Video Asylum

Posted by cfraser (A) on August 06, 2014 at 10:31:52

In Reply to: RE: wonder why these ideas never caught on? posted by cloudwalker on August 05, 2014 at 19:28:06

Midrange controls were really common in the '70s. I still have a receiver with a midrange control and phono level controls (+ phono capacitance selection for MM) from then, as well as a zillion other switches...

These days, generally speaking, there is a drive to remove physical controls; they cost more and make construction more expensive. I say that because many even very cheap receivers have built-in graphic equalizers that you wouldn't know of just by looking at them. IOW they do most of stuff in the digital domain.

Not poking at you, but I don't know what the heck 11.2 or 9.1 or x.y means anymore. It used to mean discrete source channels, now all the "kids" say they have a 12.4 or whatever system and they use it to mean the number of speakers/subs they have. The manufacturers encourage this, just like they encourage calling them LED TVs. Rendering useful info to almost meaningless marketing gobble.

I have never seen a consumer audio source product with greater than 7.1 (i.e. qty. 8) *discrete* channels. There are tons of those these days. Pre-pros can't handle any more *discrete* channels than that AFAIK. I watched a BD the other day that was enhanced for 11.1 audio, I think it is the first, but there are still only 7.1 discrete audio channels, the other channels are derived using one of the few proprietary methods. It is possible to arrange sound to be "better" for the additional derived channels, just like they did for e.g. Dolby Digital 5.1 EX and DTS 5.1 ES for the back channels.

If that seems confusing, and it's all old really by this point, wait until you see what they want you to do with speakers starting very soon...don't know how people will call their HT speaker setups then.