Scoping software: two-channel and surround-sound mixes. (The Music).

Bach, Johann Christian: Piano Concerto 13 (4-6) and Piano Concerto 14. Hanover Band; Anthony Halstead, piano and conducting. Recorded in 1999, at Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead, England. Engineer: Nicholas Parker. 63+ minutes. CPO 999 691.

The stereo presentation of this period-instrument presentation was excellent, with realistic ambiance and detail. Better yet was the sound with Dolby Pro Logic Decoding (DPL), which when delivered by my Yamaha DSP-A1 adjusted to back off the center level -3 dB, managed to stabilize the soundstage when listening from off the center axis. DPL also put some recorded reverb further out into the listening room. The Yamaha's Classical/Opera mode was even better, with equal soundstage stabilization and a better hall-ambiance sound. The standard Yamaha hall simulations (which do not utilize a steered center channel) were also good, although when listening from anywhere but the center axis the soundstage had the usual tendency to skew towards the nearer main-channel speaker.

Bach, Johann Sebastian: Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord, volume 2 Lucy van Dael, violin; Bob van Asperen, harpsichord. Recorded in 1999, at St. Michael's Church, London. Engineer: Eleanor Thomason. 49+ minutes. Naxos 8.554783.

I reviewed volume 1 of this series in Issue 87, and will state here that Naxos continues to hold its own in terms of sound quality with any other label out there. The stereo presentation was excellent, with a moderate spread and good middle-distance listening perspective. DPL decoding, as long as the center was backed off by 3 dB, was quite good. There was some squeezing, but the added distance was not significant and the surround-channel feed added a nice sense of hall space. The Yamaha processor's Classical/ Opera mode was even better, with soundstaging equal to DPL and a better sense of hall space projected into the room.

Paganini, Nicolo: Centone di Sonate, volume 3. Moshe Hammer, violin; Norbert Kraft, Guitar. Recorded in 1995, at St. John Chrysostom Church, Newmarket, Canada. Engineer: Bonnie Silver. 73+ minutes. Naxos 8.553143.

There is a nice sense of space with this presentation, with a front-row perspective in a smallish hall. The sound is very clear and detailed. The Yamaha processor's Classical/Opera mode, as well as DPL decoding, move us further from the stage than this music deserves, and unless one is sitting off axis to some degree, a better choice would be straight stereo or a two-channel ambiance extraction or synthesizing program of some kind. The smaller hall simulations available from the Yamaha processor did this quite well.

Incidentally, a well-regarded speaker designer pointed out to me that this release is one of the few he has heard that appears to have genuine vertical imaging, with the violin sound appearing to be slightly higher up than the guitar sound. This may involve two things. First, the cover art for the album booklet has a picture that shows the violin higher up than the guitar, and the power of suggestion can be a strong factor in what we think we hear. Second, in most systems tweeters are mounted higher up than midrange and woofer drivers, and violins have higher harmonics and fundamentals than guitars. However, these are only partial explanations, and try as I may, I was still pretty sure myself that the violin image did indeed appear to be higher up than the guitar. And I listened to this piece with both my MTTM Allison IC-20 models and a pair of MTM Dunlavy Cantatas. The violin still sounded slightly higher up. Go figure.

Schumann, Robert: Concerto For Piano and Orchestra, op. 54; Concert-Allegro With Introduction and Allegro Appasionato. Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne; Christian Zacharias, piano and conducting. Recorded in 2000. Engineer: Werner Dabringhaus. 61+ minutes. MD&G 340 1033.

The soundstage here is excellent, with a properly sized piano, nice integration, and a fairly wide spread. The Yamaha processor's Classical/ Opera mode was just plain superb, if the usual -3 dB backoff in center level was executed. DPL decoding, while not quite as spacious as Classical/Opera, was still superior to straight stereo playback.

Beethoven, Ludwig V.: Symphony Number 6; Ottorino Respighi: Pines of Rome. New Jersey Symphony, conducted by Zdenek Macal. Recorded in 2000, at Prudential Hall, Newark. Engineers: Mark Waldrep, Andrew Giacumakis, and Kevin Mochel. Aix Records 80006.

