Observation About The Rxv2500

[little wing]

Hello All,
I have had the 2500 for almost a year now. I play my music through the analog outputs of a dedicated CD player. And use the "Straight" mode. When I first got it, I tried all the music surround modes. "Vienna hall" "Hall in Munich" "Bottom Line" and so forth.......And was not to impressed. It seemed to thin out the presentation to me. Recently I hooked up a Coax cable from my Digital cable box. Comcast has a bunch of music channels. Anyway, I tried the surrounds modes again, using the digital input on the reciever and the surround modes sound a thousand times better! Much more body and weight to the music. I was just wondering if anybody else had a similar experience? Why would feeding the 2500 a digital signal and let it do the processing make the surrounds modes sound so much better? Any ideas?............ Thanks.

If there is an obvious answer to this, please forgive my ignorance.

 

[tomd51]

Sounds a bit strange, shouldn't sound any better unless the analog outs from the STB are pretty crappy. Most of the DSPs are garbage and just for goofing around, the 'Straight', 'Pure Direct' or 'Stereo' settings are usually what I'll use for two channel listening.

f you have your CD player in the same configuration (digital coax/toslink and analog RCAs), do you notice a difference switching from one to the other? I've got my 2500 hooked up to my Yamaha C750 universal changer w/both toslink digital cable and RCA, but the sound from either is identical regardless of the CD source.

May want to consider trying this setup (if possible from your CD player) to see if you get the same affect, this would either indicate the analog outs from the STB are garbage, the receiver is affecting this behavior or possibly something else is at work here... -TD

 

[simpleHT]

I also agree that you should try to see if sound gets better when you use digital out from your CDP. If you see improvement over the analog out, that might mean the DAC in your receiver is better than that in your CDP.

 

[MDS]

You know how everyone talks about 'level matching' before making sighted coomparisons to tell if one amp/recevier/cd player etc sounds 'better' than another? Well the same thing applies to this situation.

The level of the music from the digital music channels on cable is far greater than the average level of a typical CD and in many cases 'louder is better'. It may just be that the digital music channels sound better than the CD simply due to level; then again there very well may be a difference between the analog inputs of the receiver and the digital inputs. It's tough to tell definitively.

 

[little wing]

Thanks

Thank you guys. I am going to buy a digital cable this weekend to run it from my cd player and see what it sounds like. Good point MDS I didn't think about the levels of the input. I'll try to adjust it to see if it makes a difference. Thank you again for the replys!!

 

[jeffsg4mac]

I have found that with a treated room the effects modes are much, much better. I use several of the concert modes with various concerts and my wife loves the classical/opera setting when watching Phantom of the Opera. In untreated rooms the modes seem to exagerate all the issues of the untreated room. I never liked them prior to treating my room.

 

[little wing]

jeffsg4mac good point as well. My room is not treated at all. I use the EQ in the reciever to make slight adjustments. But that is as far as I have taken it at this point.