Surround sound for Movies with only stereo sound track?

[tyhjaarpa]

I have been recently experiencing with DOLBY PLII/IIx Music on stereo music and for some music this works really well but for some I still rather stereo only. How ever I was thinking that this could give more for old movies that only hass stereo sound tracks but for some reason this option is not available for blu-ray that has stereo sound, or is this blu-ray specific? What I have available is DOLBY PLIIz that plays the content still as stereo and DTS NEO:X Cinema but this only plays content on center channel.. I know I could play MULTI CH STEREO but that is not really what I want.

Any one else experienced with this and got good results?

 

[lovinthehd]

Hmmm, never tried playing a BluRay in 2.0, nor do I think any of mine are only 2.0, so I popped a few in to see if I could choose a 2.0 soundtrack which from what I remembered were mostly foreign soundtracks. First one was DTS HD only, second one had a Dolby 2.0 soundtrack in French (never tried Ferris Bueller in French....). I can matrix into DPLIIx Cinema in both 7ch and 9ch (a DSX hybrid) modes, DTS Neo:X in 9ch mode. I would think your avr would be similar (Denon 4520 for me).

What output audio mode is your bluray player in? What blurays?

 

[tyhjaarpa]

Hmmm, never tried playing a BluRay in 2.0, nor do I think any of mine are only 2.0, so I popped a few in to see if I could choose a 2.0 soundtrack which from what I remembered were mostly foreign soundtracks. First one was DTS HD only, second one had a Dolby 2.0 soundtrack in French (never tried Ferris Bueller in French....). I can matrix into DPLIIx Cinema in both 7ch and 9ch (a DSX hybrid) modes, DTS Neo:X in 9ch mode. I would think your avr would be similar (Denon 4520 for me).

What output audio mode is your bluray player in? What blurays?

I have to check exact settings when I'm home and got time to do it, might be tight today. I think my player is set to output as bitstream. Receivers auto setting correctly finds the audio as stereo when I play these movies at least.

Was watching Throne of Blood yesterday.

 

[lovinthehd]

Is there something unique about the language version you have? Maybe try a soft reset?

 

[TLS Guy]

I have been recently experiencing with DOLBY PLII/IIx Music on stereo music and for some music this works really well but for some I still rather stereo only. How ever I was thinking that this could give more for old movies that only hass stereo sound tracks but for some reason this option is not available for blu-ray that has stereo sound, or is this blu-ray specific? What I have available is DOLBY PLIIz that plays the content still as stereo and DTS NEO:X Cinema but this only plays content on center channel.. I know I could play MULTI CH STEREO but that is not really what I want.

Any one else experienced with this and got good results?

Well if it is a Dolby soundtrack and you sent it bitstream then the receiver will do what it should and play it 2.0.

I think if you play these discs and set the player to stereo and switch off Dolby then the receiver will recognize a two channel stereo source and PL 2x will work.

Some discs have a two channel PCM mix which works like you want, but these are generally opera discs.

 

[tyhjaarpa]

Well if it is a Dolby soundtrack and you sent it bitstream then the receiver will do what it should and play it 2.0.

I think if you play these discs and set the player to stereo and switch off Dolby then the receiver will recognize a two channel stereo source and PL 2x will work.

Some discs have a two channel PCM mix which works like you want, but these are generally opera discs.

Even if it is Dolby Digital Stereo? If that is the case then I wonder why can't receiver just handle it as it was a plain stereo?

 

[TLS Guy]

Even if it is Dolby Digital Stereo? If that is the case then I wonder why can't receiver just handle it as it was a plain stereo?

That is because of the Dolby system. Once the receiver gets a Dolby signal it goes into discrete mode and the algorithms are disabled.

 

[lovinthehd]

I noted the Japanese disc in one version of the Kirosawa film was mono LPCM, others 2.0 Dolby. The disc I tried to matrix was 2.0 Dolby, though (and I use a bitstream setting on my player) and I was able to matrix it with my avrs upmixers....

