Anthem D2/D2v/AVM50/AVM50v/ARC1 tweaking guide - Page 118

It would be GREAT if Anthem published the proper values for some of the more common HDMI equipment on the market today. I assume Anthem tests many source components, so this should be relatively easy to publish.

Failing that, is anybody aware of publicly confirmed information for some of the components such as:
Sony projectors (pearl, ruby, etc)
HD-DVD and Blu-ray players

(Stuidio) RGB is a safe bet for any DVI device intended for home theater use. This would include cable TV or satellite boxes when using DVI output for example, or home theater projectors when using DVI input.

YCbCr 4:4:4 is a safe bet for HDMI V1.1 or later connections.

For HDMI V1.0 connections you may run into devices that ONLY support RGB. The Pioneer Elite DV-59avi DVD player -- one of the first HDMI source devices -- is just such a case.

YCbCr 4:2:2 will typically be mentioned explicitly in the owner's manual for any HDMI device if it is actually available as an optional setting. Look closely for any hints as to whether the implementation is for 8, 10, or 12 bit samples. If for 10 or 12 bit samples, then using YCbCr 4:2:2 to or from the Anthem is well worth a try. You will have to judge by eye which works better for you. I suggest you look at gray scale and color ramps if you can get them. 8 bit YCbCr 4:2:2, on the other hand, should only be used if you have no other choice.

Also be aware that *MANY* HDMI source devices use a particular, almost industry standard, HDMI output chip that has a bug. It clips Blacker than Black and Peak White data when asked to do the conversion from YCbCr to RGB -- as for example when outputting to a DVI device, but also if you force RGB output on your own. It is possible for the manufacturer to work around this (as Pioneer has done with their older 59avi player -- basically the player has to do the conversion to RGB itself before passing the data to the output chip), but most manufacturers don't give a poop about DVI anymore so they don't bother.

Even some of the new HD-DVD and Blue Ray players have this chip and this DVI clipping bug.

I'm hoping, but not certain, that the new HDMI V1.3 output chips will not have this bug.
--Bob

Can anyone explain what exactly difference is between the YCbCr 4:4:4, YCbCr 4:2:2, and RGB are? It has been explained when these should be used, but not sure what it really means.

Each signal consists of three channels of information. RGB is simpler to understand. It is a Red, Green, and Blue value -- one of each for each pixel. RGB for devices of interest to us here uses 8 bits per pixel for each of these. Thus you get a 24 bit value representing a mixture of 256 different values for each of R, G, and B.

Now you might assume that Black is a 0 value for each of these and White is a 255 value for each of these, and indeed that's the way it works for "Extended RGB". However when you do video processing of various sorts, the algorithms have trouble near black and near white because the image data has a sharp cutoff right there. There's no "headroom" for the algorithms to take advantage of -- letting things floating around a bit above and below Black and White. And you can get some artifacts because of this.

So video stuff is NOT set up that way. Instead "Studio RGB" uses a value of 16 for each of R, G, and B to represent Black. Reference White is 235 for each. The range from 1 to 15 is the Blacker than Black imaging data -- not intended to be seen, but still in there to make things work better. The range from 236 to 254 is the Peak White data, that IS intended to be seen, but content producers are careful to make sure things still look pretty good for TVs that can't reproduce different shades of white above Reference White. The values of 0 and 255 are reserved.

OK so much for RGB.

Now think of what happens when you get near black, for example. The eye is much more sensitive to shades of gray and to resolution of grays than it is to colors. There aren't that many steps available to keep one or the other color from kind of dominating things, so there is a different way of recording this stuff that works better.

Instead of recording the three primary colors you record a "luminance" signal -- basically the brightness of gray, plus two channels of "color difference" information that says how to color that gray appropriately. In YCbCr the Y signal is the gray scale luminance and the Cb and Cr are the color difference channels.

You will also sometimes encounter YPbPr, which is the same thing, but, properly, represents an analog signal whereas YCbCr is for a digital signal.

Now YCbCr 4:4:4 means that for each pixel you have one sample each for the three channels. Don't ask me to explain what 4:4:4 has to do with this. It is not something man is meant to wot of.

For the devices of interest to us here, each pixel is represented by 8 bits each of Y, Cb, and Cr. And as with Studio RGB, the values for Black and Reference White are 16 and 235 respectively (in the Y signal -- the color difference signals would be at the value that indicates "add no color"). For HDMI V1.3, the "Deep Color" stuff folks are talking about will allow that to extend to 10 bits each or 12 bits each.

