Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Discs Use Different Audio Formats?
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Shiflan
 Posts: 418 |
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It depends on exactly what hardware you are using and how you have it hooked up. If you are using 2 speakers you should be setting your playback to stereo. If you are set on 5.1 and you only have two speakers connected the you'll be missing everything that plays on the center channnel, and that is usually a lot of the dialoge. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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Depends on the audiophile of course, but I have observed audiophiles who just refuse to listen to anything with mastering that isn't up to their standards; listening more for the sake of the audio quality than how much they like the actual content. Some of the, shall we say more moderate audiophiles appreciate and seek out the higher quality recordings where possible but accept that because of age, budget or whatever other reasons really high quality masters just don't exist and take music/films they like as they can get them. I imagine some of those are really bothered by the lack of quality, but probably most who are really bothered by it are in the "refuse to listen to it" category.
This. The ability of the equipment to reproduce the sound makes more of a difference than nature of the recording or number of speakers. Also, the quality of the speakers makes more of a difference than most people realise; people looking to get better quality sound will get a better amp and maybe a better player, but think "a speaker's a speaker". |
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Ouran High School Dropout
 Posts: 440 Location: Somewhere in Massachusetts, USA |
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Nice to see folks out there who truly understand this. Decades ago, someone told me that speakers should be the one component that requires the most scrutiny at purchase. While shopping for my current set-up, I would bring along several of my own live-action and anime discs for testing, and spent a collective 2-3 hours testing various Left/Center/Right units, surrounds, and subwoofers. It requires patience, but boy does it pay off. |
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zarzam
Posts: 19 |
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Actually even more important, and the most ignored factor, is the room. The best thing I ever heard were Two old Tannoy speakers with MacIntosh amps and a good consumer-grade CD player. it was an out-of body experience. The thing for me is that good, indistinguishible-from-original lossy compression is an art and requires an engineer that cares and quality control lest the thing go to sh*t. Lossless avoids the problem entirely. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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It helps that my dad's something of an audiophile, so I grew up with access to a pretty good receiver with pretty good speakers. And pretty good advice. Of course, when it came time to buy my own stereo equipment, I had a tighter budget to deal with and had to settle for less, but have since been able to get something decent.
One of my dad's friends, when he was getting his house built, found out that a room needed to be a minimum size to get a good sound in and the plans for his living room fell short by a meter. So he physically moved the markers that had been laid out where the wall was supposed to come to, and hoped the carpenter and bricklayer wouldn't notice or kick up a fuss. |
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Ouran High School Dropout
Posts: 440 Location: Somewhere in Massachusetts, USA |
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Funny you should mention this. While househunting a few years back, finding a room with a decent sound field was a priority, and no small task. |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13590 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Since I am more of a streaming person, this is essentially a foreign language to me. That said, when I do watch anime on DVD, as long it is has good basic quality, I could care less the audio being the most powerful version.
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Shiflan
Posts: 418 |
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Agreed 100% on both points. And I'd also throw in a 3rd one, though it applies more to popular music than it does to things like anime, and that is the intent behind the engineering and mastering processes. When the sound engineer sits down to master an album they often consider how people will listen to it and make adjustments to suit. These days the average listener is not going to have or be using a fancy HiFi setup. They'll be listening on car radio, using crappy headphones, basic TV speakers, or a mobile device like a phone or tablet. Thus the engineer will tweak things so it sounds good on those sorts of devices. For example, they might boost the bass expecting that the crappy cell phone speaker needs help in that department. They might cut out both the very low bass and the high end expecting that the customer's hardware can't play that back anyway. They might run the whole thing through a dynamic range compressor. Etc. All that is OK if you're listening on a tablet speaker but the moment someone decides to listen using a good hifi suddenly things will sound very off! And don't even get me started on autotune. Thankfully those sorts of shenanigans tend to be limited to modern pop music (think: Justin Beiber, Britney Spears, big-name hip hop, etc.) It doesn't tend to happen for niche things like anime, opera, classical, folk, etc. It also wasn't a problem for vintage albums because that sort of technology didn't exist at the time. The quality of the engineering/mastering of Japanese releases is well-known in the audiophile commuity. Japanese pressings of LPs and CDs command a high price compared to those from the US, UK, etc. I have not done any sort of detailed study of it, but I have never been disappointed with the quality of the recording on any of the hundreds of Japanese albums I own (both anime-related and not), whereas I have sometimes been disappointed by domestic (US) albums. |
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BigHeadClan
Posts: 283 |
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As someone who has a full home theater system I try and get
the best sounding audio I can regardless of what I'm watching. While I don't need something like 7.1 for my anime simply having 5.1 surround can really add to whatever it is I'm watching. And I can't wait for the day that streaming services start supporting the more dynamic audio formats. |
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Just Passing Through
Posts: 277 |
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[Homer]Hmmm, Akira... Hypersonic Audio...[/Homer]
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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Your not a true audiophile until you get your own utility pole.
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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But surely the pecunia non olet principle extends to electrical equipment as well... |
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Kurohayabusa
 Posts: 16 |
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It depends on what set up you're using as well. For example, if you are using stereo speakers or headphones on a computer, it would depend on if the program you're using downmixes 5.1 to stereo correctly (and if not, if your DAC is able to take a 5.1 signal and mix to stereo). For many 5.1 channel mixes, the voices are played through the center channel primarily, while the BGM/SE are through all channels. I once had a laptop with a HDMI 1.0 output which only supported stereo output, and when I plugged it into a receiver I basically only had the FL and FR channels, while everything else was lost, meaning at some points there were no voices altogether. tldr: So yes, it could be, depending on your setup |
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Ouran High School Dropout
Posts: 440 Location: Somewhere in Massachusetts, USA |
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I played that track. Once. Once was enough. 
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russ869
Posts: 428 |
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You didn't talk about all those DTS audio DVDs, like the special edition GITS: SAC releases. What about DTS Headphone X audio like they had on the Japanese BD of Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Dark Side of Dimensions?!
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