Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ctrl@ltDel 
I posted this on the PS3 as your bluray player thread but thought I would pose the question here also. Any thoughts and advice is appreciated.
DRC is Dynamic Range Compression, not Control. So you got it right that it has a similar effect to the Dolby noise reductions on tapes. However, you are saying the Dolby noise reduction had the dowside of cutting frequencies. That's a misconception. That system was meant to be used both on the recording and the playback side. During the recording it would do the opposite function, i.e. expand the dynamic range of the signal by emphasizing the high frequencies so that during playback when the attanuation is done the noice is decimated. If you have used Dolby on tapes recorded without that or with a different type (B or C) I can see how you got that impression.
The DRC is a similar thing to the playback part of the Dolby noise reduction so you should expect the effect to be similar. The difference is that it also does it on the low frequencies, but only beyond certain amplitude. In other words, whenever the signal is not loud , it goes through unchanged, when it gets loud, the highs and the lows get attenuated, otherwise you would find yourself turning the volume up and down, which is essentially the same thing.
The dynamic range is my biggest gripe with the home theater concept and I'm sure most people that have wives and babies are dealing on daily basis with the issue of how to control this thing. The 1019ah gives you a lot of options and I keep experimenting every night, but after a month of tweaking I have not been able to find the setting that will not wake up my family at every gunshot and let me hear the dialogs at the same time.
Here are the controls I'm aware of:
- DRC setting on my BD source - I leave that on Auto and let the 1019ah do that job
- DRC setting on the 1019AH - tried that, but was not completely satisfied. I keep it on Auto.
- The LFE attenuator on the 1019AH. I used to have this on -10dB and the good thing is that it does not affect the bass on stereo sources. I changed my speakers and the dynamics changed and it's on 0db now.
- The dialog enhancement of the 1019AH. Tried that, but it seemed somewhat unnatural at times. It's off now.
- The midnight setting on the 1019ah. I think that works in conjunction with the DRC Auto mode, but it's not a total solution. I keep switching between loudness on and midnight on, leaving it most of the time on loudness.
- The ALC mode. In that mode the dialog enhancement is disabled, but you can program the effect level (50 by default). The perception is that the effect moves more or less of the signal from the side speakers to the center channel. I decided to keep it at 50. The drawback is that this is an autosurround function and if the source is two-channel as from some TV programs, it switches to stereo as opposed to the Dolby prologic II that I prefer and I have to keep switching between ALC and standard surround.
It seems like the ALC does the best job.
- The volume on my subwoofer - I resort to that when I'm tired of playing with the other knobs.
I watched Transformers 2 last weekend and I paid attention to the sound in the theater. It seemed that the dynamic range was not great, there wasn't much bass and treble, but the dialogs were very legible. That's great for the dialog, but the effects sounded worse than I expected and I'm sure for such a movie Michael Bay has put a lot of work into that. At home the effects in general sound great especially with my manual tweaking of the EQ, but the dialog is not nearly as legible as in the theater.
Just haven't found the golden setting yet.
