Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat Who wants height channels?

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Who wants height channels?

The well healed who have everything else I suppose, Cheers Chris

For me...no thanks.

I'm not pining for it. I'd have to hear what sort of improvement it would make. 7.1 made no noticeable difference over 5.1 in my nine by five meter room.

If I had limitless money, me. Purely because I believe the guys who say that a spherical encoding of the acoustic sound field would be the most realistic (for recording live music). But there is virtual no such material available anyway.

There must be loads of B-format recordings in existence as session tapes (because that's the default format of the original Soundfield microphone) but (probably) none ever got as far as a release in a decodable format.

I have heared in the past demonstrations of 2+2+2 on DVD-A
That is very good with a recording made for it.

We even have support for that with Meridian processors, and the catalogue is only 50 titles perhaps.

Artificially created height from Prologix 2x is perhaps less good, but i never had a good demonstration of that.

Also i do not think you can compare it with going from 5.1 to 7.1, but from 2.0 to 5.1, it adds a dimension.

I want to have height channels

Robert

As usual, I need to remind everyone that Bob Stuart (and others) believes that height channels are much more important psycho-acoustically than rear/surround channels. Obviously, retro-fitting surround speakers into living rooms was easier than ceiling speakers.

I may want extra 'wide' channels, but no 'height'.

I tried several Audyssey DSX receivers/processors and filled (literally!) my cinema room (a bit under 7x5m) with speakers up to the (divorce) menacing full 11.2 system.

My experience is this: going from 5.1 we all know/use/enjoy...
-a second SW makes biggest difference
-then the extra wide channels (yes! like super-Trifield width!)
-then the extra rears (our also 'usual' 7.1) but this depends on room/listening seat distribution
-and last will be the height channels. My room has not very high ceiling (2'7m), so maybe in a different room this may change too.

Audyssey blurb says something on the lines of 'we focus our hearing more in front of us thus there is where you want to put more sound sources'... and I think they got right.

This was my experience with Denon and Onkyo receivers, and btw 'she' agreed when listening, but was NOT happy at all with the sight of L+R+C+LW+RW+LH+RW=7!! speakers in the front wall.

Regards,
Josep

I see your post now VK, I agree on this, but as said (and to my surprise) was the extra-wide channels and not the height the ones that made most difference.
Forgot to mention I tried this too in a friend's system with (very) high ceiling, same result. I was expecting otherwise (in my room, wide but not very high, it seemed 'normal' the preference for extra wide over height).

How niche would height channels be ? Dedicated cinema rooms maybe. Domestic living rooms ...highly unlikely IMHO.

At the Bristol gig this year it was suggested by a well known HQ chap that multichannel
Sooloos was a nice-to-have but unlikely as the was not enough need. Too niche.

An additional question might thus be:

Would you like to have height channels or MC Sooloos?

Josep, I should say that there is really not much point with height channels unless the audio is recorded/mixed with height information. I'm sure that M can do clever DSP tricks, but it's not going to be the real thing. The real thing isn't out there in any meaningful sense.