Home Theater, October 1999, Volume 6, Number 10, by Steve Guttenberg

Will 5.1-channel music really deliver a death blow to stereo?

They say stereo is hopelessly out-of-date, and 5.1-channel music surround is poised to revive the hardware and software industries. The truest believers say that it's the next great leap forward. They say we should hear music as we hear it in life, from all around, in surround. They say that whether the next dominant music format is DVDAudio, Super Audio CD, or DTS, it doesn't really matter because stereo is on its way out. That's what they say.

Are they right? We spoke to several music producers to find out what's really going on.

Surround momentum is building, thanks to the efforts of a vast consortium of 116 associate member companies of the mighty DVD Forum. A steering committee, made up of the 10 founding companies, pretty much calls the shots of the various DVD Working Groups. The heavy hitters are JVC, Hitachi, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Sharp, Time Warner, Toshiba, Sony, and Philips. All are working to create the new DVD-Audio format, which will offer 5.1 channels of 24-bit/96kilohertz digital audio using Meridian Lossless Packing, a compression technique that doesn't discard data like Dolby Digital and DTS do.

But hold on! Sony and Philips are playing both sides of the surround movement-they have their own incompatible format, the Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD). Scheduled to roll out this fall, SACD will remain strictly two-channel through most of 2000. So while SACD is aimed squarely at the high-end faithful, the DVD-Audio contingent will get a year's head start in the surround sweepstakes.

I understand where Sony's coming from-stereo's been very, very good to me-and under the right circumstances it can project an amazingly three-dimensional soundstage. Problem is, achieving that blissful state requires both a highly tweaked system and cooperative room acoustics. Surround boosters shouldn't gloat over that fact for too long, since matching that level of precision with a surround system is a much tougher nut. Controlling both the system and the room acoustics is more than doubly demanding. Home theater's diffuse, enveloping soundfields are relatively easy; however, re-creating the acoustic environment of a recording venue is something else. While poorly set-up stereo can be tolerable, sloppy surround systems can get ugly real fast.

I interviewed a group of producers, engineers, and artists whom I thought might have an interest in surround's future. I hoped there might be some consensus about where all of this is headed. This much they did agree on: 1) They were all intrigued by the possibilities; and 2) surround speakers must be fullrange and located behind the listener. They were also unanimous about the desirability of five identical speakers. No one seemed terribly concerned that this new surround paradigm doesn't exactly jibe with the standard home theater setup. I suppose you could use a second set of dedicated music surround speakers to accommodate a dual-use system.

Taking the Pulse of the Knob-Twirlers

I began with producer/engineer Robert Margouleff, a true believer in 5.1 if there ever was one. "I always wanted to do music in surround. For me that's always been the missing element," he says. He experimented with surround with Stevie Wonder back in the early '70s, when he coproduced and engineered several releases in quadraphonic sound: Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness' First Finale. But quad died an awful death. The very idea that music and sound should come from a flat, 2-D stage rankles Margouleff, he wants "the music and the listener to occupy the same space."

Margouleff (along with his partner Brant Biles) hooked up with DTS four years ago, and, not surprisingly, they're major boosters of DTS surround CDs. These guys are absolutely passionate about surround and work exclusively in 5.1. They've remixed/ remastered many classic rock recordings for DTS. They're particularly proud of the Boyz II Men 5.1 CD II. "Instead of using processing, delays, and reverb to create a feeling of space, the 'mix' takes place in your room," says Margouleff. He believes that once you experience surround's multidimensional pleasures, stereo will forever seem uninvolving and flat.

DMP Records' Tom Jung is somewhat more cautious than Margouleff, but he's definitely a believer. Jung reminds me that, if the listening room's acoustics are more reverberant than the recorded acoustic ambience, the subtleties of that ambience will never be heard. So the desirability of surround is hardly universal; stereo remains a viable choice for some projects.

Jung's firmly in the SACD camp. "There's just something very right with the DSD [Direct Strewn Digital] recording system," he says. "You can listen and listen and listen, and you don't get tired; you don't have to live with all the things we've grown to hate about digital. The harmonics are in perfect alignment; it's just more compelling and inviting to listen to." You can sample Jung's 5.1 handiwork on his DTS formatted discs (see sidebar) right now or wait a year or so for the SACD versions. Another veteran of the quad experiments of the 70s, Jung is sanguine about surround's future: "The book hasn't been written yet-I don't want to get hung up on 'This is the way it has to be.'"

Producer/engineer Joe Harley from AudioQuest Music provided a reality check. He believes there are a handful of people in the biz putting out the impression that surround is just around the comer, but it just isn't so. "For movie mixes, there's no question about it--surround is a big deal. But as far as the music business goes, it's not a blip on the radar." Harley concedes that for more effects-driven pop music, where reality isn't really part of the artist's intention, surround effects and manipulation might be fun. But the chances of that working in someone's home "are not nil, but are not very good." Sure, there's no guarantee with a stereo mix, either; but as Harley puts it, surround gives the listener "...umpteen more possibilities to screw it up. Right now, we have a pretty good grasp on a window for two-channel mixes that translates for everything from boomboxes to great systems. With multichannel, it's pretty gauzy."

Harley doesn't see too many studios set up for surround recording-artists aren't demanding it, he says, and, most important, the record companies seem reluctant to pay anything extra for it. According to Harley, surround sound recordings in any real numbers are, at best, at least three years away. Harley's views are representative of the majority of the engineers and producers I spoke with.

So It's Happening?

OK so the music biz is in the dumps, and they desperately need something to get the people back in the store ... or on the Internet ... or whatever-as long as it's something that'll drive those desires again. What they really need is a new Sinatra, Elvis, or Beatles, but, while they're waiting for their savior, they're settling for a new format.

I'm not convinced-all this huffing and puffing seems more about foisting yet another format upon us. The odds are against a new format that requires retailers to double inventory titles and against any new format that's significantly more expensive than the established format. To pull this thing off, they'll have to introduce surround discs at prices as close to CD prices as possible. I think that at $25 to $30 a pop, they shouldn't even bother; I doubt the public will pay premium prices for 5.1-channel music discs. Throw in a DVD-Audio/ SACD format war that'll confuse everyone, and, in my opinion, you've got a recipe for failure.

If surround can let us connect with the music more completely, I'm all for it. OK, I'm not quite ready to plunk down my money for a DVD-Audio player anytime soon; but I'm far more positive about the potential of surround than I thought I'd be. The surround aesthetic will likely evolve into something both aesthetically and commercially compelling, but it's not going to happen this fall-it'll probably take a decade. So don't toss out your CD or DVD Video player just yet stereo's gonna be around for a while.