The problem is that nearly all those No voters do not even know how to check this, they do not have the technical knowledge to do so.

Users like you or Ace_Of_Stevens are technically sophisticated, but that is a rare specis around here and also in life generally.
This is not meant as criticism, it is just how it is.

For example, if I would write" surround flag verified with Onkyo TRX 5643" a minimum of users would be able to tell if I am just lying or if I am telling the truth and have really verified this.

It is something different than to check a name in the credits or check if a typo was made from the backcover.

The easiest solution would be to no longer distinguish between stereo and surround and just say Dolby Digital Stereo/Surround.

Unless that is happening maybe 2 % of the voters are actually able to verify if I or someone else is telling the truth with a statement about the surround flag.

Here is an example of one of the changes I am submitting:
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
tkinnen: YES vote: Verifed with pioneer vsx-94txh that Surround flag is set on commentary track.
FrodenF: NO vote: N2.0 on that track. Verified with PowerDVD10

This happens and will happen with many other contributions, not only with mine.
Both users claim and probably have checked it and came out with a different result.
Yet one of the users is simply lying or does simply not know how to verify such a thing.

The screeners will be in no way able to handle this, as this is a very hard thing to prove.

So I only see two solutions here.
Remove the Stereo and the Surround and make it Stereo/Surround
Or we simply go with what is much more common and that is Surround.

cheers
Donnie

Pro-logic 2 definitely doesn't use all speakers on mono tracks. On most stereo commentaries, it isn't putting the speakers' voices out the rear, so it does seem to be doing actual surround decoding. Can someone point me to some actual non-surround stereo recordings online or something that I can check on my receiver and see what happens?

Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

Quote:
Pro-logic 2 definitely doesn't use all speakers on mono tracks. On most stereo commentaries, it isn't putting the speakers' voices out the rear, so it does seem to be doing actual surround decoding. Can someone point me to some actual non-surround stereo recordings online or something that I can check on my receiver and see what happens?

If you follow the link I posted eariler to the prodcast transcription as one of the examples to taking a non-surround stereo recording and making it into surround with PL II.

Quote:

Craig: We actually use a clip from Led Zeppelin, Whole Lotta Love, and, you know, the drum solo in the middle of that. Put that on your system at home, people, and listen to that in Dolby Pro Logic IIx and the effects are absolutely phenomenal.

Jack: What does it do?

Craig: The sounds just swirls all around your head.

Jack: No kidding.

Craig: It is very, very cool.

Jack: The original recording?

Craig: The original recording.

Jack: Oh, very cool!

Craig: And that's a stereo recording!

Quoting tkinnen:

Quote:
Quoting DarklyNoon:

Quote:
Thx alot for clearing this for me, but how is it possible then to check 100 % what it really is. With all the new HD formats it is very easy as my receiver displays them perfectly, so does Power DVD, but as it seems Power DVD, all other softzware for the PC and even Receivers which cost a lot of cash are not able to tell if it is Surround or Stereo.

The matrix encoded surround  is a messy issue as there are lots of variants and issues. I use the flag setting first and the menu's/Packaging second in combination with testing the track. 

There is a way to tell pretty well if you extract the audio and do a review of it to detect the surround signal from the phase shift used to encode it.  I had someone explain it to me once but I can not recall the details as it went into areas I almost never deal with about phase shifts and degrees of separation at different frequencies.  Maybe someone around here knows the details on that.

Tom

That sounds very complicated and I think it would definitely consume too much of my time to do that for each and every stereo track.
As we all will never get a solution here, because of the complexity of this issue, I need to think what to do now.

1. Submit what I think is correct and just let some people vote Yes and some NO, and then let the screeners decide.
2. Just change all the audio local and contribute all the other changes only. But that would leave the online database with 1000nds of wrong Stereo entries that no one ever proved that they are correct.

Think some beers this evening will help me finding out how to proceed.

many thx for the professional input tkinnen :

cheers
Donnie

Quoting Kulju:

Quote:
Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

Quote:
Can someone point me to some actual non-surround stereo recordings online or something that I can check on my receiver and see what happens?

Try any audio CD.

A lot of those are encoded surround. I suppose early stereo ones wouldn't be.

Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

Quote:
Quoting Kulju:

Quote:
Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

Quote:
Can someone point me to some actual non-surround stereo recordings online or something that I can check on my receiver and see what happens?

Try any audio CD.

A lot of those are encoded surround. I suppose early stereo ones wouldn't be.

Audio CD's? I highly doubt that. Please give one example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(audio_Compact_Disc_standard)

Quoting bob9000:

Quote:
Quoting DarklyNoon:

Quote:
Let me ask the few that really believe 2-Chan stereo is exisitng in cinema.

WHERE IS YOUR PROOF ???????

cheers
Donnie

Dude, I am the one asking you for proof before changing existing data.  You want to change things without proper documentation, then send nasty PMs when I vote no.

Actually, I am with Bob on this.  If you want to make a change to existing data, you have to provide some sort of documentation.  Simply making a statement, with nothing to back it up, isn't good enough...and, yea, that PM was uncalled for.

Quoting DarklyNoon:

Quote:
But I am done replying to ridiculous statements from people who obviously have no clue what they are talking about.
And I am more than happy if I can get valuable and correct data into the online database and even more happy if those few troublemakers do not like that this is getting into the database.

cheers
Donnie

In other words, I have no proof other than "because I said so" and if you dare to question me, you are a troublemaker, who has not clue, and is making ridiculous statements.  How nice.