These Are The Best Albums For Testing Your Surround Sound System
When you think of surround sound, you probably associate it with movies. That's only natural: DIY home theaters with surround sound systems have become more common, so movies often get the most hype for their immersive soundtracks, but surround sound has become commonplace in TV and gaming as well. In video games, it can directly impact gameplay, as it allows you to hear what's behind you, which can be invaluable in stealth games.
Those aren't the only genres with a wealth of surround-sound content: There's a history of multichannel music being made commercially, as well. If anything, music has the longest history of being sold in multichannel formats thanks to the brief rise of four-channel quadraphonic records in the 1970s. After quad faded away, multichannel music largely disappeared for a generation or two, reemerging in large part thanks to the arrival of DVD as an optical disc format and the various multimedia standards that use it: DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, and Super Audio CD (SACD).
In addition to the higher-resolution audio on the latter two formats, surround-sound mixes were another major feature of the music released therein. The same applies to music on Blu-ray and later streaming once internet connections were sufficient. There are some amazing surround mixes that far too few people have heard, so let's take a look at a few of the best.
A note on playback hardware
If you're new to multichannel music, determining whether you have the correct hardware to play the physical media recommended in this list is not as simple as it should be ... well, at least not for some formats. Anything mentioned here that's available on a regular video DVD can be played on any DVD player, Blu-ray player, or Ultra HD Blu-ray player. The same goes for all Blu-ray titles, which can be played on any Blu-ray or Ultra HD Blu-ray player. Where it gets more complicated is with DVD-Audio and SACD.
You're unlikely to find any new DVD-Audio players, as the format is long dead, lacking even the cult following that keeps SACD alive. However, most DVD-Audio titles were mastered to contain not only lossless audio but also DVD-Video with lossy multichannel audio, but the accompanying video content was usually minimalistic. With SACD, Sony still makes Blu-ray players that support the format, but it doesn't advertise this fact in the device specs on its website, which also means that resellers that rely exclusively on the official product descriptions are not a good resource either.
The best starting points are specialty electronics resellers that write their own product descriptions, like Crutchfield or B&H Photo. Searching those sites reveals that the lowest-priced SACD-capable player is the Sony BDP-S6700, which can be found for as low as $98 at Walmart. Despite SACD playback going unmentioned in Sony.com's product listing for the BDP-S6700, the manual confirms that it plays SACD.
Roxy Music's Avalon on SACD
Music that lends itself best to multichannel mixes tends to have lush, heavily layered arrangements. The genre doesn't matter so much as how much stuff there is to work with. If there's one classic rock album that fits that criteria, it's 1982's "Avalon," Roxy Music's final studio album, which got a surround-sound remix for an SACD release in 2003. Long out of print, a used SACD copy will cost you at least $75 to $100 on secondhand sites like eBay, Mercari, and Discogs.
The best compliment that can be laid on the "Avalon" SACD is that it doesn't sound like it was remixed two decades after the original release; it sounds like it was always supposed to be heard that way. It helps that Bob Clearmountain, who mixed both the original stereo version and the 2003 surround mix, always had that in mind. "When we originally mixed it in stereo, I was thinking that it should be in surround," he told Sound on Sound in 2003. "I was wishing that I had more channels to pan things to, and I imagined it being like that. It's that type of a record."
If you can't bring yourself to shell out for the SACD, you may be in luck. Clearmountain (to Mix) and Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera (to Sound & Vision) have confirmed that "Avalon" was remixed for Dolby Atmos spatial audio in 2023. As of this writing, no release date or format has been announced.
Most of Depeche Mode's core catalog on DVD and SACD
Speaking of lush, heavily layered arrangements, there's Depeche Mode. The synth-pop legends started their career as teen heartthrobs playing basic synthesizers and drum machines, but after they broke out internationally with 1981's hit single "Just Can't Get Enough," their music soon gained a sense of technical artistry that was way beyond their years. Their sophomore album, "A Broken Frame," shifted their tone toward being more moody and atmospheric, while their third album, "Construction Time Again," saw the introduction of keyboardist-chief arranger Alan Wilder, engineer Gareth Jones, and producer-Mute Records label head Daniel Miller's Synclavier sampler synthesizer. This set the template for increasingly complex soundscapes that lend themselves well to surround mixes.
All Depeche Mode albums through 2013's "Delta Machine" have a 5.1 release on DVD, SACD, or Blu-Ray, most of which were part of a 2006-2007 remaster series covering their 10 albums from 1981-2001. The surround mixing shines brightest during the Wilder era, which goes through 1993's "Songs of Faith and Devotion," with his carefully layered soundscapes perfect for attacking the listener from all angles.
According to a 2007 Sound on Sound feature about the remixes, getting it right was not simply an exercise in remixing. The multitrack masters were often missing key sounds, so the remix team had to acquire them from old samples on floppy disks or Wilder's personal DAT backups. Prices of the remixed albums vary by title and version, but you can trust that a lot of work went into what you're paying for.