This is an unusual release, in that it is a two sided disc, with DVD-A tracks on one side (with Meridian Lossless Packing) and DD/DTS tracks on the other. The second side also includes DVD ROM web site connection software, and a whole lot of supplemental features.

The DVD-A tracks make use of a standard "audience-perspective" mix that puts the listener out in the hall, with the orchestra up front and with the ambiance coming from the surround channels. The resulting presentation is on the small-scale side (the Respighi piece has nowhere near the broad-scale impact of the 1983 Dutoit/ Montreal release on London), and almost has a period-instrument feel to it. However, the sound is also intimate and very clear, and in many ways is more workable than larger-scale versions, particularly with the Beethoven material. The center appears to be a L+R blend, with a phantom overlay. This is not usually a problem with broad-staged orchestral works.

The Alternate DD and DTS tracks also sound very good. The DD track also features the "audience" mix (at a rather retro 384 kbps data rate, however), and to my ears it sounds as good as the DVD-A material. With a direct, A/B comparison it might be possible to hear differences, but the DD tracks are still anything but sonic chopped liver. This side also includes visuals, with multiple camera angles, which gives you an idea of what the orchestra looks like when it performs. The DVD-A tracks on the other side do not offer this feature.

The DTS tracks (coded at a hefty 1509 kbps) offer us a "stage" mix, which puts us into the midst of the ensemble. This is not particularly realistic from the perspective of a typical concert goer, but it is interesting, and it also includes visuals of the orchestra performing. This kind of soundstaging is not my bag, but who knows, it might be the wave of the classical-music future. As long as a conventional perspective is also offered, I have no complaints.

In addition to the well-recorded music, the disc is practically a tutorial in musicology. It contains a huge amount of supplemental material on the DD/DTS side, including running commentaries on the music by Macal (Respighi) and Jamie Bernstein Thomas (Beethoven), poop on the orchestra, conductor, and composers, behind the scenes session photos, a list of web connections, set-up instructions for a surround-sound audio rig, and a section on how to use the disc itself.

The flyer that comes with the disc has little technical or musical information other than some instructions on which side to play on whatever kind of DVD player you have. So you need to access the disc itself to learn about what is going on from a musicological standpoint. Once you are into that, you are given a raft of interesting and educational information. It would be a definitely worthwhile addition to any surround-sound music collection.

Tchaikovsky, Peter: 1812 Overture, Capriccio Italien, Marche Slave, and other, shorter works. Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, conducted by Erich Kunzel, along with the Kiev Symphony Chorus and Children's Choir of Greater Cincinnati. Recorded in 1998 and 1999, in Music Hall, Cincinnati, and also the Masonic Auditorium, Cleveland. Engineers: Jack Renner and Michael Bishop. 60+ minutes. Telarc DVDA 70541.

Telarc has only produced two DVD-A releases so far, and from what I have heard the company may only concentrate on SACD technology for future surround-sound releases. I am not sure this is a good idea from a business standpoint, since if both formats fail (not inconceivable) at least those who opted to purchase DVD-A recordings will be able to listen to the alternate surround-sound tracks on DVD video players in DD or DTS form. With SACD, the alternate tracks (if the company decides to use them at all) are strictly in two-channel sound. Of course, nobody knows for sure who will be producing what in the future.

Anyway, the music performances on all the tracks I listened to were technically very well done, with very good clarity and instrumental delineation, to say the least. The surround-mix center feed appears to be a discrete channel, and the surround ambiance was done the way it should be done, without excessive reverb (see below) and also without loading up the surround channels with instrumentation, something that some other labels appear to think is cool, even with classical music. The soundstage is close up and wide, with a degree of intimacy that indicates a listening perspective oriented toward the more forward rows in a good concert hall.

The playback options this disc offers are somewhat involved. As with the Beethoven/ Respighi disc reviewed above, this is a two-sided release. DVD-A material is on one side, in both surround sound and two-channel form. On the other side we have the DTS surround-sound alternate tracks (at the full 1509 kbps data rate) and PCM stereo version (in 48/16 form, at 1536 kbps). A notation on the back of the container indicates that both DTS and Dolby Digital tracks were on the flip side of the disc. However, I could find no mention of Dolby Digital on any of the disc menus, and the information booklet also made no mention of Dolby. This appears to be a DVD-A, DTS, and PCM disc, only. This should not be a problem for the vast bulk of users.

