and I bet you have too. These will probably also be the best recording to add a reverberant field or correctly obtain the recording's Hall sound for the surround effect.
Romy: Paul, what you are saying is slightly irrelevant in context of reverberation insertion. It is absolutely irrelevant how it was recorded, mixed etc as we do not recreate the original acoustic environment of recording space. Instead we in bed whatever recording is into an acoustic environment that we synthesize.
You are correct, but again, the reverberant field you add is dependent on what was recorded in the first place. The only time your field would be a facsimile of the concert hall you are trying to emulate is if the original recording was a two mike, probably omni's, done in a completely dead sound stage without its own reverberation. You use your main speakers for this and add your reverberant field to front and back surround speakers for the effect.
Anthony: Thanks for this information Bill. Were the 16 channels (I counted 15 in your description) an all-at-once installation or have you worked up to that many channels in steps with the Trinnov 16? Say 4 channel then 8 then 15 or something like that. Would be interesting to gauge incremental changes in the "effects".
Sorry, there are actually two subwoofer channels. I am planning on going to one subwoofer and one back floor channel so I can add 2 so-called wide side channels for Dolby atmos and DTS Pro to see what happens. It’s supposed to improve the side imaging as the space between the front and side channels is over the 60 degree ideal. I doubt it will do much good as the Auromatic field supposedly compensates for the space.
I can see why Romy is working at this problem the way he is given his system topology. I too am reluctant to put all sources through a processor g
OK. This will be a long answer. The Trinnov is a very special processor. It’s actually a computer with audio only processing using its own program. It uses a special four mikes built into one which can measure time alignment very accurately for all drivers and 16 channels. They also have units for 20, 36 and 44 channels. Each channel does the following:
- Measures the amplitude across a 16 to 20k frequency range for each driver and speaker to 0.1 dB.
- Can act as a 24/96 active crossover from first to fourth order for each driver. With small speakers will allow the bass information from whatever frequency range chosen, and transmit it to one of the woofers or subwoofers in the room with correct time and amplitude alignment relative to the original speaker.
- Will time align each driver within 1/10 millisecond for each speaker.
- Will time align each speaker to the others in the room.
- Allows the listener to adjust the frequency response of each driver to their wishes.
- Allows the listener to adjust the delay to expand the relative room volume.
- Allows the listener to adjust the volume of each speaker.
- Adds the BBC dip if asked to.
- If the speakers are not properly set up in space, will align them to what is considered their optimal virtual position for the different decoding systems.
- Does up to 24/96 a/d and d/a encoding and decoding. The more expensive models do 24/ 196.
- Accepts up to 16 channels of information through hdmi, and two channel through spdif.
- Does a/d conversion of analog balanced or rca input, then will do multi-channel conversion if asked to.
- Decodes Dolby Atmos, DTS Prox and Auro 3 D and Auromatic decoding. Will take the information from whatever number of channels there are on the recording, try to separate the stage from the hall information, and transmit the correct special information to the proper speaker.
The whole process, once understood after several hours of reading their beautifully thought out 160 page instruction booklet only takes about 10 minutes to record, encode and present to the listener. The listener can then go ahead and change any of the parameters of each speaker and driver to his heart's content. After much experimentation and fiddling over four weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that all of the attempts to improve on the Trinnov's algorithms only marginally improved the sound obtained. And I can definitely say, that the sound I have now is far ahead of anything I’ve obtained in the past. I believe Romy would also agree on that point.
Disadvantages of the unit: There are only two things I have a complaint with. First is the inability to decode sacd or dsd recording. The unit only works with pcm, but will do flax and Aflac. Of course, no unit out there that I know of will do these things, and most sacd or dsd recordings are transferred to pcm when worked on and then reencoded to dsd. This is too bad as most of my multitrack recordings are sacd's, but I do have an OPPO 205 unit which does dsd to pcm decoding so it is not really a problem.Second is the price of the unit. Compared to other preamp processors, but considering the amount of money I’ve spent over the years on so-called high new equipment and wires.
Romy: As I finish, I will publish me recommendation how anybody can try it for less than $100. Yes, one more thing: I would LOVE to hear Bill’s Trinnov processor as a … DAC. It might be a very good DAC…
I have no idea how good the DAC's are on the unit, but maybe one day I’ll remove the jungle of wires behind the unit and bring it to Romy's for an evaluation of the two systems. I can say though that the sound I am obtaining now is light years ahead of what I had with high end two channel dacs and the Marantz top of the line 8805 pre-pro I sold to get this unit.
Romy: How many of recordings you have that were recorded well (from multichannel perspective) AND would be music that you want? We are subordinates of recording engineers’ taste and style and let agree that most of the recording hall do not have good acoustic to begin with. Why would I need to have multichannel audio to recreate the dreadful acoustics of Avery Fisher Hall? I agree and that is why I'll bet that none of the multiple hall reverberation fields on your unit does not emulate that dreadful place, or Fenway Park for that matter.
Very few recordings are top notch. The best multitrack are sacd's from Reference Recordings and Pentatone, and two track are best from the golden days of the 50's and 60's before the engineers without ears got at the recordings. On the other hand, I’ve been to your place and seen the thousands of vinyl and cd's on your shelves, but you always pick from a black folder of about 25 cd's and previously from a few vinyl recordings to demo your system. I believe that you would agree that you can't make a purse out of a sow's ear from 95+% of the recordings out there, but I have heat to play a recording over the past four weeks on my system that didn't sound better than it did in two channel. And the multichannel recordings have taken on a feeling of being present at the performance that cannot be obtained with two track.
No matter which approach you decide on of the six, there will always be an improvement over stereo. One does not need super high end speakers except possibly for the main channels. Matter of fact, all of my and Romy's surrounds are inexpensive speakers mated with zip wire to inexpensive amplifiers, but the sound improvement would not allow either of us to go back to two channel. Or would you disagree with that Romy?
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