Stereo or neo6?

[goodtimes]

calling all you music freaks, do you listen to your music in stereo or does yahall listen in neo6?

[Kenny Glasgow]

I listen to music in TAG McLaren TMS5+ Sub

[MarkE19]

Normally just plain old stereo. If I feel like playing around with music though I sometimes listen with the processor set to Logic7. I've tried neo:6, but was not overly impressed.

Mark.

[KillerOfThreads]

Tried Neo 6 and PL 2 and CSS in their 'music' modes but always end up in stereo.

All o.k. for a laugh, but gimmiky (Is that a word?)

[eviljohn2]

I always end up in vanilla stereo although my favourite of the processing options available to me is Circle Surround 2: Music.

[Mandel]

I prefer to use a matrix decoder rather than plain 2 channel stereo. Seems a bit of a waste to only use two of my speakers, and I am big fan of the centre channel. No more of the 'left and right with most of the music in a diffuse virtual centre' that results from 2 channel stereo.

I use DTS:Neo6 for stereo classical material, as it gives a better sound stage than PL2, but use PL2 (music mode, definitely not movie) for pop/rock as it's better at decoding any of the phasing information in the recording.

[Spooky]

If its designed to be heard in Stereo then why put an artificial process in?
Neo 6 and PL2 arent that impressive IMHO.
If you want to listen to Multichannel music try DVDA or SACD
Spooky

[Mandel]

May I just ask what the people above mean by DTS:Neo 6 being 'gimmiky'? I've found that Neo:6 in music mode does little except spread the music across the front 3 channels and provide a little ambience from the rears.

Originally Posted by Spooky

If its designed to be heard in Stereo then why put an artificial process in?
Neo 6 and PL2 arent that impressive IMHO.
If you want to listen to Multichannel music try DVDA or SACD
Spooky

Ideally yeah I prefer SACD or some other discrete quad format. However PL2/Neo:6 are both designed to decode matrixed material, and all music has some of this in. Sometimes it doesn't add much, but I've never found it has taken away. Maybe I've been listening in multichannel for so long that 2 channel stereo just sounds a little dull.

[dynamic turtle]

Neo6 & DPL2 massacre music. Using matrix decoding is heresy of the highest order!

[eviljohn2]

I've found that it very much depends on how your amplifier implements bass management, some do this very well and channel it around really well whilst others do a rubbish job. I also think that most people havn't given these decoders the time they deserve as they're very tuneable within the amp settings.

I have the same reservations about all forms of multi-channel music and that's that you really have to sit still in the "sweet spot" for it to be of any value. I usually sit at 90deg and way off axis with my speakers or am actually doing things around my room or the house which makes it all a bit (including stereo) a bit overkill for my purposes.

I disagree that sound engineers deliberatly encode this material into the recordings I'm afraid - they're mixed as pure stereo.

[KillerOfThreads]

Originally Posted by Mandel

May I just ask what the people above mean by DTS:Neo 6 being 'gimmiky'?

Gimmiky from the point of view that it wrecks the mix to add extra channels. As eviljohn2 said it is flexible, but on my Kenwood 9060, getting on now I know, Neo6 and PL2 can be adjusted to a degree but CS you can tweak and tweak, and you end up fiddling so much to try to get the right sound that you destroy the original sound.

People I've played it to over the last three years seem very impressed with it to begin with and then ask to switch it back to stereo to compare the sound, and their very next words are 'it's a good gimmick but it sounds better switched out'.

[goodtimes]

The reason I picked my AX5i is because of its dsp modes ,they seemed so good at spreading the sound around without killing the mix too much,my old kenwood add alsorts of sounds into the mix to beef it up. Im now trying 7 stereo its noy bad at filling the room with sound.