Pretty straightforward so far, right? Now it gets funky.

The eye isn't capable of resolving color detail as finely as it can resolve gray scale detail, and back at the dawn of time TV people took advantage of this by only sending color info at half the resolution of gray scale info.

A 480i standard def TV signal has only half as many color samples across each line as it has gray scale samples. It's even worse for analog broadcast signals since color is encoded as kind of a "too rapid" change of gray scale -- which is why you see false colors when someone wears a striped shirt for example.

And YCbCr 4:2:2 is the digital video form of this. It has one color sample for every TWO luminance samples. Like this: Y, Cb,Y,Cr,Y,Cb,Y,Cr.

Now if your connection is able to handle 24 bits per pixel (as is used with RGB or YCbCr 4:4:4) then you can USE this reduction in color resolution to send bigger samples!

Again, your choices are 8 bit, 10 bit, or 12 bit. 8 bit is no fun. It has no better info than YCbCr 4:4:4 and you've ALSO cut the horizontal color resolution in half!

But 10 bit or 12 bit can be pretty nifty. If you send each of the Y, Cb, and Cr channels at 12 bits per sample you still, on the average, send 24 bits per pixel. It fits! But you've got more "dynamic range" for representing gray scale and color scale data.

Well that won't look good will it? You are throwing away half the color! Guess what. It looks just fine because, as stated the eye can't SEE color detail that well.

In fact standard DVD imagery is EVEN WORSE than this! The data on the DVD disc is encoded in what's called YCbCr 4:2:0. And what that means is that you've not only halved the HORIZONTAL color resolution, but you've ALSO halved the VERTICAL color resolution!

Your TV never sees YCbCr 4:2:0. Every DVD player -- even the old, original, non-progressive style players -- "reconstitutes" the vertical color info. I.e., it converts YCbCr 4:2:0 to YCbCr 4:2:2 as part of decoding the data off the disc. It's another kind of "scaling". It is tricky because of differences in video-based and film-based content. Players that screwed this up suffered from the now infamous Color Upsampling Error or "CUE".

And what's worse, the sample size on the DVD is only 8 bits! So you get all the loss of color resolution -- both horizontaly and vertically -- and no gain in data quality. Why do they do this? Because otherwise the movie wouldn't fit on the disc, or it could only be made to fit by cranking up the MPEG2 compression so high that the compression defects would be unignorable.

Next step: Players with digital outputs now have to decide whether to send out that YCbCr 4:2:2 they just created on the fly from the YCbCr 4:2:0 on the disc, and if so whether to leave it at 8 bits or "scale" it up to 10 or 12 bits, *OR* convert it to YCbCr 4:4:4 (8 bit samples) by "reconstituting" the horizontal color resolution as well. Alternatively they could convert it to RGB (8 bit samples) which also requires them to reconstitute the horizontal color resolution.

So if the device you are hooking to the Anthem supports YCbCr 4:2:2 at 10 or 12 bits it *MIGHT* give you better results than YCbCr 4:4:4. Or it might not.

But the only point in doing YCbCr 4:2:2 at 8 bits would be if you believe the source device has a bug in the way it produces YCbCr 4:4:4.

The only way to tell is to try it, calibrating both ways separately, and see for yourself which you like better.
--Bob

I just wanted to follow up on my post from a week or so ago and say that it was indeed a problem of having too many DVI-HDMI adapters on my DVI cable. My Monoprice HDMI cable arrived today and I'm now feeding 1080p/60 to the Optoma with no problems.

Thanks for the help, everyone!

Really good explanation Bob.

My understanding is also that when you are using 4:2:2, even if your source (such as DVD) got only 8bits, it does allows for the processing to be performed over a 10 to 12 bits resolutions to be at the end of all the processing to be truncated to 8bits resolution before being sent to the display. This reduces the impact of rounding error.

Yes, but understand that rounding error is just not that big a deal as regards transmission between devices.

What people are USUALLY seeing when they discuss such stuff is more typically incorrect Gamma Correction or simply improper set up of gray and color ramps to begin with.

Doing the math with more bits helps much like upsampling audio to 192KHz helps in the D2. It makes the math easier which means you can do more stuff in the same time instead of being cleverer about how you do it (which takes time).

But at the point where you want to send stuff between devices, reverting to the original sample size just isn't that bad.
--Bob

Thanks man, I know you'll love the JVC.

I give Peter kudos for getting component out of a PC to work, but component out of anything (analog) shouldn't be hard.

