Receiver and speaker setup

[Phantom]

Hi all, a newbie question for you. I have just completed the construction of our new home theatre room. We spent a tremendous amount of time up front researching the construction and have now installed our system (Yamaha and Paradigm 9's, Titan rears, CC370 center etc). Yahoo!
My question is, what is the best setting on my receiver for the best theatre experience? I was playing with all the settings and trying to determine what sounded best out of Dolby Digital, Dolby ProLogic II verses DTS Digital Surround decoding (along with all the Yamaha's Quad-Field CINEMA DSP settings).

Any thoughts, comments and recommendations would be appreciated!

 

[MDS]

Dolby Digital and DTS are the two most prevalent audio formats on a DVD and if both are present it comes down to personal preference as to which one you think sounds better. If you have a 5.1 speaker setup you really should use the straight DD or DTS decoders.

PLII is a matrix decoder and is used for a different purpose. It can take any analog or digital 2 channel signal and extract center and surrounds, making it 5.1. You could use it to play back a stereo source (such as a CD) in surround. If you had a 6.1 or 7.1 speaker setup you could also use PLIIx to turn 5.1 into 6.1 or 7.1. There are probably other matrix decoders available on the receiver as well, such as Neo:6. You have to try them to see which you prefer and of course it will vary depending on the source you are playing.

Yamaha's DSP settings are yet further options. You can layer them on top of DD/DTS. They are not simply matrix decoders, they change the sound in various ways which you may or may not find useful.

So there is no 'best' option other than for straight DD/DTS soundtracks it is probably best to just use the DD/DTS decoder and not layer any of the other DSP programs on top of them.

As always, experiment with them and you'll soon develop your own preferences. I tend to use DD/DTS straight and PLII Music mode for everything else.

 

[Phantom]

Thanks MDS, funny enough I through in a Star Wars DVD (which should offer exceptional sound?) and DD/DTS only worked in mono?
What would that mean?

 

[flyv65]

Thanks MDS, funny enough I through in a Star Wars DVD (which should offer exceptional sound?) and DD/DTS only worked in mono?
What would that mean?

Check your receiver settings: IIRC, the StarWars DVDs are all Dolby Digital (not DTS) and offer the 5.1 (in English) and 2.0 (in Spanish and French, I think), so if you're not getting the DD5.1 you might have the wrong input mode selected (auto, PCM, analog, etc). Then again, I'm not real familiar with the Yamaha stuff, so it could be a DSP issue, or a DVD player issue (possibly, but not likely), or it could even be a set up issue; have you just set this up recently? what are your components?

Bryan...yamaha gives a lot of bang for the buck, but I hate all the DSP stuff they give you...