Long time ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and AMD K8 was the pinnacle of technology, I invested in a basic home theater setup. A decent AV receiver, a subwoofer, two studio-quality monitor speakers. A friend warned me that the speakers I had picked were "crisp, but unforgiving".
All of a sudden DVDs sounded wonderful. The audio tracks in TV programmes became clear. The warnings made no sense.
Until I watched a classic TV show episode from 1980's. Bad mixing. Flipped stereo channels. Stuffy voiceovers. Everything sounded ... wrong.
In images they call that the difference between being "scene referred" vs "display referred".
There is no generally accepted theory of stereo sound, instead there are at least three theories:
(1) a method for mastering sound recordings intended to be played by two speakers that are right next to each other (two sides of a TV, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Retrieval_System for some theory)
(2) mastering sound records so that 'left means left' and 'right means right' which means your speakers are on opposite sides of the room and you're near the middle. That can cast sounds effectively to the left and right but falls down casting them to the middle
(3) Ambisonics, which doesn't really work because the coherence in natural sound sources badly damages the timbre of natural sounds and the concept of 'represent natural soundfield' doesn't really mix with 'record instruments individually in dead environments', 'add reverb', and 'repeat' which is how 'quality' sound in the judgement of the industry is attained.
One way to think about a 5.1 system with a modern layout (FL, FC, FR, R, and L, nothing in back) is that you put the FL and FR close to the FC, expect to play back type I content on the FL and FR, and play type 2 content on the L and R.
Often DVDs were mixed under the assumption that they couldn't trust the receiver (e.g. no center channel); blu-rays sound a lot better not just because they allocate more bits to sound, but because the mixing is more aggressive... they don't feel they have to copy dialog on the L and the R because they know many people don't have a working C.
Long time ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and AMD K8 was the pinnacle of technology, I invested in a basic home theater setup. A decent AV receiver, a subwoofer, two studio-quality monitor speakers. A friend warned me that the speakers I had picked were "crisp, but unforgiving".
All of a sudden DVDs sounded wonderful. The audio tracks in TV programmes became clear. The warnings made no sense.
Until I watched a classic TV show episode from 1980's. Bad mixing. Flipped stereo channels. Stuffy voiceovers. Everything sounded ... wrong.
Suddenly, it all made sense. I understood.