Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Stereo or Trifield ?

How do you listen CD's, Trifield or stereo ?

We have a rahter heated discussion on www.htforum.nl were we have two Meridian owners against almost the whole forum.

We two are of the opinion that in the future (starting with Trifield) stereo will be outphased and that there will be DSP's maybe even better than Trifield which will make the stereo recordings sound more like real.

The discussion has gone almost this way.

I'm of the opinion that Stereo is just a phrase and that it doesnot mean that you HAVE to listen to 2 speakers.

What do you want from a reproduction ?
You want the way it should sound in real life.

I know that when mixing the mixer always takes into account what happens from left to right, so adding a center speaker is no problem at all, according to me this is the best way to listen to stereo.

Ambiance is often captured in phase differences in the stereo tracks, if this is extracted with for example Trifield than the surrounds take over the sound of the recording room.

In other words the main soundstage SHOULD stay in front of you, but the soundPLACE should be arround you.

This is why DPL-II music for me is out of the question, it adds way more than natural.
Trifield is not perfect but at the moment I primarly listen to Trifield.

Because the other forum members cannot test it I wonder how we as Meridian owners think about this.

One remark was for example, you should stay loyal to the recording, meaning stereo is stereo and 5.1 is 5.1, I heard DVD-A in 7.1 on a 861 and I would never want to use 5.1

Very anxious to see your remarks.

Greetings,
Frank

You're preaching to the quire here.

Trifield for me.

Frank,
i�m with you, not from the Trifield side i am with Logic 7 from Lexicon.
Everytime when i�m bashed for listening with more then 2 speakers i got the pure hate of the 2-CH hardliners. They ignore that stereo was at first 3-CH: L-C-R!
If you have some samplers from RCA, there you can see in the booklet a record studio car with 3 pods (L-C-R). TZhey didn�t got three channels into the good old vinyl record. At this point an intermediate product becomes cult.
Don�t get me wrong, i don�t go any time with MC, but most of the times. I love live record, and none of the so called 2-CH popes can explain why the audience is behind the musicans, instead of being around me. Sound like Sahrah Key( beware good that this music is on my platter or CD)so clinical and death must be listened 2-CH. There is no live in the production: No need for MC.
That may be the point why you are bashed in a so called audiophile forum. Theese duys don�t like the live performance, the miss the sense of music: to be envolved and emphasised. Live to them is a compromise. If they realize how theoretical their disc. is, the have to serch arguements why they paid so much money for the wrong and often bad equipment.

Stay strong, my best wishes
Armin

Frank,
Im also with you- I would add that I prefer to listen in whatever playmack mode seems the most pleasing. While I generally mean "realistic" it could sometimes be less realistic- an example would be heavily tracked music. I mean- how does Dark Side of The Moon sound in real life anyway?!

to the 2 ch purists, I would tell them that stereo was originally planned to use 3 channels- but the technology wasnt there. modes like Trifield and Logic 7 really help the experience. I have been listening exclusively in Trifield for years now. Once in a while I try it as just plain 2.0 and the other modes, DPLII Mus 6, etc. I always come back to Trifield.

Hooray for Trifield!!!!

i heard 568.2mm with 598mm in my friends' system.

triefield sounded much better than stereo.
but this is because stereo was just very far from satisfactory.
i can;t say that triefiled was good enough.

obviously i can't judge by one audition on not familiar system - but you, guys, have you ever compared yor 56x against good pure stereo preamps?

Yes- but its so hard to compare systems. Most of my comparisons are done either at show rooms or shows featuring mega buck equipment that is supposed to be truly wonderful. While Ive heard some very good sounding setups, I prefer the M system using Trifield. I suppose that just makes me a different kind of "audiophile"- ultimately, what matters is that one finds what one actually wants with all this gear. The day I find something that is more pleasing to me than the M gear, I will switch.

Practically all 2 channel recordings are pan-potted mono, meaning that they are only amplitude adjusted to create the left-right imaging. That means we are trying to imagine the imaginary soundstage in front of us with only one of the two main sound localization method (ILD) that our brain uses. But all is not at peace, since our brain is receiving conflicting information, with the other method ITD that does not correspond with the ILD information.

Trifield, besides re-distributing the LR signal to a center channel in an energy preservation manner, also tries to re-introduce ITD into what we hear. That way, the ILD and ITD information that our brain process is more in sync with each other, allowing us to truly localize sound w/o conflicting information that would confuse us.

So to listen to pan-potted music w/o Trifield is not really listening to true sound at all.

