CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[digitalayon]

I heard a nice 2 channel 4 speaker front system today that was incredible and almost emulated a dolby system. Either 2 channel is underhyped or dolby is overhyped.

[kal]

How exactly did the 2-channel 4-speaker system work? If there's only 2 channels why are there 4 speakers?

You can get some pretty good imaging out of 2 speakers. Problem is that there's only one place where that imaging works. Some speakers image better over a wider space, some require you to not move your head an inch.

Movies are typically watched by many people at once so you need speakers all around to have reasonable imaging for larger groups.

Kal

[kal]

How exactly did the 2-channel 4-speaker system work? If there's only 2 channels why are there 4 speakers?

You can get some pretty good imaging out of 2 speakers. Problem is that there's only one place where that imaging works. Some speakers image better over a wider space, some require you to not move your head an inch.

Movies are typically watched by many people at once so you need speakers all around to have reasonable imaging for larger groups.

Kal

[Tom.W]

Two woofers and two tweeters ?

[gjaky]

I like the 2 chanel spatial sound reproduction priciples, however as Kal said the results are depending greatly of the actual application. But with headphone (as also 2 channel system) the results are far better, the only problem is then there is no head tracking in reproduction -at least at consumer level.
There are many technologies which supports 2 channel spatial sound reproduction, sensaura 3D, A3D, but these are computer based solutions, the 'virtual dolby surround' which is proudly signed on many tv-s -IMHO- is just a marketing thing nothing really more than that.
The best solution I've heard yet is Aureal's A3D technology, it was a company which brought a NASA technology to consumer level, they manufactured PC soundcard chips with this technology at the end of the '90s, unfortunately they went to bankruptcy in the early '00s. Creative technologies bought the company but the technology disappeared.. Those soundcards are working best in Win 98 environment, with a lot of interesting demos and features. Power DVD also supported their technology for a long time, so 5.1 channel movies could be easily converted to A3D's 2channel reproduction.
I have an Aureal based soundcard, and even built a retro PC around it, sometimes I fire it up and play with it a bit

[kal]

I remember Aureal... some intereseting stuff. I've got a sound card or two somewhere around here with that technology.

Kal

[kal]

I remember Aureal... some intereseting stuff. I've got a sound card or two somewhere around here with that technology.

Kal