I watched that video last night. My results are totally at odds with Gene's. Center spread really ruins my excellent results from the Dolby Digital Up mixer.
This is the post I placed in the comment section of Gene's video today.
Gene, again my results are totally at odds with yours. With center spread off I definitely have the widest and most realistic sound stage when upmixing 2 channel program with center spread off. The only up mixer that I find acceptable is Dolby Digital Surround. This appears to be the only one that can make 2 channel music close to discrete multichannel sound without upsetting the tonal balance.
I played around with sweeps today and found the upmixer to be very discrete. The really convincing demonstration which was an absolute decider for me as playing an old Decca 7.5ips 4 track tape: "A Journey in Stereo Sound." This was superbly recorded in 1959. It was issued on LP. But I played the tape version, so there was no possibility of interchannel crosstalk. It was played on my Revox A77 Mk IV, which is in perfect as new condition. This recoding has a lot of tracks, including steam trains, motor racing, symphonic excerpts, dance bands, and all sorts of good test material. Now with the upmixer the host is dead center with extremely natural speech, with center spread off. With center spread on, the voice is not as well localized and the voice colored and a bit "chesty."
There is a band with trumpets left, percussion center and saxophones to the right. With center spread off everything is nicely balanced, and everything as it should be. Engage center spread, and the percussion sections spreads all over the sound stage. What ever program I use to test, the sound stage is far wider and deeper with center spread off. When center spread is engaged the sound stage becomes narrower and most unnatural. With my live live recordings done with a matrix technique or pure Blumlein, the degradation caused by center spread is extremely dramatic. I have no idea why our results vary so much. Possible it is because of my center channel. I think I'm more proud of that speaker than any other. It is an incredibly natural and accurate speaker, producing really realistic natural speech. I'm yet to find another center than can get close to matching it.
The other possibility is that these upmixers are implemented differently on different units. Mine is the Marantz AV7705. With that unit in my room, I continue to be absolutely stunned how good it is. How it manages to produce such discrete channels from two, I have no idea.
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