Dolby PLII vs Neo 6

[philh]

Sony 995 Receiver
Two front towers
Center Speaker
Sub Woofer
surround l/r
NO rears

I have been struggling to get this system set up in my new house for over three years. Besides the fact the room configuration is nearly impossible to overcome, and complete speaker mismatch.

Receiver has multiple choices for two channel (?) decoding, including Dolby PLII, DTS Neo 6.

Satellite sound is hooked up to the receiver via digital cable and properly switches to Digital Dolby, when it receives a DD signal.

Now for the fun, some non DD tv shows or movies sound better in PLII, others sound better in Neo 6. Why and can my system be configured to automatically recognize which one? If I leave it in pure auto mode, if forces non digital to 2.1 configuration.

Second question, how much advantage is there to rear speakers, considering most tube watching comes across satellite? Very little DVD watching. Music is 2.1, unless it's the kids crap, and then it's 2.0 only. Towers produce more then enough bass to crack the foundation with their music.

Just for grins this weekend, I got mad enough over my lousy speaker placement and increased the right surround volume 3.5 db. Wow, did it make an improvement.

 

[MDS]

Now for the fun, some non DD tv shows or movies sound better in PLII, others sound better in Neo 6. Why and can my system be configured to automatically recognize which one? If I leave it in pure auto mode, if forces non digital to 2.1 configuration.

There is no way for the receiver to know which matrix decoder 'sounds better' for a given type of input. However, most receivers will remember the last mode used. So if you were using PLII for non-DD signals on the input where your satellite is connected, it should automatically use PLII. If you were to manually switch to Neo:6, it should retain that setting. Some higher-end receivers also allow you to specify your choice for decoder in the setup menu (for each type of input signal - analog 2 channel, pcm, dd 2.0, etc) and will always switch to that decoder when it sees that type of input signal (you can still change it manually); it cannot however know that you prefer PLII when watching a sitcom and Neo:6 when watching cartoons.

 

[philh]

I wondered if I missed something to receive a config flag somewhere. One show sounds great with PLII, but another similar show has way too much "background" noise going through the surround speakers. But, when things go digital, all is good