The real target is pixel by pixel HTPC to projector, by DVI or HDMI out of the PC. I have NOT been able to get that top work through the Anthem, even in "pass through" of 1920x1080 in to 1920x1080 out. Switching after the Anthem (HDMI high bandwidth switch) works fine, though it complicates the macros marginally, including every few weeks I pull my hair out trying to figure why I have no video and the post-Anthem switch is set incorrectly. Like Peter I have not tested later software revs.

Nick is great so if he says it works maybe it does, it's not as simple as plugging in an AV device though, even if it does work.

Never seems to amaze me the knowledge of some people on this forum. Not only knowledge but the ability to break it down into words in a way that us people not so literate into the field jargan can understand. Thank you for taking the time to type out that explanation Bob. You know I use to think the scariest place ever was inside my wife's head, I have started to question that of lately. Please tell me you at least have a book open sitting off to the side that you read from when responding to these questions. Whew!

On that note off to have a beer! oh and some dinner.

Hey all.....I was wondering if you all could suggest an optimal setting for my room resonance filter. I set my volume to 10db below reference and measured the sound level of each without applying the filter.

SPL determined by the RS SPL meter set on C weaighting and slow response:

18hz 80 db
21hz 84 db
24hz 90 db
27hz 92 db
30hz 93 db
33hz 94 db
36hz 94 db
39hz 91 db
42hz 89 db
45hz 88 db
48hz 84 db
51hz 80.5 db
54hz 76 db
57hz 71.5 db
60hz 72 db
63hz 75 d
66hz 81 db
69hz 83 db
72hz 81 db
75hz 75.5 db
78hz 75 db

Also, if you think that I may have some problems with my crossover point that would help too.

My current speaker settings are all set to small with crossover of the front speakers set to 60hz....the rest at 80hz. My mains are Martin Logans Ascents (rated down to 35hz) and my sub is a ML Descent rated down to 18hz. Sub has the low pass filter set to 70hz.

Help or suggestions appreciated.

Have you tried switching the phase switch to 180 instead of zero or vice versa? There might be a cancellation effect on your crossover frequency of 60 hz. If this works the difference between your highest and lowest SPL reading will not be as great and you can find the offending resonant freq. in your room quite easily.

I dont know if the RS meter would work well in your situation as you might factor in corrective values to make the reading accurate.

I am getting a JL Audio Fathom 113 today and trying to determine whether I should manage it through the D2 or the sub? Currently I have a Velo SPLR-1000, which is managed by the D2, however the 113 is much more sophisticated. Also it is suggested I use the balanced vs RCA. Any thoughts?

Why would you have the low pass on at all? Can you disable it? Seems like you are creating a hole here. Isn't the sub's low pass redundant since you are using the Anthem crossover?

I just learned that even though my low-pass filter is set to 70hz.....it is bypassed because I am using the LFE input (via balanced XLR connection). So disregard the comment about the low-pass filter.

Can you explain what you mean here? Thanks.

The Sound Pressure Level (SPL) meter from Radio Shack that everyone uses for manual audio level calibration is not completely flat in its response to the lowest frequencies. This can be importatant to folks doing bass response adjustments.

In the Subwoofer forum here, there is a sticky thread that goes into this and provides links to adjustment tables for correcting the readings you get at lower frequencies:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=505236

*HOWEVER*, very important, read through that thread and DON'T just adopt one of the correction tables linked in the first post of that thread!

The folks working that thread have done additional testing and come to the conclusion that these widely published correction tables -- as linked from the first post in that thread -- are WRONG. They WAY overcorrect.

Later in the thread are links to tables with much more modest correction levels, and the discussion of how they were developed. THOSE are the corrections you want to use.

The correction table is nothing more than a list that says for a test (noise) tone at a given frequency -- as generated by the bass response test page in the Anthems for example -- you should add or subtract such and so from the value the Radio Shack SPL meter reads to get the correct reading.

There are two different types of correction table in there: One for people doing this by hand, and one for people to load into a PC program that graphs it automatically. They differ because the PC program processes the table's values a bit before using them.
--Bob

I think I cannot explain it better than Bob.

It would seem that you have a crossover problem because there is a big dip at around 57 hertz(near the 60hz. crossover frequency) relative your lower frequency values. Why don't you try the default 80hz. crossover point and calibrate the sub level again via D2. I think you will have a better set of values when you use the RS meter.

From the values given, you are really getting earthshaking bass but its 17-22dB more in the deep bass region, you might be hearing a muddied midrange because of this.

