About

Introduction

Right after the holidays I received an unexpected gift:  a set of high-quality surround sound speakers.  Now I’m a huge music-head – over the years I’ve collected over 6000 CDs, tons of vinyl,  and 500 gigs of MP3s – plus I’ve always had a pretty good sound system set-up at home.  But nothing had prepared me for the joy of sitting in the middle of my living room soaking in the sweet spot of crystal clear 5.1 surround sound music.  I was hooked from the minute I popped in my first surround-sound mixed album…

For the last couple of months, I’ve been building up a decent collection of DVD-As and SACDs. They’re not as easy to find as I originally thought – there’s very few record stores left anymore (and even less that keep a stock of them), only a few online retailers that specialize in surround sound and audiophile music, and Amazon’s listings are difficult to navigate and hardly complete. But more frustrating was the fact that I found very little guidance or advice as to which 5.1 mixed music is essential and worth tracking down (and which isn’t), nor did I find much information about future releases and the long-term viability of this music. Sadly, it seems I’m sort of late to the game; from the little that I’ve learned, the whole hi-fi CD idea peaked a few years ago (as the mass-market shrugged its shoulders at the new technology) and now the music industry has a lot of bigger things to worry about (like the continued existance of any kind of CDs) so it doesn’t seem like there’s going to be lots of action of the 5.1 front outside of seriously major pop/rock artists and a steady stream of classical music.

That said, I know there’s a lot of people who are as passionate and excited about 5.1 music as I am. With HDTV becoming more prevalent, excellent home theater sound systems capable of quality playback for 5.1 music are showing up in more and more people’s houses. Regular peeks at eBay’s surround sound listings show that the best titles retain nearly their full value used (something you defintely don’t see with regular CDs), and some out-of-print ones can go for $40 or more.

Most importantly, my recent experiences with 5.1 music has got me thinking alot about fidelity and timelessness, two aspects of music that seem to be getting short-shrift these days, what with the music industry’s cliff-dive and the widespread adoption of MP3s as the digital music standard. Anyone with a computer and an ipod now has more access to more music that ever before and they can carry it all around with them whereever they go, yet the actual quality of the sounds most people are hearing is significantly inferior to what has come before, thus rendering all that music more temporary and disposible. I’m not saying that any of this is reversible or even necessarily bad, but I do think something important is being lost.

I hope to cover all of this and more in the weeks and months ahead at SoundSurrounded.

My set-up

First off, let me state clearly that I’m NOT an audiophile. I don’t lust after $20,000 speakers or rare vacuum tube amps. At this point, I can’t really tell the difference between Dolby and DTS. I love great sound, especially at concerts but also at home – but I enjoy music in many ways…I have a crappy pre-installed car stereo, I often use Apple earbuds with my iPod (though I use my Etymotic ER4s on airplanes), and I have a Bose Radiowave in my bedroom. But I know quality when I hear it, and my current set-up at home is the best sounding system I’ve ever had.

SPEAKERS

These were the gift that started it all…

Orb Audio’s People’s Choice Home Theater Speaker System