Surround sound in the car is GREAT!
I've had my Sony MEX-DV2000 (www.xplodsony.com) for some weeks now and have been listening to music in my car (all right, SUV) more than I've ever done before. Most of my surround discs are SACDs, but because this player is technically a DVD player as well, it will also decode the DTS tracks on the few DTS and DVD-Audio discs I own. In other words, it will decode all but the DVD-audio "high resolution" tracks. No doubt it will play surround DVD music videos as well, as long as they don't get hung up in a DVD menu that can't be displayed on the front panel (the Sony seems to bypass the MENU display after waiting a while for DVD-Audio discs).
How wonderful to hear voices coming from somewhere other than my knees! The only complaint I have when using the 1/2 DIN center channel speaker (Clarion SRK5; also sold under the Pyle name) is that on those very few albums with the voice exclusively in the center channel, the tiny drivers just can't handle any low frequencies at all and the voice sounds "tinny".
The price is certainly right ($279 list); I spent more for the center channel speaker (Clarion SRK5), sub amp (Sony slim series) and subwoofer (Infinity REF1220SE) than I did for the receiver itself. [But don't forget the $799 Sony XAVW1, for vehicle that support a 2DIN slot]
I also bought the HD Radio accessory from Sony, and whether that is related or not, the MEX-DV2000 does NOT return to the same radio station it was on when you turn off the vehicle.
Just with regard to the HD radio, you can also not store a preset for a "multicast" station (in other words, you can only preset the primary, or ".1" broadcast on each "channel").
Getting back to SACD, it would be nice if Sony supplied amplification for a center channel speaker, but in the end I found a center channel speaker with its own amplifier (how they got all that stuff up in the SUV's dashboard I don't know).
But those are just quibbles. Basically, it sounds good and it has played every SACD I've put with the exception of one of the sample SACDs that I don't even know how I got.
I WAS griping about some way to balance the channels individually, but that limitation only applies to the menus available during play (level controls for sub, center, Left-Right and fader). The "power off" SETUP menus allow you to adjust the levels of individual channels, which I promptly used to increase the level of the left rear speaker, which has the poorest route to my ears. Okay, promptly once I put 2 and 2 together.
It has only been the last two weeks that I've been running out my DVD-Audio discs and most of them have played just fine via their DTS tracks. The "Blue Man Group", which was written up in the April, 2005 Sound and Vision magazine, is one of those "made for surround" albums, in every sense of the word. It just sounds too muddy in stereo.
Of course I spend most of my time with SACDs. Recently I've enjoyed both of the Indigo Girls SACDs, though I have to admit that many of their songs sound somewhat alike.
Other recent SACDs that I enjoyed in the car include "3 Doors Down" / "Away From the Sun" and James Taylor "Dad Loves His Work". The best pop SACD for the car has to be Destiny's Child "Survivor".
Several pipe organ albums are great, including my favorite "four organs" recording brought forward from the quadraphonic era, with E. Power Biggs at the console.
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As the number of released SACDs moves towards 5000, I've been reflecting on the fact that SACD and DVD-Audio are not music formats; they're MEDIA formats. I'm a fan of surround sound, not of Q8, Q4, DTS, SACD or DVD-Audio.
I've also been cleaning up my stacks of Sound and Vision issues from 2005 through the present and have come across several "end of SACD / DVD-Audio" articles*. Most writers fail to note that the great divide between the new media formats and Elcaset, DAT, minidisc and DCC is that those formats were just "another way to store stereo."
Let's hope we continue to have at least one format for those artists who want to put out surround sound for music for us to enjoy.
*February / March, 2005: "DVD-Audio, SACD: M.I.A." (Ken Pohlman)
April, 2005: Letters column: "Saving multichannel music"
July / August, 2006: "Thanks for the memories" (David Ranada)
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