Rush's Moving Pictures on DVD, Blu-ray, and Apple Music
Sticking with the general theme of elaborate arrangements, we shift away from alternative rock and inch more toward progressive rock with Rush's seminal album, 1981's "Moving Pictures." Even though the surround mixes of this one are a bit more recent, coming out on DVD and Blu-ray in 2011 and 2022, they are still out of print, though you can find used copies of the 2011 version for a reasonable price. There's also a newer Spatial Audio remix available for Apple Music subscribers.
"Moving Pictures" attacks the senses with a mix that has enough moving parts — especially Geddy Lee's vocals and basslines, Neil Peart's drumming, Alex Lifeson's guitar playing, and the of-its-time prog rock synths — that it lends itself perfectly to surround sound. Lifeson personally supervised the 2011 surround mix on the band's behalf, and in 2009, he explained his attitude to surround mixing in an interview with Power Windows, a Rush fan site.
"It's just a matter of sitting in and getting a sense of the placement of everything," he said. "I think the important thing with 5.1 is not to get too fancy-schmancy with it, but to create this full-room sound environment rather than tricking it up with stuff 'whipping' all around, and that sort of thing." The final product definitely succeeds in that regard.
The Dolby Atmos spatial audio mix came in 2022 and is readily available on Apple Music. Professional reviews appear scarce, though AV Club said the sound envelops the listener.
Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon on SACD, Blu-Ray, and Apple Music
For the first time on this list, the surround mixes of the recommended album are still mostly available. That's probably because it's one of the best-selling albums of all time: Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon," which has sold more than 45 million units since its 1973 release. It's also an outlier from the other albums listed here in that it had a multichannel release (four-channel quadraphonic) that came out soon after the canonical stereo version in 1973.
"Dark Side's" dream-like tone applied to its complicated arrangements makes it a perfect choice for an immersive, multichannel mix. A 30th-anniversary edition was released on SACD in 2003, and a 50th-anniversary edition was released in Dolby Atmos in 2023. In 2022, Louder described it as arguably "an album designed to show off the capabilities of surround sound," while Audiophile Style in 2023 said that the 7.1.4 channel Atmos remix is "truly 'Dark Side of the Moon' like I've never heard" and "unequivocally my favorite version." (The 12-channel spatial version comes close to the multichannel master's 16-track recording.)
Whichever version you try, you can trust that it makes perfect use of your surround setup. "What I have tried to do for many, many years is to make the speakers disappear — so that you're aware of sound being everywhere," engineer James Guthrie told Sound and Vision in 2003. "You get immersed in the sound and can experience the music."
Talking Heads' entire catalog on DVD-Audio and Apple Music
In 2006, the latter days of the SACD vs. DVD-Audio format war (The Guardian described DVD-Audio as "extinct" the following year), Talking Heads reissued their entire studio album catalog on hybrid CD/DVD-Audio releases, complete with 5.1 channel remixes. Though these versions are long out of print, including the collected "Brick" boxed set, they were newly remixed for Dolby Atmos audio in 2022 by Talking Heads keyboardist Jerry Harrison and longtime producer Eric Thorngren (who also mixed the 2006 versions) and can be streamed on Apple Music.
"If any band should have been spread out, it was Talking Heads," Thorngren told The Absolute Sound in a 2023 YouTube video. Some Talking Heads albums lend themselves better to surround than others, though. That's not to say any of them translate poorly, but the three albums produced by Brian Eno — "More Songs About Buildings and Food," "Fear of Music," and "Remain in Light" — with their elaborate arrangements and world-music influences, feel like they're tailor-made for the format.
"So much detail is brought out particularly on 'Fear of Music' and 'Remain in Light,' that it is hard to imagine all the tracks squashed into the original stereo mix," reads a 2011 review of "Brick" at Hi-Res Edition. "The listener is put in the sweet spot with the band playing just in front of you and secondary instrumentation and percussion wrapping around you from the surround channels."
Methodology
To whittle this list down, I focused on titles I had personal familiarity with while also leaning on titles that had a fair bit of documentation, both in terms of reviews and articles about the mixing process. As a massive Depeche Mode fan when that reissue campaign started in 2006, it was a no-brainer to spend $100 on an RCA-branded home-theater-in-a-box to get the most out of the $250 to $300 I'd spend on those deluxe editions the following year. I eventually upgraded to a better system, opening my world up to SACDs and what quality speakers could unlock.
So, while this list does lean on my musical tastes, I balanced it with what I felt were the best surround mixes, regardless. I've also tried to balance that with accessibility. Most of these are reasonably priced on the used market or have a newer Dolby Atmos version available to stream. The big exception is Roxy Music's "Avalon." The album is genuinely that good in surround, and you don't just have to take my word for it.
If you've noticed that more recent remixes — like The Beatles' reissues — are missing from this list, there's a reason. Since moving to Brooklyn several years ago, I don't have the space for a full surround system, so I elected to lean on albums I had experienced myself in surround sound, which somewhat prejudiced the list against newer mixes.