KCWolfPck - Does your sub have a variable phase or 0/180 switch? Even if you raise the crossover to 80 you might have phase problems there too. If you can't adjust the phase on the sub you can try playing with the subs distance setting in the Anthem which is a clever way of changing the phase at your listening position. Another option is placement. Do you have any flexibility in room location for the sub?

Has anyone had their D2 turn off after turning it on? I have the 200mv trigger controlling my screen and the D2 will let the screen get about a third of the way down and then shut off so the screen goes back up. It does this at random and it is a little embarrassing when friends are over and it does this.

Jeremy

We've not had any reports of problems like that in this thread.

You could have a faulty D2 of course, but there are some things to try. The first is simply to disconnect the screen from the trigger and see if you still have the problem. If NOT, then it seems likely the screen is drawing too much current on that trigger and the D2 is shutting down to protect itself. Double check the specs for the screen's use of the trigger and double check that you are actually using Trigger 3 -- the higher current trigger on the D2.

Do you have anything else on any of the D2 triggers? It is possible that the overdraw is actually due to one or more of those. Possibly the combination including the screen trigger is just at the edge of what the D2 can support.

If that proves to be the problem, another way to set up a trigger that puts less demand on the D2 is to get a triggerable power strip. Use the D2's trigger to activate the power strip (this is a low current function). Get a 12-volt power brick of the right size from Radio Shack or whatever, plug it in to that power strip, and then use it to power the trigger input on the screen.

Other causes of D2 shutdown would be overheating or a short on one of it's cables.

Finally, if you are using a programmable remote, double check its programming. It is possible that one of the codes it is sending out when you turn everything on actually happens to duplicate or include the code the D2 uses for power off.
--Bob

I am getting the oppo 970 HD tomorrow to complement the Toshiba A2. My plan was to use the Toshiba for movies (SD and HD) and the oppo for music (esp. SACD/DVD-A).

How should I connect the oppo for best music reproduction on the D2--HDMI or use the 5.1 analog inputs?

If I decide to use the oppo for SD movie viewing, will I be able to use the 5.1 channel music output for SACD/DVDA or will it automatically output everything using HDMI?
Thanks,

p.s. the P5 issue was resolved and the M&K's sure do sound sweet!

You can use the analog outputs from the Oppo, but when doing that the quality is based on the quality of the DACs in the Oppo. They're OK, but not as good as in the D2.

So instead, use HDMI, even if you are just playing music, so that the audio remains digital all the way into the D2. You will need to set the Oppo's video output resolution to 720p or 1080i when playing DVD-Audio or SACD that way or you will only get 2 channels of audio. You can use any video resolution for CDs. You could also just use optical audio for CDs but *NOT* for DVD-Audio or SACD.

If you are not using the Oppo for DVDs at all, I'd suggest you just leave it at HDMI 1080i for all music.
--Bob

I don't know about shutting off (I think that happened once). But increasingly when I turn on, the Anthem amp being triggered properly, but NO sound. It isn't muted, I test every zone, but no sound. Switching sources, doesn't help. Standing on my head or pretending I'm rabbit ears to cajole it into laughing to make sound ... nothing. Only a power recycle (which includes amp going off and back on also) gets sound back. This isn't an HDMI thing either as I'll start up on Optical audio devices and switch around, still with no sound.

At this point I regret moving up to v11, it seemed much more stable in the "olden days" or earlier software builds.

Thanks. I guess that if I use the Oppo for movies then I should manually switch to 480i output to the D2 and let the D2 upconvert the video signal to 1080i or should I just have the Oppo at 1080i ouput for everything?

I think all of this is just going to turn out to be a simple case of the Anthem not properly initializing all its internal operating values at power up, so that it is picking up whatever garbage is left around in memory.

When they added the new, overlayed inputs, and the custom video resolutions, they added a whole bunch of new values that have to be properly retrieved on power up, and a whole bunch of new default values that have to be established as well.

In any event, they really REALLY need to get the fix out for this stuff. It is downright embarrassing.
--Bob

You want to manually switch the Oppo to 480i for standard DVD playback. Its internal de-interlacing and scaling are not anywhere near as good as what the D2 will do.
--Bob

Thanks, Bob!

Roger that. New DVD2, 3, 4 etc are nice features but need to pay attention to the basics (stability, switching, etc.) first and foremost.

Thanks Bob,

It is in the 200mv output for the screen. It is the only thing connected to the triggers. The screen doesn't effect it as the fourth time I tried it with the screen trigger unplugged it shut off. I'll keep track of when it happens to see if there is any kind of pattern but I know sources don't affect this.

Jeremy