I am using my analog outs from my DVD player to a high-end passive pre-amp, tube monoblock system, extremely transparent with as neutral a midrange as you can get. My soundstage and phantom center are fine, but while LPs are stunning and CDs through the DVD player are great, movies, especially dialog, sound thin and compressed. I have no desire to go surround, but could it be that the DRC in the downmixing process is doing this? I've read somewhere that in order to avoid DRC that one needs to add a center and surrounds. Thanks

Yes, you need to add a center to avoid down-mixing. And, more specifically, you have to use a multi-channel decoder.

It may be the case that you've set your DVD player to not downmix, and it's actually putting signal on the center pin, and NOT down-mixing, hence you're not getting much dialog in the left/right channels. Have you tried hooking one of your channels to the center out (assuming you have six outs on your DVD) to see if there's signal there?

Btw: there's significant measurement evidence that shows that "tube" and "transparent" really don't go in the same sentence. But if you like the sound, that's what's important!

I am using my analog outs from my DVD player to a high-end passive pre-amp, tube monoblock system, extremely transparent with as neutral a midrange as you can get. My soundstage and phantom center are fine, but while LPs are stunning and CDs through the DVD player are great, movies, especially dialog, sound thin and compressed. I have no desire to go surround, but could it be that the DRC in the downmixing process is doing this? I've read somewhere that in order to avoid DRC that one needs to add a center and surrounds. Thanks
Transparency and truthfulness is great for music but not always the best for movies. For example, all but the biggest budget movies take their sound effects from prerecorded libraries of dubious audio quality. The mix then goes through a number of stages of mixing, compression etc., all not good for the kind of sound quality you've built your system to reveal. It will reveal all the electronic crap in a complicated mix such as a movie track just like it reveals all the hall ambience and great stuff in the direct to tape Shaded Dogs you are using as a reference.

To specifically address the dialog you asked about... There is a lot of use of wireless mics today and I swear I can just listen to the dialog and tell you if it was a wireless mic or not. They sound exactly as you described. Then, most dialog re-recording mixers will immediately sit down at their desk and apply some eq usually accentuating the upper midrange and sibilant frequencies. Then they run it through a compressor and raise the volume to make sure that there is not volume dips. Often times, they run the whole stem through a soft compressor/expander (like an old Dominator) on the printmaster as well to smooth the whole thing out. This is all to assure dialog intelligibility both in lousy sounding theatres and so that the dialog cuts through the music and effects, especially for people that are using 2 channel that don't have a separate center channel for the dialog.

Last, keep in mind that DVD and broadcast TV use a lot more compression than redbook and you will hear it. When I first put together my video system, I was very disappointed in the digital compression and couldn't believe people listen to this and think it is great. I've since gotten used to it, which is a sad state of affairs, but for another conversation. I do still notice though that some networks compress more than others. NBC seems by far the worst, HBO the best with CBS in the middle. This is just by my ear, I don't know the bit rates.

While adding a center channel may help your complaints, really downmixing should not affect timbre as you describe. You may be one of those with a well trained ear and a very revealing system that is hearing these things. Most people that are very serious about their music have a hard time optimizing one system for both music and movies. I myself built two separate systems.

^^ A dissertation on movie soundtrack recording...by someone without a clue. ^^

^^ A dissertation on movie soundtrack recording...by someone without a clue. ^^

You know, after reading through all that gobbeldy gook, I couldn't agree more.

If you're just connecting to the 2.0 L/R outputs from your DVD player, it's most likely the case that your DVD player is engaging DRC and dropping the LFE track entirely. This would make something like an action sequence sound thin, but I wouldn't really expect this to affect dialog. That sounds like some other sort of issue. I'd double-check all your settings on the DVD player.

Thank you. I may have overemphasized the dialog issue. The specific question I have is this: if I am satisfied with a phantom center and have no desire for a sub, or surrounds for ambiance, what is the advantage of going surround? I have read that a center and surrounds are necessary to avoid engaging drc metadata in the disc itself. In other words, if ALL speakers (exclusing sub) are not set to ON, drc is automatically engaged, which degrades the sound. I've tried outputting the L/R analog outs with all speakers set to on, which is giving me only those two channels. Of course I have little to no dialog and no surround info, but that L/R sounds much better, more dynamic and open, than that information sounds when I downmix, turning the center and rears to off. Any thoughts?

For most of us who rely on the receiver to do everything, there aren't many options other than getting some external decoder, pre-pro, or receiver which can downmix without compression. Denon makes the only receivers I'm aware of which can toggle compression on and off when downmixing (and I have never personally tested one, so I don't know for sure it does what it claims). If you got such a unit, you could run a digital signal from your DVD player into a receiver or prepro and have it do your decoding and downmixing.