 

[tyhjaarpa]

I checked that my player outputs as bitstream but I had no time to play with discs and audio tracks, will try these things out in either saturday or sunday. I could set the player to output as PCM but I don't know if this would help or limit something?

 

[tyhjaarpa]

So I had time to play today and now I'm even more confused about this..

Some of my DVD that have dolby digital stereo work correctly with PLII Movie NEO:X Cinema but for some of DVD it still gives sound only in center channel even when the sound track is dolby digital stereo. All blu-ray I tried this with only gets sound in center channel even when dolby digital stereo sound track is selected.

If I make my player to output PCM then PLII Movie NEO:X Cinema works just like before, sound only in center channel. How ever with PCM output I can now select PLII Music NEO:X Music and I get sound from all speakers.

What are the differences with PLII Movie NEO:X Cinema and PLII Music NEO:X Music? How about PCM output from my player, am I losing something here?

 

[TLS Guy]

So I had time to play today and now I'm even more confused about this..

Some of my DVD that have dolby digital stereo work correctly with PLII Movie NEO:X Cinema but for some of DVD it still gives sound only in center channel even when the sound track is dolby digital stereo. All blu-ray I tried this with only gets sound in center channel even when dolby digital stereo sound track is selected.

If I make my player to output PCM then PLII Movie NEO:X Cinema works just like before, sound only in center channel. How ever with PCM output I can now select PLII Music NEO:X Music and I get sound from all speakers.

What are the differences with PLII Movie NEO:X Cinema and PLII Music NEO:X Music? How about PCM output from my player, am I losing something here?

No, you are not loosing anything. In the PCM mode your player does the lions share of the decoding, and in bitstream the receiver does.

What I do not understand is how you only get sound on the center channel, unless those DVDs are actually mono recordings. If that is the case then PL2x would send everything to the center channel.

 

[tyhjaarpa]

No, you are not loosing anything. In the PCM mode your player does the lions share of the decoding, and in bitstream the receiver does.

What I do not understand is how you only get sound on the center channel, unless those DVDs are actually mono recordings. If that is the case then PL2x would send everything to the center channel.

I had to play more with the disks and I must say that you were right. Some of my blu-ray/dvd list stereo sound as sound track and the disc menu also says Dolby digital stereo but when I listen to them with headphones it actually is mono duplicated to both sides! All of these blu-ray/dvd result only sound to center channel when using PLII. Some of my blu-ray/dvd actually get working PLII and when I listen to those with headphones they are true stereo and not mono.

Question now how ever is why do these companies label these as stereo when they are not? Makes it a lot harder to use sound tracks properly as you can't apparently trust the labels.

With PCM output I was able to get PLII working with music setting from the disks that had mono sound track labeled as dolby stereo. Do you know what differences there is between PLII music and movie if any? And how would this PLII work when there actually is duplicated mono instead of true stereo?

 

[TLS Guy]

I had to play more with the disks and I must say that you were right. Some of my blu-ray/dvd list stereo sound as sound track and the disc menu also says Dolby digital stereo but when I listen to them with headphones it actually is mono duplicated to both sides! All of these blu-ray/dvd result only sound to center channel when using PLII. Some of my blu-ray/dvd actually get working PLII and when I listen to those with headphones they are true stereo and not mono.

Question now how ever is why do these companies label these as stereo when they are not? Makes it a lot harder to use sound tracks properly as you can't apparently trust the labels.

With PCM output I was able to get PLII working with music setting from the disks that had mono sound track labeled as dolby stereo. Do you know what differences there is between PLII music and movie if any? And how would this PLII work when there actually is duplicated mono instead of true stereo?

In movie mode the balance is changed to favor the center channel. I think it is basically like just turning up the center channel to favor dialog.

I actually do not use it, as speech clarity is good on my rig, and using the movie mode collapses the sound stage somewhat.

I would say that PL IIx that is a 7.1 matrix does work significantly better than PL II 5.1. This is a big benefit of 7.1 over 5.1. Come to that DTS Master 7.1 movies are a lot more spacious and realistic than 5.1 and it is a pity there are so few in 7.1.