watch out people bass mgmt for SACD might be bad

[mike_p]

my understanding is that using any bass mgmt on SACD playback will convert the stream to PCM then apply some fancy DSP logic to re-channel your bass. Conversion bad, very very bad.

Try it, set all your speakers to "large" you'll be shocked how much better SACD sounds.. I was totally floored.. FYI, I've got a Denon DVD-2200, but I think this applies to most if not all SACD players, with maybe the exception of Sony's dedicated SACD models. Would be interesting to find out exactly what's going on. Never-the-less, it was a pretty dramamtic change when I made all speakers "large".

l8s,
mike

 

[jeffsg4mac]

Better how? I have a 2200 and setting my fronts to large will then completely throw off the balance and calibration between my fronts and the sub and would then sound worse. Where did you hear about this conversion to PCM? The Denon has separate separate decoders for SACD and DVD A, From Denon " Sony CXD-2753 Second Generation DSD Decoder" I think you might have got some incorrect info there, I would be very skeptical.

 

[Rob Babcock]

I have a '2200, too, and I love bass management with SACD. Sounds great to me. If there's any degradation in the signal, it's infinitesimally small compared to the value of having bass.

 

[mike_p]

have either of you tried to set all your speakers to "large" on SACD playback, in the dvd-2200 speaker mgmt screen??

I've got Dynaudio Audience 70 in front, 42 in back and 42c in center. I used to have the backs and center set to "small", upon changing to "large" things improved on a massive scale. I can only assume the bass mgmt is somehow messing things up.

As for what kind of conversion happens, I could be totally wrong about the PCM stuff.. does the bass mgmt operate directly on the DSD stream? What hardware actually does the bass mgmt? Is there seperate bass mgmt for SACD, that knows how to handle a DSD stream as opposed to a PCM stream? Why does setting speakers to small make things sound so much worse?

mike

 

[Rob Babcock]

I'm not sure. I tried "Large" but all I found missing in the sound was the bass. To be honest, I'm not positive if it converts to PCM for BM- my impression is that it doesn't but then I know the SACD won't let you adjust the channel delay. Maybe we'll have to ask Denon directly.

 

[mike_p]

I ended up turning the "filter" completely off.. that should remove all processing to the audio, however its being done. My results could be very different than yours due to speaker sizes.

It would be interesting to figure out what exactly is going on.. I tried to do some research on the sony DSD chipset, and found zilch about bass mgmt.

mike