Thread: Importance of Surround

Posts: 1

Post by Arthur June 23, 2007 (1 of 1)
For about three months I was relegated to listening in stereo due some equipment problems compounded by my rather shaky employment situation. Prior to that I listened in 4.1. (Since I had reflective Definitive Technology speakers that really spread the sound I felt pretty comfortable with my listening set-up prior to the equipment crash). Well, this weekend I was able to replace my surround receiver and add an inexpensve center channel speaker. I was somewhat wary of what the results might be since the center channel (Boston Acoustics) wasn't anything near the quality of what I was used to.

But to my pleasant surprise, it works just fine!

More importantly I have been listening to many recordings with new ears! Extons had previously been among my favoraites from a sonic standpoint. And they're still good, but their discs have shown just about the least improvement. It seems that they barely use the center channel, and what they do use is for ambience only.

Not surprisingly (from the tenor of the comments here) PentaTones in general showed the biggest improvement! I can barely contain my excitement with how incredible the Mendelssohn Trios disc is; I already loved the performance!

But the single biggest improvement I've encountered so far was the Mendelssohn Octet on Praga. Without the center channel this recording seemed to lose all the important lines, and further to simply have a kind of a mask over the entire proceedings.

This experience shows me quite definitively that those of you who have been campaigning for a more thorough explanation of the equipment used have a really valid point!

Thank you.

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