Home Theater Dynamic Range Considerations - Page 3

Originally Posted by BIslander 

The Onkyo receivers that had the Ironman problem powered up with DRC set to Auto. Auto does not turn on DRC. Rather, it means DRC will be engaged if the disc instructs it to do so. And Ironman is the only disc known to do that. Now, it is certainly possible that Spottedfeather has manually set his receiver to use DRC, which would explain why he can hear dialog better with Dolby encodes than with DTS.

Originally Posted by crazy4daisy 

Oh ok, I stand corrected then, apologies all. I thought "auto" meant it was actually applying DRC "automatically". Thanks for the explanation.

Anyway spottedfeather must have some form of compression going on automatically for Dolby TH sources, and not DTS HDMA sources, as agree there should be no difference in the two.

Originally Posted by Spottedfeather 


My receiver doesn't use DRC unless I tell it to. And it doesn't even show up as an option for DTS-HD tracks.

Originally Posted by Spottedfeather 

When the receiver detects a TrueHD track, it will show a list of options such as Bass, Treble, Subwoofer, and Center. There will be something called Night Mode. It has the options of Off, Low, and High. This evens out the sound on Dolby tracks. The only way that this shows up for DTS tracks is if I set my player to mix the main audio with the menu sounds. But with just HD Audio outputting, there is no option for Night Mode. The DRC on my player it's self is always set to off.

Originally Posted by pokekevin 

Well its definitely not DTS HD MA's fault. You can't compare it to TrueHD since they are two different mixes, you'd have to extract the audio an EAC it to TrueHD to compare( it will sound the same ). Do you have Audyssey on your pre/pro?

Originally Posted by BIslander 

DRC is a Dolby feature and is not available with DTS or PCM.
The question is whether you use those Night Mode options with Dolby sources, which would account for the differences you are hearing. btw, when bitstreaming, the DRC setting in the player makes no difference one way or the other. DRC and all other digital processing happens when the track is back to being PCM after decoding. With bitstream, the player just sends the encoded file to the receiver where it is decoded and processed.

Spottedfeather - I presume you would like to find out why you can hear some tracks better than others. It is quite likely the specific soundtracks that are being played and the ones you have a hard time hearing just happen to use dts-MA. I can assure it is not the codec used the compress them. That simply cannot be the reason. Beyond that, the use of DRC (Night Mode) could account for the difference between tracks encoded using Dolby and DTS.

OPTIMUM SURR
– In the Optimum Surround mode, this receiver automatically optimizes sound balance in each
scene based on actually set volume. The sound balancer controls three major theater sound elements dialogue, bass and surround with original algorithm.