My initial take was an interesting one. The content was an Eric Clapton concert, which I’d heard bits of plenty of times, including the room we had the MCD in. I could tell we were on another planet in terms of detail and the spatial cues that come from higher resolving power and lower system noise. What was interesting is that I wondered for a moment if all the channels were mapped correctly. Because I was hearing sounds coming from so far outside the boundaries of the speakers that at first it took me by surprise. Everything was set up properly. So, what I was experiencing was what happens when, for the first time to this level, you apply reference level audio equipment traditionally the domain of stereo playback and apply it to multichannel playback. Quite amazing, really. I listened to several other titles I was familiar with, and in each case, the naturalness of the sound was what floored me immediately. As was the awareness of little bits of information that I hadn’t necessarily noticed before. This ALWAYS happens in the two-channel world. You improve things to a degree that information that was always there is suddenly so much more present and more a part of the experience than before, when it was effectively masked or buried within the noise floor of any given system. So, this really is unlike anything the industry has offered up to even the most high-end home theater customer. It will be exciting to see these make their way into systems and hear dCS level audio quality in a home theater environment.
~ Scott Wallace, 25 Years Definitive Expert
Come check it out in our Projector Shootout Starting September 18th
Share:
We usually don't do this.