What I Surrounded Myself With On Holiday

I'm just back from a relaxing week in Ireland - to be more precise in Cushendall on the Antrim Coast. As much of a family visit (my wife's mother and brother live over there) as a holiday we had rented a rather lovely holiday flat for the week as the picure below shows. The weather was a little iffy but this did not cause too much concern on my part, not least as in my advancing years my need for activity on holiday diminishes and the availability of books to read and a ready supply of liquid sustenance (and that's usually coffee!) is good enough for me.


There was one considerable additional attraction to our home for the week and that was the presence of a 5.1 Surround Sound system. Much as I love movies I've not yet indulged in a home surround system and have been a little sceptical of the benefits of this to music. For the latter, I remain wedded to the view that I'm (at least in theory) listening to a performance by a band where I'm in the audience and they are on stage in front of me, and not surrounding me. In other words, my preference seems to sound very much like stereo

Conclusions? Mixed, I think.

The live concert DVD's I took along with me (all Bruce Springsteen as it happens) did not much more than to give an expanded version of the Stereo soundstage. The back channels were not much more than the sound of the audience and it did give some impression of sitting in a concert hall right down to, rather bizarrely in my opinion, the echo of the drums coming off the back wall! As such, much of the music was drenched in a greater amount of echo than is the case for the stereo mix.

I also took Brian Wilson's DVD's of SMiLE and That Lucky Old Sun. Although live performances (and I remain of the view that there has been an element of post-performace sweetening) these were set out with a view to recording and so are not the same as a live concert as such. My first disappointment was in being reminded that my version of SMiLE was a Region 1 disc so it would not play. That Lucky Old Sun was able to play and was thoroughly enjoyable but I'm not sure how much of a benefit there was to my ears - it certainly put you in the middle of the stage but that does seem a false place to be when listening to music.

I had also taken the 40th anniversary DVD of Pet Sounds and this was most interesting as the 5.1 mix allowed a better seperation of the instruments from the voices. If anything would encourage me to invest in surround sound this would have been the best advocate amongst the things I took along.

I did have another disappointment when listening to the DVD of the The Beatles' Love album - this plays as a continuous edit but there were gaps between the tracks which broke the magic of this album and I must confess that I didn't listen to it fully.

At this point in time, I think home surround sound is grand for movies (and probably those of a particular kind with lots of effects) but I think the jury remains out for music.