Just testing the new Arcam AVR600 ATM. Incredible machine

It has the normal PLIIx modes, ie. Movie, music and Game.

There is a 4th one I'm not familiar with, Its called PLIIX Matrix.

Can someone tell me about this, or point me to a link.

Thanks.

Just a guess, but sounds to me like this is the setting for "matrix"-ing rear surrounds (i.e. in a 7.1 setup) from a 5.1 input.

Just a guess, but sounds to me like this is the setting for "matrix"-ing rear surrounds (i.e. in a 7.1 setup) from a 5.1 input.That's what PLIIx does.

There is a 4th one I'm not familiar with, Its called PLIIX Matrix.Think of PLII processing as working in two steps. First is matrix extraction which, for example, sums correlated mono information from the left & right channels and send it to the centre speaker. Then comes logic steering, which inverts the centre signal and sends it back to the left/right channels, cancelling those sounds from the left & right speakers.

Unlike the other three PLII modes, Matrix only does the first part (matrix extraction), not the second (logic steering). Older logic steering based surround processing used to sometimes hesitate or pump with difficult material, which could have been avoided with something like PLII Matrix mode. However, modern surround processing has gone a long way to minimize those artifacts, so I don't think there's any need for such a mode.

The only time I've heard PLII Matrix mode is on the all analogue, tube-based Fosgate FAP-V1 processor. Honestly, the Matrix mode sounded like mush to me. It did a good job of, for example, sending vocals to centre speaker but didn't suppress those sounds in the other speakers. So centre-imaged sounds were coming from all three front speakers. From the sweet spot it sounded OK (a little comb-filtery), but outside the sweet spot it didn't have the the kind of imaging specificity of the other PLII modes.