Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Axiom speakers for classical music?

As far as I can see on amazon.com and other places, DVD-Audio and SACD are far from coming to age when it comes to classical music. Yes there are some titles released, but many seem almost like an "experimental" recording with relatively obscure artists. Even those few titles with reputable artists tend not to be one of the artist's best performances. Selection seems so restricted that you have to buy them for the sake of experiencing a native surround-sound recording, rather than to enjoy your favorite artists' musical interpretation and performance. I am not one of those "audiophile" people who are more interested in improving the sound quality of one's equipment than the contents of the music itself. Rather, I am one of those wacky folks who opens and follows the orchestral full score while listening to symphonies. LOL

John, I just recently did that in one of my local hi-fi/HT stores. The 5.1 system seemed to be well calibrated. Unfortunately, however, I did not like the speakers (Infinities) they happened to demo in that room at all. But still I did very much enjoy one of my favorite recordings of Mahler's #8 "Symphony for one thousand" (a Denon recording with Eliafu Inbal conducting Frankfurt Radio Symphony). That experience certainly reinforced my motivation to go for a 5.1 system.

That said, of course my (our ) major reason for 5.1 is movies! Also, I have a rather large collection of classical music video DVDs and LDs, some of which are truly outstanding. I plan to buy a front projector as well in the near future. (now talk about WAF and KAF... )

2x6,

Sorry, as I posted in another thread, I live in Dallas, TX.

I'm with JohnK on sticking with stereo for CD's. I find DPLII puts too much of the sound into the center channel. Stereo recordings were meant to be listened to in stereo. 5 Channel Stereo, however, is great for parties. VERY loud!

I actually saw a program on discovery channel not too long ago about a person who was experimenting with sound.
One of the things they tried was to record the individual instruments from an orchestra and then setup a stage with platforms conforming to the location of each musical instrument. On each platform they placed a single speaker and then tried to replay the symphony essentially using a seperate source for each speaker which replayed the music.
It was an attempt at reproducing true live sound using home speaker equipment. I can't remember the rest of the details. I started falling asleep.

Sushi,
Once again i reply to your postings.

I typically use the DPL2 for music.
Although there are hardcore stereophiles out there, i find the DPL2:music (not DPL2:theatre) keeps the stereo sound up front but kicks in the surrounds just a bit in the rear to add the surround effect without being overbearing or collapsing the sound in any one direction. The surround sounds from certain recordings truly makes the sound image far more realistic to me.
I never use DPL2:theatre because i find it collapses the sound into the centre channel way too much.

I always considered myself a "stereophile"; I abhorred any sort of DSP for 2 channel music. All the salesmen kept telling me about DPLII and I just didn't care. But after I got my receiver, I listened to it, and I think it sounds great. I not a big classical listener, but I'd imagine that it would create a fantastic full sound for that live setting.

My M60s produce a pretty accurate center image in stereo mode anyhow, so switching to DPLII doesn't collapse things to the center as much as fill out the center even more.

Good to hear various opinions on DPL II... I took note of the importance of setting it correctly to the Music mode.

I am clearly inexperienced in surround sound systems, but what really impressed me at the store demo the other day was the reproduction of the hall ambience. I knew that the CD I brought for the demo contained a lot of indirect sounds (most classical concert halls are acoustically VERY live with a long decay time; I understand that unless you seat right in front of the stage, over 80% of what you hear in a typical symphonic concert is indirect sound!). I was amazed that all those reverbration sounds actually surrounded me rather than coming from the front. Moreover, the off-stage brass ensemble, which Mahler often uses in his symphonies, indeed sounded "remote" and indirect, clearly separate from the rest of the orchestra and chorus -- something I had never heard from this recording before.

This recording is certainly an extremely good one, but still it is a traditional 2-channel CD. I was stunned by the amount and quality of spacial ques that can be exracted from traditional 2-ch sourses by the latest incarnation of matrix decoding technologies.

Cheers!