The blurb on the disc booklet indicated that the DVD-A surround-mix material was coded at 88.2/20 resolution. However, the Onkyo TX-DS929 player I used showed that it was at 88.2/ 24, definitely better, but not to an extent that would matter all that much in terms of sonic realism. In addition, the booklet indicated that the DVD-A stereo mix was at 88.2/24, and yet the Onkyo readout said 44.1/24. I'll lean towards the Telarc explanation for this one, and write off the Onkyo readout as a glitch in its data-readout circuit.

Another interesting thing is that this disc has no explosive bass on the .1 (normally LFE) track. The bass, even the low-frequency rumble from the cannons, is incorporated into the left/right main and surround tracks (but not the center-channel track), with the .1 track reserved for full-bandwidth height information.

Yes, I said height. You would reproduce the latter by installing additional speakers directly above the listening position or high on the side walls, between the front and surround channels, and then feeding the LFE-channel material to an outboard amp that would power those speakers. I did not utilize this option, but Telarc says that it is subtle, and my surround speakers are already mounted up pretty high on the side walls. In most cases, trying to make this work would be awkward, since nearly all audio systems have a subwoofer more or less permanently attached to the LFE output of their processor.

The cannon shots in this program (be they DVD-A or DTS) have to be treated with care. The musical material was recorded at a rather low level, in order to accommodate the immense dynamic range of this disc, and this means that in order to get the orchestral and choral sections to sound right you have to advance the amp gain a bit higher than typical. When the cannons go off they are at peak recording levels, and the impact is rather startling. Actually, those who have copies of Telarc's original, two-channel edition of the 1812 (CD 80041, recorded in 1978) will have already experienced this dynamic effect.

Normally, one would think that recorded sounds of real cannons would be most likely to put woofers or subwoofers at risk, and this certainly could be the case in some situations. However, my own Velodyne F1800RII subwoofer had no problems whatsoever with the low-bass part of the pyrotechnics. What was considerably more startling was (1) the amount of midrange "snap" the cannon shots generated in the main and center channels and (2) the amount of cannon sound that was coming from the surround channels, particularly in the low bass. If you run your surround speakers full bandwidth, they had better have a good woofer or subwoofer in operation if you play this disc, and all the satellite speakers had better be able to take high peak outputs in the midrange. Interestingly, there appeared to be no cannon-generated bass in the center channel at all, thereby depriving my Hsu TN1220 center sub from having any fun with the program.

With much of my serious listening, I utilized the bass management my Yamaha DSP-A1 offers with its six-channel inputs, but I did temporarily configure it in a number of other ways, in order to see just what channels had the cannon-shot bass. To my knowledge, the DSP-A1 still remains one of the very few processors that has bass management with the six analog inputs.

Musically, I consider the Capriccio Italien to be a superior piece of music, compared to the 1812 Overture. However, the latter is certainly a popular hi-fi demo piece and so I took a bit of time to directly compare that material to the Delos Surround Spectacular release (DV-7001) of the same composition, done with Dolby Digital at 448 kbps. After comparing, I had to award the Telarc version the technical prize. The latter definitely had a better cannon presentation (the Delos was recorded live, and so the cannon shots were generated by in-house speakers at the performance), and it also had a better sense of realistic hall space.

Indeed, during the comparison it was easy to see that the Delos disc's hall ambiance was too loud in relation to the ensemble sound. Consequently, it had an excessively wet, reverberant, and almost echo-like feel to it, although its sense of space was terrific if the surround levels were backed off considerably. Unfortunately, that is a rather inconvenient thing to do with most surround processors.

The Delos disc did manage do some creative thing with its choral parts (they started out in the surround channels and as the opening segment progressed one got the impression that the singers were filing down the side aisles toward the front as they sang). Nevertheless, overall I would have to say that the Telarc version had a more realistic soundstage and sense of hall space, even with the DTS tracks. I'd give the Delos the edge for performance, however, if that is possible with the 1812 Overture.