On purist recordings that preserve the true accoustic environment, Trifield would not really enhance frontal soundstage.

If you just want re-distribution of the L-R sound into the center channel, you could just use the Music mode.

Both mode would extract the ambience in the recording and put the in the surround channel.

Trifield was one of the main reasons that I started down the Meridian road in the first place. I've got L/C/R speakers and processor but only a CD player, so multi-channel sources are not relevant yet. An important and non-upgradable part of my music system, my ears, are not "balanced": I don't know exactly what the problem is, I've never had it checked. My hearing is generally quite acute but I have trouble localising the source of sound. I suspect that I've lost some of the high frequency sensitivity in one ear. Anyway, the effect is that with two-speaker stereo systems which I auditioned there was always an unsettling feeling that things were off-centre, with the main vocals over to the right. The 500/568 in Trifield snapped things back into position. I had always assumed this was just because the physical centre speaker was carrying most of the lead vocal, but it may well be the time alignment aspect described in the post above that is doing it. I didn't buy the whole system in one go, but started with the 500 and L/R pair of 5000s. With this setup you still get a balance control which is not just lounder on one side but time aligned too. This created a very "real" shifting of the sound image for me, so perhaps I'm particularly sensitive to the timing factor, possibly to compensate for the other hearing issue. I'm sure that lots of people have less than 20/20 hearing, so this is a important benefit of Trifield.

One thing that I'm still not 100% clear about is Trifield and rear-speakers. Before finding this forum I had assumed that Trifield used three front speakers only, just beacuse of the name and that was how it was demo'd by the dealer. But I've seen postings here that suggest it will use two rear speakers to provide ambiance too. Is that right? If so then I'm quite intrigued to know how it would sound. I think that this year's addition to the system will probably be a G98, mainly for DVD-A. I will probably stretch to upgrading my 568.1 to 568.2 also. An alternative would be to upgrade the processor and buy a couple of DSP 33s as rear speakers, to get more out of my existing CD collection, leaving the DVD player until next year.

DSP33s are a bit of an overkill for rears purely for Trifield use. Rears for Ambisonics, Multichannel Music and Films are much more important. You may also find that turning the Trifield rears on in an acoustically 'live' room sounds excessive.

UA,
You said so well exactly what I was trying to say. Thank you.

SmoothSound,
I have a 7.0 setup in a room that is designed to have optimum sound and has acoustic treatments. The surrounds add ambience to the sound. With recordings like Dark Side of The Moon, you will get what seem to be discrete surround effects. I bet I could fool quite a few people into thinking the version of DSOTM is actually a surround version. On most recordings its just ambience added though. its almost like Trifield knows that on multi tracked recodings like Floyd, go ahead and put certain things around you- and it does it so naturally- and then on recodrings like jazz, just add some ambience. It really enhances the sense of musicality. It makes it seem more "alive". I pick that word because on recordings like Genesis' Abacab, which I listened to yesterday, it pulls some of the synthesizers to the side/ back of the sound field. In a very cool way that makes you think the front speakers are imaging like crazy. Yet, if you put on a song like "Misunderstanding" (from Duke) which is more straight rock&rolly you get a soundfield thats more focused up front, but still not totally so. As you can tell- I really enjoy it!

As to ambience, you can tell the mode which surrounds to use- and you can also use a filter on the speakers- for example, I use a 7khz filter on the sides to help tone them down just slightly.

Mudge / Jerry

Both your points are very relevant to me. I'm already slightly concerned about the physical size and the decibels that rear speakers will add. Also when I set out with Meridian I assumed that 5.1 was the ultimate end point, but now I've learned more it seems that 7.1 is more relevant for surround music. However in a room of my size 7.1 would not really be sensible using 33s. One answer would be four smaller, less powerful, active speakers from another manufacturer. I discounted that idea partly because I wasn't sure about mixing DSP and analogue speakers, particularly whether the whole surround effect might just fall apart because of timing or tonal differences. Even with M33s, which I imagine are tonally just like DSP33s, I'd be worried that I'd lose the timing that the all-digital system with DSP speakers gives.

(I've just realised that the DSP420 is comparable to the DSP33 in many ways: quite possibly the same electronics and speakers. The price of a pair of these seems to come out almost exactly the same as a pair of DSP33s. But this thread is about Trifield, so I'll leave this for now.)

David

[This message has been edited by SmoothSound (edited 01-04-2004).]

When you say Trifield or stereo do you mean only in a sytem that has at least 3 speakers as I only have 2 but sometimes I use tri otherwise I use Direct or stereo.

Skooby