SurroundByUs.com

I'm really a new on this so bear with me and pardon my ignorance. All of my CDs have been ripped with EAC to FLAC format for home media. I listen to them on my Squeexebox Duet via my 5.1 A/V receiver. I've got a 5.1 setup on the A/V receiver, but also have two older Mission speakers that I use strictly in a Zone 2 config for my audio listening in 2.0 [stereo] format with the Squeezebox. I only use the A/V 5.1 config for movies. FWIW, my receiver will do the upscaling of CD stereo into a 5.1 + format [Neo 6] on it's own..............so why pray tell me should I re-rip all my CDs again to DTS, when my receiver already does the job? I've a home server that carries all my media, music & video. My Squeezebox is networked through the server for music material and my video media is also networked via a Brite-View Cinema Tube. I'm kinda confused here on this and don't see the point of doing all this work again. Thanks for listening!

It's about the quality and separation we archive here vs. Neo-6, dolby prologic, circle sound, etc. etc. buttons you may have on your HT.

Take a listen to the music examples here: http://www.surroundbyus.com/sbu/viewforum.php?f=19, and you can decide for yourself if it's worth the effort.

Cheers,
Z

Well, if you're happy with what you're receiver can do, then more power to you. You are, after all, one man and his living room. However, what the different modes on a receiver can passively do simply cannot even come close to what a perfectly tweaked conversion to 5.1 can do. Your receiver is going to apply one setting to everything you put on it, no matter what artist, album, or genre you throw at it. The flexibility that actively doing this yourself offers is a different experience altogether, not to mention I think it happens to be a lot of fun. If we thought otherwise, we would not have bothered doing any of this.

Please let us know if you need any further help with our methods here. We have been doing this for years now and believe there is no one else out there that can offer what we can.

Thanks to both of you for giving me the heads up on this. I don't think I will download or listen to any of the torrents or sample files on the link you gave me Zeerround, as I will have nothing to compare it to from my own collection, but I will go one further that both you and River161 mentioned in your replies...............the quality of sound. I will read more on this forum and read the wiki about moving to DTS on some of my own collection and compare it to what my receiver puts out, and run them both through my 5.1 HT and listen to the differences. I'm anxious to give it a try. I guess I'm from the old school of listening to music only through stereo and not 5.1.
@River161. I guess what my HT system is putting out on my music in 5.1 compared to what you people are doing may be slightly analogous to using a "tone" control vs a full blown EQ from the old days. I'm going to read and give it a try. Thanks again!

It sounds like you know what you're talking about. If you are willing to put in the time effort and go through the learning curve, this will be a rewarding experience for you. I've definitely spoken to other surround fans throughout the years for which the time and effort required to properly upmix just isn't something they're willing to put in. Like I said, it's their living room.

Check out the video guides here, as I feel they are a wonderful way to navigate through some of the trickier setup issues. We look forward to hearing more from you and making a believer out of you.

I wanted to mention one more thing.

As you may have gathered I do almost all my music listening in the car on the way to and from work (1+ hour each way). I have 3000+ DTS encoded songs that I play via iTunes (yes, you can make iTunes do surround - see my guide i the wiki).

Anyway AFAIK unless you go all out with a car PC or MAC like I did you're not going to get NEO-6 in the car. Many new cars are now coming with Surround Sound systems that can play DTS CDs, DVD-V, DVD=A, etc.

So, mobile surround is another reason for what we do here.

OMG
i just had a look at your "10 min Quick Start Guide" and I think I have understood a bit more what this is all about. Appologies for my ignorance lol as i just fell here from the sky, by chance, if there is such a thing...

So you get the normal CD, you extract the sound as best as you can get and then you tweak it in a way that it introduces in the final result the fullness of surround.

I am sorry IF I am just stating the obvious for you guys lol but i hope I get it now lol

Now, it looked crazy amazing the video, although I would love to be able to do it myself just to see.
If I got it correctly, the way you guys do this will mean that the final result would be very individual to the person who does it as in the way each one decided to tweak those frequencies...am i right?

If I am.... this is kinda really cool ,) although very subjective...
hummm...

You can check out some examples of what is possible here:

viewforum.php?f=19