Music in the Round #100: Multichannel & Merging Anubis

This is the 100th and—surprise!—final edition of Music in the Round. MitR began in mid-2003, shortly after SACD and DVD-A discs made high-quality multichannel music convenient and widely available. At the time, I was convinced that multichannel reproduction was superior to stereo because it was able to reproduce the full sound of the performance—not just the performers. Stereophile's founder, J. Gordon Holt, had promoted this idea many times, but the appearance of the new media finally brought it to a wider audience. I recall that, when then-Editor John Atkinson and I floated the idea of a column on multichannel audio, we had to promise our publisher that it would not deal with anything having to do with video or home theater, lest it impinge on the territory of sister publications. We readily agreed: In keeping with Stereophile's mission, the column has always been about optimizing the music-listening experience.

Back then, we were so grateful for every new music release that we gobbled them up, sometimes regardless of whether the content exactly suited our taste. We sought hardware to play the discs, even if integration with the rest of our components was clumsy. We foresaw a future in which multichannel would supplant stereo, just as stereo succeeded mono, simply because it was technically and aesthetically superior. Multichannel recordings would become the "lingua franca" of the music industry and hardware to play it would be the default, especially for the serious audiophile.

Despite all that, even today, nothing more than casual references to multichannel music playback appear in the pages of audio magazines. Even in Stereophile, Music in the Round is a niche: too easily passed over and possibly beyond the notice of many readers. This contrasts with the interest and attention paid to it all over the Internet and in my email inbox. General awareness requires general exposure.

To this end, Stereophile will now integrate multichannel products and recordings into the main editorial content of Stereophile. Jim Austin decided to make this change during a long discussion on the eve of his elevation to the position of Editor. Our conversation acknowledged multichannel as a valid and important facet of high-quality music reproduction, both scientifically and aesthetically, even as it remains a small niche.

Intrinsic to this change is the idea that multichannel product coverage will now be offered in full equipment reports and will be subject to measurements and analyses by Technical Editor John Atkinson, something for which I and many readers have long wished. It may even result in other reviewers venturing into multichannel—who knows?

I know many may miss this platform for advancing multichannel audio, but I'm glad to be free from the yoke of the bimonthly cycle. With the editor's encouragement, I will now investigate and report on new technology as it applies to all aspects of audio. I have new equipment reviews loaded into the pipeline, including stereo and multichannel products. Equally important to me is the time flexibility to explore and listen to music. At this moment, my music collection consists of about 40,000 multichannel files/tracks, plus another 30,000 stereo tracks. I'm adding new releases all the time.

"Best sound of my life" is what a good friend of mine recently posted about his own multichannel experience. I second that. I hope that many more of you will feel the same way as Stereophile moves multichannel into the mainstream.

Looking back and looking forward
During the 16 years my column has been published, Apple's iTunes and the rising popularity of portable personal players fostered the mass market's drive toward the cheap and the convenient. This may have been good for most of the world, but it diverted aspirational interest away from high-quality audio and resulted in the commercial failure of such physical media as DVD-A, SACD, and ultimately CD. On the other hand, it planted the seeds for the explosion of interest in quality headphones, music streaming, and downloading.

With the near-extinction of physical discs, the shrinkage in the market for disc players is no surprise. High-end two-channel players survive, for the time being, but analog outputs are disappearing from "universal" players, leaving HDMI as the only multichannel output option. The gravestone of multichannel analog player outputs is marked with Oppo's withdrawal from the market. In a world without physical media, this was inevitable.

Streaming and downloading, along with file playback, represent the future of the music business and of multichannel. You can still buy and play SACDs and Blu-ray discs, but fans of all types of music are now ripping these and storing the files in collections from which they have near-instant access to everything. I note with pleasure that streaming site Qobuz now has a few dozen high-resolution multichannel albums: You can stream them in 5.1 channels at 24/96 via Roon! It isn't a wide range of repertoire, but just the idea that it's on a streaming service thrills me as much as my first file playback (or my first LP).

For a short while during the first decade of this century, the prospect of multichannel music as a new product category encouraged the audio industry to offer up a wave of suitable analog preamps and power amps, but the rising tide of home theater swept that away. We had hoped that the popularity of surround systems for home theater would encourage interest in multichannel music, but the general public never appreciated that music playback could go beyond stereo, even when they already had the ability to play "surround sound" recordings in their homes. Still, many avid HT enthusiasts ask how to play multichannel files through their theater equipment, via connections other than the obvious and somewhat compromised HDMI.

