Dolby Surround & DTS Neural:X "Upmixers" on New Denon X2800 in a 5.1 System

[John Lohmann]

Not sure I've ever had an HD DVD (had to look it up too, been a while). I pretty much went from dvd to bluray. I probably only have a handful of 2.0 dvds (I know I have one bluray that way).

I too went from DVD to Blu, but my point was that the HD DVD format had the majority of Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks (as far as discs go); when Blu-ray arrived, the major codecs were Dolby TrueHD and, to a larger extent, DTS-HD Master Audio.

Not sure of your point with the Fleetwood Mac disc, tho.

A couple of weeks ago, I played a Fleetwood Mac concert DVD that has a 2.0 Dolby sound mix, and the Denon automatically went into Dolby Surround mode to decode it. I experimented with switching this to DTS Neural:X while the disc was playing to see if there would be more crowd immersion from the surround channels, and there really wasn't. This was in response to you suggesting I try another upmixer.

But when I did this, it sent the AVR into that "upmixer mixup" I talked about a couple of posts up; no matter on that, I was just saying.

The bottom line is that I did try DTS Neural for a 2-channel signal.

 

[lovinthehd]

Thanks for the expansion.

Didn't even know DD+ had been used on discs. So was that a limitation of HD DVD, they still couldn't handle a lossless codec?

I think it may depend on material and original recording as to what may stand out with using different upmixers. I just don't analyze the upmixers nearly as much as you do otoh I'd worry more about proper speaker setup myself.

 

[John Lohmann]

Thanks for the expansion.

Didn't even know DD+ had been used on discs. So was that a limitation of HD DVD, they still couldn't handle a lossless codec?

No problem.

Well, no, HD DVD also had lossless mixes on them; the format simply lost the "format war" so to speak.

I think it may depend on material and original recording as to what may stand out with using different upmixers. I just don't analyze the upmixers nearly as much as you do otoh I'd worry more about proper speaker setup myself.

It's just disappointing that, using the Friday the 13th DVDs as the example, 2.0 Dolby Stereo mixes played back with some aggressive surround information via Pro Logic II and now I'm not hearing it with Dolby Surround. I'm not the first person to complain about this upmixing system and how it's just not nearly as "effective" as Pro Logic was if you Google it.

As for speaker setup, we're fine with the way the system is -- sure, the surrounds should TECHNICALLY be at ear level, but everything sounds fine where they are above us. It even gives a quasi-Atmos effect because they're up there.

 

[isolar8001]

No problem.

Well, no, HD DVD also had lossless mixes on them; the format simply lost the "format war" so to speak.


It's just disappointing that, using the Friday the 13th DVDs as the example, 2.0 Dolby Stereo mixes played back with some aggressive surround information via Pro Logic II and now I'm not hearing it with Dolby Surround. I'm not the first person to complain about this upmixing system and how it's just not nearly as "effective" as Pro Logic was if you Google it.

As for speaker setup, we're fine with the way the system is -- sure, the surrounds should TECHNICALLY be at ear level, but everything sounds fine where they are above us. It even gives a quasi-Atmos effect because they're up there.

For your use case and expected/wanted results you need to look into Yamaha.

They still have a plethora of DSP modes on their AVR's that will give you what you want.
(they still make separate DSP processors even)

In the age of Atmos, other makers have cut DSP functions to the bone.

 

[Trebdp83]

No problem.

Well, no, HD DVD also had lossless mixes on them; the format simply lost the "format war" so to speak.


It's just disappointing that, using the Friday the 13th DVDs as the example, 2.0 Dolby Stereo mixes played back with some aggressive surround information via Pro Logic II and now I'm not hearing it with Dolby Surround. I'm not the first person to complain about this upmixing system and how it's just not nearly as "effective" as Pro Logic was if you Google it.

As for speaker setup, we're fine with the way the system is -- sure, the surrounds should TECHNICALLY be at ear level, but everything sounds fine where they are above us. It even gives a quasi-Atmos effect because they're up there.

If you care to throw a bit of money at an experiment, Onkyo does have a refurbished TX-NR686 available on their site. It does NOT have the expanded web setup to worry about and any setting you'd need to make is available in the onscreen Setup. It does NOT display source input and input signal together on the front display. It does NOT have the sound mode preset. However, it is one of the last models to feature IntelliVolume. Center Spread can be accessed from the Quick Menu. It would be buried in the Setup menu on later models and only be accessible there. It does not have the cross up mixing restrictions of some later models but I'm not sure how well the sound modes automatically adjust for input signals. It does NOT support Dolby Atmos Height Virtualization or DTS Virtual:X so there is no Speaker Virtualizer setting with which to be concerned.