"Official" Audyssey thread (FAQ in post #1) - Page 612

Hi Larry,


Manual? What's that?

It is indeed confusing. They seem to be attempting to show that DSX can only be on when you have Wides or Heights (which is true of course), but the diagram implies that you also need Back Surrounds. I will let them know that people actually do read manuals.


I don't have a problem with that. It's when we start saying Side Surrounds and Rear Surrounds that I start taking off points.

Hi Chris,

Yeah, some of us cheat and actually read the manual before attempting to set things up.


Thanks! I'm guilty of using the Side Surround designation in a misguided attempt to make sure my fellow forum members know I'm referring to, well the surrounds near the sides. Don't worry from now on it's "Surrounds" for me, none of that Silly Side Surround stuff.

Larry

I think I'm in point debt.

Can we rename each of them using the 7 dwarfs naming convention? The Surround backs can be Sleepy and Dopey.

Yeah, good idea, but with DSX we're gonna need four more dwarfs.

Larry

OK that's my confusion. I wasn't assuming that people setup BOTH height and wide speakers to switch between. I thought some were using just one set of speakers and using them for both height and wide. Thanks for clearing it up.

Hi,

Do any of you folks with electronics background have an educated guess whether this new Optimum Gain Volume Circuitry on the new Onkyo PR-SC5507 will have a potential for mitigating Volume Scaling limitations when Audyssey is enabled? Or is it simply a matter of how muscular the Volume IC chip is regardless of volume controls?

Thanks.

Larry

Well, I thought we could refer to the DSX speakers using the Beatles naming convention. George and Ringo can be the Height's since the Wides do most of the work on stage...

Several theaters in my area (Northern Virginia) have them. Now, what they actually USE them for, I have no clue.

I too am one of those strange people that read the owner's manual. I studied the manual for my Onkyo TX-SR706 for a week before hooking anything up. I have to say that Onkyo's Listening Mode charts can be very confusing at first glance, but after you have studied them for a while, you find that they contain a wealth of information.

Perhaps what we need is someone to do like Batpig has done and create an "Onkyo to Engish" dictionary.

While technically incorrect, I almost always stress side surrounds and rear surrounds. It amazes me how many folks I talk to that think 'surrounds' in a 5.1 setup go on the back wall. Check the Onkyo 705 thread and you will find countless folks plugging their surrounds in the L/R Back and wondering why they don't work. Saying "Side Surrounds" sometimes gives them a hint

Looking at the figures, this looks like Onkyo's variation of Dolby Volume/Dynamic Volume. There's obvious signal compression taking place.

Or maybe Audyssey's four technology executives, but they'll have to decide among themselves who does the most work.

1. Holman
2. Kyriakakis
3. Bharitkar
4. Hilmes

Larry

Hi,

Dolby Volume is analogous to Audyssey Dynamic EQ which both adjust the levels based on monitoring and adjusting the volume in real time, and compensating for the human ear's changing sensitivity with frequency. So there shouldn't be any dynamic range compression. (I suspect that Dolby Volume is making adjustments based on monitoring changes in volume, rather than measuring the actual in-room dynamic SPL, but that's another story. )

Larry

Analogous to Audyssey Dynamic Volume. Dynamic EQ is part of Dynamic Volume, but can also be used on its own when the adjustments to the volume control are done manually

Hi Chris,

Thanks.

The point was that I was attempting to make is that when running Audyssey Dynamic EQ without Dynamic Volume, there is no dynamic range compression. I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that Dolby Volume likewise did not necessarily compress dynamic range.

Larry

Hi Larry,

Both Audyssey Dynamic Volume and Dolby Volume are designed to compress dynamic range when needed. Dynamic Volume uses Dynamic EQ to make the necessary perceptual adjustments when the volume is turned down. Dolby Volume uses another method for doing that.

Just kidding. Chris beat me to the response.

Yeah, that's what I get for assuming.

Larry

Thanks for a laugh out loud moment. I'll try not to be so Grumpy.

So . . . John and Paul are the Wides. Where's Yoko?

I recently came across this post about the Onkyo 886 that mentioned something about MultEQ XT reducing the maximum achievable volume control by 12dB to compensate for raising the equalization, but I haven't been able to find a good explanation of exactly what this refers to or what the implications of it are. Could anyone here help me understand it? Thanks.

I can add a little more detail. In the case of any compressed 7.1 audio, TrueHD, HDMA, DD+, DTS HR, there is a complete 5.1 presentation created by the encoder, made by downmixing under operator control. The bitstream carries an additional substream to expand the 5.1 to 7.1. When the playback system cannot support 7.1 channels, only the 5.1 presentation is decoded. The only time an AVR or BD player performs downmixing to make 5.1 from 7.1 is when the source track is LPCM.

Hi,

For those interested in possible improvements in Volume Scaling on newly released units, here's a response that was posted in the Onkyo PR-SC886 thread.


Larry

Thanks Roger. FWIW, this is what I was thinking of when I made my post:

Dolby Labs Metadata Guide.
http://www.aesnashville.org/PDFs/Tec...20Metadata.pdf
It discusses the metadata used to control downmixing and states pretty clearly at p12:

"In all downmixes, the LFE channel is not included."

If I had never seen that, my initial answer would have been less elegent, but similar to yours: whether the LFE survives downmixing, and at what levels it is included, depends on the decisions made during the encoding process. With the caveat that, at least down mixing to 2 channels, I clearly found some blu-rays that did not "keep" the LFE, or at least not at anything like the original level. It is of course impossible to tell from my house whether the LFE is mixed back in at, say, -10dB or whether all the low end I hear in a downmix with quieter deep bass was present in the main channels in the first place, and the LFE channel was omitted.

This stuff gets confusinger and confusinger to me . . . .

The speakers along the back wall of movie theaters are used all the time.

For Dolby Stereo optical, they are part of the single surround channel U-shaped array comprising all surrounds in the theater.

For 5.1 sources, they are split into two halves, and joined with their neighboring side wall speakers to make the L-shaped Ls or Rs arrays.

For Surround EX content, in theaters equipped for EX playback, they are driven by the EX channel, and Ls/Rs channels drive only the side-wall mounted surround speakers.

In bed with John.

Did I just say that? C'mon. We're all adults here.

Yes. But that document only discusses Dolby Digital, and how it handles it's own downmixing function.


Exactly.


There are tools that can read the bitstream and display the metadata settings. But whatever you find, it goes in the "read it and weep" department, as that was someone's choice upstream. OTOH, you could make your own downmixes with a multi-ch BD player feeding an outboard stereo mixer.


Your grasp seems perfectly correct.

I guess that makes her Zone 2.

Maybe I could just revive my PC downstairs with the Yamaha DSP factory in it (I think I've got 8 analog outs between various cards). But my wife already is annoued that I often have my laptop open while watching the tube and sliders (especially motorized sliders) are just so much more fun . . . . Maybe I could pick up an old 02R for cheap . . .

I'd be kicked out of the house in no time.

I think I'll live with the existing mix.

Zone 2.