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The answer is that AVRs and preamp-processors have become network appliances, and nothing is needed, save a little firmware, to enable them as multichannel renderers on a home network. These are inherently multichannel audio devices armed with networking hardware, yet they're not set up to accept multichannel audio via their Ethernet inputs. It's disturbing that most manufacturers don't seem to recognize how illogical this is. Consider the Trinnov Altitude preamp-processors, which can stream multichannel from my server without complications: We should demand similar capabilities from all such products.

How to do multichannel today
Here's a quick parting shot on how to get into multichannel music playback.

FILE STORAGE: A high-resolution multichannel track, even compressed, can take up more than a gigabyte, so storage capacity is important. Think in terms of terabytes (TB). Hard drives are essential, and an NAS (network-attached storage) device, which combines and organizes an array of drives, quickly becomes inevitable. Using a NAS also allows you to relocate the relatively noisy storage device to a place outside the listening room where it's still accessible via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. A remotely located backup copy or two of everything is essential! Eventually, every drive will fail, and without backup you face the horror of losing some or all of your music collection.

MUSIC PLAYER HARDWARE: In choosing storage media, the only distinction between the requirements for multichannel and stereo is capacity. For the player hardware, the big issues are noise and processing power. If you are content to play the music as it is, without any processing, Roon's compact and fanless Nucleus or Nucleus+ will do the job without fuss, although they are restricted to using Roon software. You can save money and gain flexibility by buying an i5 or i7 NUC computer, or by using almost any quiet but capable processor—including the one built into your NAS—as long sufficient muscle. MacOS, Windows, Linux . . . there is software for all, so you can choose whichever OS suits. In fact, you can start the process rolling with whatever computer you already have around (footnote 1).


Footnote 1: There are a few proprietary packaged servers from vendors like SOtM, Nimitra, and DigiBitwork that will do high-resolution multichannel but, unfortunately, the majority of the excellent music servers reviewed in Stereophile will not—or at least do not support it officially.
ARTICLE CONTENTS

COMMENTS
tnargs's picture

You are right, Kalman: "Even in Stereophile, Music in the Round is a niche: too easily passed over and possibly beyond the notice of many readers."

So easily overlooked, in fact, that I briefly overlooked it when I once criticised Stereophile 5 years ago for its lack of multichannel coverage, and got promptly put in my place by JA, citing Musing in the Round as proof of how wrong I was.

At least now, its utter inadequacy is being acknowledged (just like I said back then) and acted upon. But waay too late.

How ironic that JA will now find himself doing tests and measurements of equipment that was, he insisted to me, covered all along. (As an aside, I wonder how he will choose to test the performance of room correction?)

Good on you, Kalman, for carrying the torch for so long in a magazine that, in the broad, had its back firmly turned towards your field, until now. You did a great job. And I hope the reviewers turn to you as Chief Consultant for their reviews: you know so much more than them.

cheers

John Atkinson's picture
tnargs wrote:
As an aside, I wonder how he will choose to test the performance of room correction?

I examine the lower-frequency room correction offered by Dirac LE in my forthcoming review of NAD's M10 integrated amplifier, scheduled to be published in the January 2020 issue of Stereophile.

John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile

Bogolu Haranath's picture

May be JA1 could also review, one of the Devialet Expert Pro integrated amp models with SAM (speaker active management) technology? :-) .........

Jim Austin's picture

hope the reviewers turn to you as Chief Consultant for their reviews: you know so much more than them.

But Kal himself will, in many if not most cases, be the reviewer.

Why is everyone assuming that Kal is leaving?

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

tnargs's picture

I didn't assume he is leaving.

I assumed his words, "It may even result in other reviewers venturing into multichannel", were serious. Otherwise he will simply be overloaded, having said he is currently pressed by the cycle of publication deadlines. Or his reviews will be more sparse than ever, since he wants to write about other topics more now.

cheers

Jim Austin's picture

"It may even result in other reviewers venturing into multichannel."

I'd say that's perfectly stated. Currently, none of our regular reviewers are equipped with multichannel systems, except Kal and Tom Norton, whose multichannel system is, I believe, optimized for cinema.

The best way of thinking about Stereophile's coverage of multichannel music, going forward, is that we will cover it in proportion to its importance. In determining that, I will weigh both the popularity of the medium (or media) and sonic merit, with an emphasis on new developments. As there are some new things happening right now in the multichannel-music realm--much music being released in Dolby Atmos; new "spatial" and "immersive" technologies popping up--I'd expect some decent amount of continued coverage, but we'll see.

