How to get the Best Value from your Home Theater Investment with the help of ‘Pink Floyd’.

Okay, so you read the title of the article and probably thought, “that’s a typo” or you were probably thinking does he mean ‘Pink NOISE’. Or maybe you were thinking, that title is too long. Well the answer to both questions is no. It’s not a typo and no I don’t mean pink noise, I really do mean Pink Floyd and I just couldn’t make the title any shorter.

Now as to your home theater investment some of you have invested lots of money and some of you have what may be called a budget system. Now I am also pretty sure that many of you are interested in anything that can show your better half that your home theater investment is a really good value when it comes to entertainment. I would guess that almost all of you have a DVD player and certainly some of you have a multi-disc DVD player like one of the Oppo multi-disc players. Even if you don’t, you can get a really good multi-disc player for not a lot of dough.

So how does all this relate to Pink Floyd?

Bear with me, I will get to that.

Well what many of you might not realize is that under the right circumstances you may have a hidden treasure in your HT that can open up a whole new world of entertainment. So let’ just say you happen to have a DVD player that supports DVD Audio or even plain old DVD multi-channel sound or you have one of the many multi-disc players available today. This means you can experience world class multi-channel music on your system and if the right multi-channel source material is chosen, the whole act of listening will be transformed in to a totally new experience.

I know I am asking you to try something a little different than just watching your favorite action movie and listening to the same old  multi-channel explosions from your favorite movie, but bear with me a little longer. I think once you do listen to a very good multi-channel music source on your system you may find that you can tell subtle differences in source material and presentation that you just miss when you listened to your favorite music in stereo.

You see, many Home Theater systems actually could be classified as a world class multi-channel music system and yet the owners of these systems may not even know it, or even tried true multi-channel music before.

Now I am sure you are wondering, how can that be. Well if you have a decent Home Theater system you have the potential to own a world class multi-channel music system. I say potential because just having a Home Theater system doesn’t guarantee you a great multi-channel music system. But for any of you with an Oppo multi-disc player or any number of other multi-disc DVD players, the potential is there.

And for those that don’t have any kind of multi-disc DVD player or even a SACD player, there are many on the used market that can be had for as little as 200 dollars and up. Now I am not saying multi-channel is better than Stereo or anything else for that matter. What I am trying to do, is show you a new way to use your HT to get more value from your investment.

Multi-channel

If you choose the correct multi-channel music and by that I mean music that was mixed and mastered specifically for a 5.1 multi-channel presentation, well with that music you hear things on your HT that you and your significant other never heard before. You may discover a whole new world of music enjoyment. It doesn’t replace all the other forms of music, it just adds a little spice to the mix and after all you already paid for your HT, so it has to be worth just one listen, right.

Now you see for the most part multi-channel movies use the rear and side channels to convey ambiance or support for sound coming from the front speakers. This matrix approach does not give the same kind of experience or presentation that you will find on properly mixed multi-channel 5.1 music. The rear and side channels often carry a mirror signal of the other but in multi-channel music, the artist can convey something unique to each channel. After many years multi-channel music has changed from what could be termed a gimmick to a legitimate form of artistic expression. And for those keeping track of such things, multi-channel music has been around a long time, since at least the early  1970s. And although I will admit that many multi-channel efforts in the beginning were gimmicky at best, today there are multi-channel wizards like Steve Wilson that seem to be able to transform multi-channel sound in to true multi-channel music.

Vatious musicians and sound engineers have been mixing and mastering multi-channel sound for many years. Now when you combine this multi-channel source material with a decent HT system, it can turn music in to a whole new experience. There are now DVD, Bluray, DVD Audio and SACD titles available by the thousands. These various titles were mastered and mixed just for one or more of the formats that I just listed. And now here is where Pink Floyd comes in.

If you are up for it, the easiest thing to do is go online and purchase Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon SACD and or The Beatles Love in DVD Audio. Listen to these on your HT system and if your system is decent, you will either have an epiphany or you may get sick to your stomach, either way you will not be able to say that multi-channel music did not affect you .

In my next article, if there is a next article, I will do a deep dive on some of the best multi-channel music of all time and I will list many more titles that were specifically mastered and mixed for a multi-channel music presentation. And I will try to go in depth on what to listen for on your HT system. You may be able to stun and amaze your friends, but instead of using movies you can use multi-channel music like Dark Side of The Moon or Depeche Mode.

Goal of a good HT system

Let’s face it; the goal of a good HT system is to immerse you in the moment of the movie by using sound to make the moment seem that much more real. We are talking about literally allowing you to experience what the characters on the screen are experiencing, at least as close as make believe can do that. Well multi-channel music is another way that the artist can allow you to experience the music. If it is done correctly, you experience something very different from just listening like a bystander. You can feel the music go through you as it goes from one channel to the other.

You  can say that you participate with the music. It may wear you out or make you uncomfortable but if it does, then you will know that your HT is probably dialed in about as well as it can be. And your next movie should be that much more real for each individual that hears it. So your multi-channel experience should at least make your multi-channel movie sound better.

Last but not least, I can guarantee that some of you will find the experience pleasing and you will pursue more multi-channel music. Those of you that fall under its spell will want to come back for more multi-channel bliss. Or for some of you like me, you have been listening to multi-channel music for years. For you these articles should help you as you go further in to the multi-channel world, I have been there for a long time and have tried almost every thing there is to try.

And for those readers that want to experience more multi-channel music, come back for the next installment of multi-channel music and we can compare our MCH experiences. You may not know that PS Audio has several components that can make your multi-channel experience world class and I am not sure they even know itJ. But over time I will spill the beans on each and every component that can make the multi-channel music experience better.

But that as they say, is another story.

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