Heya, folks.
I asked a different question once before, primarily about hookups and so on.. this time it's settings.
What are the actual difference between Pro Logic II "Movie" and Pro Logic II "Music"? (Besides the obvious fact that one is made for movies, and the other for music).
Specifically, this is in regards to video games. My DVDs all use Dolby Digital/DTS, and my VHS collection is just collecting.. dust. So video games are the only time I use the Pro Logic II settings on my reciever (Sony STR-K750P, from the HT-DDW750 home theater set).
Dolby's site, and a few other places I've looked, recommend using the "Movie" mode to decode the game's PLII audio (my reciever lacks a "Game" mode). This mode has an upside and a downside.. The upside, of course, is that it gives me a full range of sound from all five speakers. The downside is that I seem to lose a lot of the bass, it sounds somewhat "tinny" compared to normal stereo. Here's my theory:
With a normal stereo signal, it seems that the reciever automatically shifts the low-end audio from the left/right channels to the subwoofer, so you get nice "deep" sound, even without a dedicated LFE channel. It almost seems that, in PLII "Movie", it's doing the same thing.. pulling low-end from the left/right channels and sending it to the subwoofer. But it seems to be ignoring the center and surround channels as a possible "source" of low-end audio. So there's still some bass, just not as much as there was.
Now, PLII "Music" mode seems to recify this.. the sound seems just as deep as normal stereo, but spread out over all the speakers. But I think there's a downside here, too.. the audio doesn't seem quite as immersive as it did, like it's more just "spreading out" the sound rather than properly splitting it off where it needs to be (which seems likely, considering this is what it would do with a music CD).
Is this actually what it's doing? Is PLII "Music" still decoding the incoming PLII signal properly, or is it ignoring the encoding and just doing a "best-guess" since music signals don't have PLII encoding?
Basically, I'm just trying to figure out a way to get as much "oomph" out of PLII in video games as I do in stereo signals and DD/DTS movies. But I don't want the lose the accuracy of the sound field, either, I'd like all the sounds to stay where they're supposed to be, ya know?
On a side note, I've found that the audio from my PS2, even though it's digital (optical) is still only an analog PCM 48KHz stereo signal. My reciever doesn't recognize anything about the signal (no digital "marker", or whatever it's called, to identify what it is), which I think may be causing some of these problems, since I'm having to "force" it into PLII decoding mode. Normally, the PS2 input is set to "AFD AUTO", where it creates a simple stereo signal, even with PLII-encoded games (except for the occasional DD5.1 movie or cutscene, which it recognizes and switches over, sounds lovely). With PLII games, I have to manually push the AFD button on the remote to switch it over to "PLII MOV" mode. My DVD input (coax) doesn't have this problem, as it's a purely digital signal, so stereo remains stereo (older films), and it can recognize PLII encoding (
Firefly, for example, or most DVD menus) and switch over automatically (probably because even stereo signals on DVD are encoded in Dolby Digital, and they have the "marker").
Anyway.. any help would be hot.
I'll be trying to do some tests this afternoon with "PLII MUS" and games, but it's difficult to find the right parts of games that have a full-bore surround field where I can isolate noises from different speakers. But I'll try.
TIA!
