RX-V2400 DSP vs Stereo Observation

[EdR]

<font color='#000000'>Vivaldi &nbsp;posted a tip about some really excellent budget classical CD's over in the 'Musical Goodness' forum, &nbsp;he's right on as to their (Classical Express) quality, and listening to one of them I noticed something very interesting about DSP, Pro Logic IIX &nbsp;that I'd like to pass along.

The CD is the Stabat Mater that features a boy soprano. &nbsp;He has a very powerful upper range, very different from a woman's, and when initially listening on my 'trial system', which has inferior electronics (a dvd player digitally into a low end 4 year old Onkyo receiver) when he hit his upper range (track 2) it sounded very harsh, in fact, hard to listen to.

I figured it was the electronics, and took the CD upstairs where I have a Rotel RCD-1072 CD player running into my new Yamaha RX-V2400. &nbsp;PLIIx is new to me, so I've been doing a lot of listening in that mode, and generally have been liking it. &nbsp;However, while the singer's upper range sounded much better, there was still a harsh edge. &nbsp;The 2400 has a Straight Stereo mode that removes all DSP from the signal path, and for comparison, I tried that. &nbsp;While not dramatic, there was a very distinct difference. &nbsp;The harsh edge went away, and there was distinctly more gradation in the tonality.

Note that this was only easily noticeable with this singer hitting his upper range- obviously something about this singer is challenging to DSP. &nbsp;However, I A/B'd a number of times, and there was no doubt that, in this case the DSP did slightly degrade the sound.</font>

 

[RX-V2400]

<font color='#000000'>True, and I have said this myself here before. For audiphile classical stuff you need purity and power, not effects. Also, and this is very important, when you are in stereo mode ALL of the 2400's power supply is going to just two channels so you get reasonable headroom. When in a 5.1 or 7.1 mode the power supply just can't drive all the channels to give quality sound which need headroom. It's OK for movies and special effects but it strains good stereo. Now if you try DVD-audio where all the channels are used you will see the effect is worse than ever. Now if you had the Z9 which has the power to really drive all channels things would be different. That is why even Yamaha recommends adding a stereo power amp to the front two main channels if you are not satisfied. Do this and let the 2400 just do the processing and drive the souround stuff.

I feed the pre-out for the two main speakers from the 2400 to a a NAD 7600 (600 w REAL headroom into 4 ohm).Try this.

The 2400 is supurb, but for classical music it needs a push.</font>

 

[A. Vivaldi]

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EdR : <font color='#000000'>Vivaldi  posted a tip about some really excellent budget classical CD's over in the 'Musical Goodness' forum,  he's right on as to their (Classical Express) quality, and listening to one of them I noticed something very interesting about DSP, Pro Logic IIX  that I'd like to pass along.

The CD is the Stabat Mater that features a boy soprano.  He has a very powerful upper range, very different from a woman's, and when initially listening on my 'trial system', which has inferior electronics (a dvd player digitally into a low end 4 year old Onkyo receiver) when he hit his upper range (track 2) it sounded very harsh, in fact, hard to listen to.

I figured it was the electronics, and took the CD upstairs where I have a Rotel RCD-1072 CD player running into my new Yamaha RX-V2400.  PLIIx is new to me, so I've been doing a lot of listening in that mode, and generally have been liking it.  However, while the singer's upper range sounded much better, there was still a harsh edge.  The 2400 has a Straight Stereo mode that removes all DSP from the signal path, and for comparison, I tried that.  While not dramatic, there was a very distinct difference.  The harsh edge went away, and there was distinctly more gradation in the tonality.

Note that this was only easily noticeable with this singer hitting his upper range- obviously something about this singer is challenging to DSP.  However, I A/B'd a number of times, and there was no doubt that, in this case the DSP did slightly degrade the sound.</font>

<font color='#000000'>Thank you for your compliments. I'm glad you found out that true stereo was the best way for you to listen to this cd. That's what I mean by reference quality! Some of Harmonia Mundis recordings can reveal limitations in your system. Chances are that if that recording sounded better in stereo, than your other stereo music will too. They just may not have had the dynamic range to show you that. My advice is to never listen to any stereo music recordings in DSP or any of those stupid sound effect modes, or any multi-channel music recordings for that matter. If you have an amp that won't let you pass the multi-channel analog signals through entirely in the analog domain, get rid of it.</font>

 

[EdR]

<font color='#000000'>Thanks to both of you. &nbsp;If I decide to get those used Thiel's, I'm going to drive it with a 200 watt/ch Rotel separates stack as a stereo system. &nbsp;I'm going to listen to them later this morning. &nbsp; I saw Dan's comment regarding the low end, but with the money I'm saving, I could always augment them with a Hsu TN1220 pair.</font>