Another option in your situation is running the 5.1 analog outputs from your DVD player into a decent quality line-level mixer. You could manually downmix everything to two channels, thus avoiding all DRC. I can't make specific recommendations, but you could ask on some of the pro audio boards. They should be able to recommend a good clean line mixer.

I agree: if that's what you want, then get a 6 channel line mixer, hook it to your 5.1 outputs on the player, and do your own downmix.
$45 plus cables (http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Mix50/) if you don't need the LFE, $90 (http://www.sweetwater.com/store/closeup/PV6--Main) if you need to also include the LFE.
You can, of course, spend significantly more if you want :-)

For most of us who rely on the receiver to do everything, there aren't many options other than getting some external decoder, pre-pro, or receiver which can downmix without compression. Denon makes the only receivers I'm aware of which can toggle compression on and off when downmixing (and I have never personally tested one, so I don't know for sure it does what it claims). If you got such a unit, you could run a digital signal from your DVD player into a receiver or prepro and have it do your decoding and downmixing.

Another option in your situation is running the 5.1 analog outputs from your DVD player into a decent quality line-level mixer. You could manually downmix everything to two channels, thus avoiding all DRC. I can't make specific recommendations, but you could ask on some of the pro audio boards. They should be able to recommend a good clean line mixer.

Thank you greatly. My instinct would be to pick up a Denon and use one cable. If the Denon does in fact disengage DRC, do you feel that that 2-channel output would be an improvement over the 2-channel output from the DVD player? My concern is that I have a Placette passive preamp and that the Denon be adding active preamplication with a resulting loss in transparency. My Toshiba DVD player has an on/off switch for DRC, but my understanding is that this is the "midnight mode" and different than the DRC in the downmix metadata. I'd like to stay 2-channel, but maybe I'm trying to make apples out of oranges. Thanks again for all of you help.

Without knowing what DVD player you're using, I can't say what the difference in sound quality would be between using the Denon as a pre-pro and using the DVD player. If it's a typical consumer DVD player I'd expect the Denon to do better, but it depends on your equipment.

As far as I've seen, the current Denon models which claim the option to disable DRC during downmixing are the 887, 987, 2307ci, 2807, and better. Some previous models, e.g. "05" models like 2805 and 3805 also advertise this ability.

Given the expense of even a used Denon, I'd really suggest trying a line mixer first. That would also give you lots of flexibility down the road. I don't think building a clean line mixer is hard (nothing like building a clean mic pre-amp, for example), so I'd expect the modestly-priced gear to do a good job. Here's another option:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Behringer-Eurorack-Pro-RX1602-16Input-Line-Mixer?sku=631243

Buy something from somewhere with a good return policy and try it out; you don't have much to lose.

Thanks again - I'll try it. Am I correct in that this would enable me to use my DVD player as a pre-pro and avoid adding an additional pre-pro if I want to add additional speakers? In other words, I could use the DVD player for D/A conversion, processing, bass management and speaker configuration and use the mixer to adjust channel levels and overall volume and just add an additional three channel amp in the future? My other thought is that I have an expensive Placette "Passive preamp" which is really just an attenuator/volume control. Would this mixer do the same and I could do away with that? Thanks again for your valuable insight.

Thanks again - I'll try it. Am I correct in that this would enable me to use my DVD player as a pre-pro and avoid adding an additional pre-pro if I want to add additional speakers? In other words, I could use the DVD player for D/A conversion, processing, bass management and speaker configuration and use the mixer to adjust channel levels and overall volume and just add an additional three channel amp in the future?

I guess that all depends on how much your DVD player can do... mine sure couldn't handle that. :) But yeah, if your DVD player can do bass management and whatever processing you need (EQ, Dolby ProLogic, whatever), then adding the line mixer just lets you do the final downmix on your own. All the processing happens before the analog line outputs. You could definitely add amps if you wanted to add more speakers later.

My other thought is that I have an expensive Placette "Passive preamp" which is really just an attenuator/volume control. Would this mixer do the same and I could do away with that?

I'm not familiar with that unit; can you link to it? I took a quick look on their site and it seemed like it wasn't able to do any mixing, but I didn't look too closely.

From what it sounds like, the Placette couldn't do it.

To do a down-mix yourself, you need something that can take six inputs and mix it to two, with separate pan and gain for each. If you want to send your channels to six separate outputs with level control, you need a six-bus mixer, which is a little more involved than a simple (stereo) line mixer. Or you can go full out and get a matrix mixer, but those are a fairly specialized breed.

So, to go from 5.1 to stereo, you can easily use an off-the-shelf mixer. If you want to go to something more on the output, you start running into expensive equipment.