[Gary147852]

I've played with the drc settings but no matter what I do its not making a difference. I've also tried using the volume normalization on my bluray player (LG bp330) but peaks in spl haven't changed..... any ideas?

 

[highfigh]

I've played with the drc settings but no matter what I do its not making a difference. I've also tried using the volume normalization on my bluray player (LG bp330) but peaks in spl haven't changed..... any ideas?

Is this with movies? Must be, because music CDs haven't ever been accused of excessive dynamic range.

What's happening that makes you post this- distortion on peaks?

 

[Gary147852]

No I want my peaks compressed. I'm sick of turning it up to hear dialog and then turning it down during explosions etc...

I'd prefer a constant listening level.

 

[postrokfan]

There are a number of things that Pioneer offers to control this issue including auto level control (multi-channel), loudness control, and midnight listening mode. Unfortunately, of these features I think the vsx-524 only has 2-channel auto level control.

 

[Gary147852]

There are a number of things that Pioneer offers to control this issue including auto level control (multi-channel), loudness control, and midnight listening mode. Unfortunately, of these features I think the vsx-524 only has 2-channel auto level control.

 

[postrokfan]

Ah, so it actually does have the midnight listening mode. That could definitely help out with movies. Have you tried it? Not sure about the loudness control but it appears only to be applied for 2-channel?

 

[Gary147852]

According to the manual and my experience it boosts the surrounds which will help you hear them at low volumes. But that doesn't really solve the dynamics. I'm thinking of a minidsp nanoavr. I think it will allow me to compress the dynamics plus I can do proper dsp.

 

[JHAz]

Try the dynamics control in the Pio. Outboard gear, you'll find requires different settings from movie to movie (if not from scene to scene) and you'll just frustrate yourself trying to figure out and remember what settings work best. People pay thousands of dollars, many thousands of dollars, to get a mastering engineer to compress and eq a CD tune by tune and overall . . . (when you compress, you change the eq, so it's all a big freakin circle) not because it's so very easy to get right. Plus on a movie 60 percent or more of the sound is in the center channel, so if you don't touch it thingswill get unnatural sounding no matter how wonderfully you can manage to control dynamics to your preference in the left and right channels.

FWIW, the Audyssey dynamic volume thing works well for me (once I do appropriate and different offsets for movies versus music). I have not used whatever Pio has, so I can't say whether it's equivalent or not (and it's all personal taste anyway, so you really should not care what system or settings I use, other than as a possible starting point), Bu
t just because the Pio description mentions surrounds doesn't mean it does nothing else. Go to the thread for your Pio and see what folks say. Try searching first so people don't harass you for asking a question that has already been answered a hundred times . . .

and btw the Pio doesn't have too much dynamic range. You don't like the mixes. It's not the Pio's fault that it accurately reproduces what the mixers wanted you to hear . . . . It's not expanding dynamic range. You absolutely should not want some device that always applies hypercompression to everything whether it needs it or not, and frankly, such a defective device would get horrible reviews and be unsaleable.

 

[sjm817]

This is something that frustrates many people. Myself included. I used to have a Pioneer receiver that had a "dialog enhancer" feature that worked pretty well. My current Sony does not.