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

Bogolu Haranath's picture

May be you (JCA) could go for somewhat less expensive option ...... Sony's new '360 Reality Audio' and the 'Dolby Atmos' audio, via headphones/IEMs, intended for audio only, not for movies ....... See S&V website ....... S&V reports that there is a Sony demonstration going on right now in NYC :-) .........

Kal Rubinson's picture

Yes, at AES. Just back from there.

Bogolu Haranath's picture

Looking forward to your (KR) report :-) ........

Kal Rubinson's picture

Thanks for the encouragement.

Bogolu Haranath's picture

S&V also mentioned that the '360 Reality Audio' is also being demonstrated at the Sony Square show room in Manhattan, from Oct 16th to Oct 20th ....... They may have extended hours and days than the AES convention :-) .........

Kal Rubinson's picture

I know but I am hoping to get more nitty-gritty because the currently available implementations are not appealing. I am more interested in higher quality audio devices, aren't you?

Bogolu Haranath's picture

Yes, yes, of course ....... I didn't know all the details ........ 'Dolby Atmos' could be different/better :-) .......

Glotz's picture

And this was one of your best columns yet! Thanks for the goodbye primer.

I think streaming holds a lot of promise for multichannel.

The Anubis looks like a killer value dac/preamp and looks like a joy to play with! I would think a revised Anubis with removed 1/4' jacks on the front and requisite changes to the rear jacks would be a successful variant in this area of the market.

And sadly I think mc's stagnation can be laid at other well-known high-performance audio manufacturers that could effect great change to an industry that always needs more innovation and forward thinking.

Kal Rubinson's picture

"And sadly I think mc's stagnation can be laid at other well-known high-performance audio manufacturers that could effect great change to an industry that always needs more innovation and forward thinking."

I am not so sure. There were several "well-known high-performance audio manufacturers" who jumped in at the dawn of SACD/DVD-A and lost a lot. Streaming does hold a promise.

Capitanharlock's picture

It’s not clear to me which mch protocols are supported by the Anubis.
DTS, Dolby digital, Atmos, what else?
Is there any way to use a central channel for a movie?
It looks too complicated and limited compared to a good Av processor.

Kal Rubinson's picture

It’s not clear to me which mch protocols are supported by the Anubis. DTS, Dolby digital, Atmos, what else?

None of the above. PCM or DSD.

Is there any way to use a central channel for a movie?

If you feed it a center channel (as I did), it will play a center channel speaker.

It looks too complicated and limited compared to a good Av processor.

Yes but by the same logic, it is too complicated and limited compared to a television or an automobile. That's because it is just a damn good multichannel DAC.

ssmaudio's picture

Dear Kalman, thank you for continuing to review surround sound stuff. I don’t know why there aren’t more of people like you. I watched with interest the video of the RMAF 2016 talk about multi channel audio. 

I’ve been a multi-ch enthusiast for many years. And an-audiophile-at-a reasonable-price. Mainly classical SACDs.  However, now with so many multi-ch DSD downloads available, my problem is how to play DSD files. One issue in the talk that didn’t get addressed is all the obstacles to playing and streaming multi-ch. 

Take my case. For various reasons, I currently have a Yamaha Rx880 receiver (that natively decodes DSD) and a Sony SACD player connected over HDMI. (I also have a Yamaha S1000 player for stereo CDs.) This works great for SACDs but not for playing DSD files. 
1) the receiver and the Sony SACD don’t do multi-ch DSD over usb. 
2) I can’t connect an external DAC (like the Exasound) because the receiver doesn’t have line inputs. Also I’m not sure I want an external DAC because (I think) it’s better if my receiver does the room correction and bass management. 
3) I guess I could buy a used Oppo and go the usb stick route but I’m hesitant to buy something old and the company not in business. 

So I’m stuck. I’d love to be able to stream multi-ch DSD from the comfort of my couch, but it’s not easy. 

Any suggestions? Is my only alternative to buy a receiver with surround line inputs (which seems to be free anyway and what about room correction) and an Exasound? What am I missing? Thank you. 

Kal Rubinson's picture

I guess I could buy a used Oppo and go the usb stick route but I’m hesitant to buy something old and the company not in business.
You can stream MCH to the Oppo and output that to the AVR by HDMI.

Is my only alternative to buy a receiver with surround line inputs (which seems to be free anyway and what about room correction) and an Exasound? What am I missing?
Mebbe. However, you would not likely get RC because, afaik, most prepros/AVRs will not redigitize the surround line inputs.

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