AVR Settings

[alleycat]

Hi All,

So my Denon AVR has three audio settings from what I can work out:

Pure - plays the file as is with no adjustments
Pure Direct - same but the most of the machine shuts down so there is no mechanical noise/interference - also turns off the AVR OSD
Movie - select the playback type i.e. DTS-HD, stereo, mono, multi mono etc

I imagine most people on fanres will opt for pure or pure direct. However the AVR also has this Audyssey feature where you place a microphone in different parts of the room and it calibrates itself based on your actual room. When playing the AVR in pure or pure direct mode, the calibration from that feature is turned off. There are some that say room calibration is one of the biggest advances in home theater. 

To be honest with my hearing I doubt I'd hear any difference between the settings, but what do others do? 

Thanks

[zoidberg]

The microphone calibration should be for individual speaker levels/delay from the 'main' listening position. The levels can also be adjusted using a SPL meter and the test tones. Subs are trickiest to calibrate (ideally you use a RTA) but you can get in the ballpark with a SPL meter. Many adjust by ear but it's easy to overdo it.
A lot of AVRs have DSP modes which are designed to mimic certainly environments but they are generally naff. Best to stick to the standard processing (Dolby, DTS etc) with the speakers calibrated.
Of course it goes without saying to play back as loud as is safely possible. Release those endorphins lol

[alleycat]

The microphone calibration should be for individual speaker levels/delay from the 'main' listening position. The levels can also be adjusted using a SPL meter and the test tones. Subs are trickiest to calibrate (ideally you use a RTA) but you can get in the ballpark with a SPL meter. Many adjust by ear but it's easy to overdo it.
A lot of AVRs have DSP modes which are designed to mimic certainly environments but they are generally naff. Best to stick to the standard processing (Dolby, DTS etc) with the speakers calibrated.
Of course it goes without saying to play back as loud as is safely possible. Release those endorphins lol

Yes after having a kid I don't get the opportunity to play it as loud as I'd like, but I did watch John Wick 3 loud with the Atmos track the other day and that was an experience. Not listening to it loud often makes my appreciate it more

[pipefan413]

You generally don't want either of the "pure' options for films if you have more than 2 speakers because most 2-channel stuff is matrix encoded and "pure" will incorrectly throw it all through L+R.

Stick with Movie mode in the appropriate bitstream operation for what you want (usually you'll probably want either the Dolby Surround or DTS-HD MA one). That will correctly interpret tracks with a "surround" flag. Use Pure for anything you specifically want to only be interpreted based on number of channels (e.g. most 2ch TV, or maybe mono stuff depending on how it's encoded).

For the most part I really like my Denon. Enjoy!

[zoidberg]

Depending on the model you may be able to change the Dolby Pro-Logic decoding between original DPL and DPLII, DPLII has a movie or music mode so you'll want the movie mode. It's surprisingly good and it somehow gets the split surrounds right. However if you're feeling trad then you should use the original DPL.

[pipefan413]

Depending on the model you may be able to change the Dolby Pro-Logic decoding between original DPL and DPLII, DPLII has a movie or music mode so you'll want the movie mode. It's surprisingly good and it somehow gets the split surrounds right. However if you're feeling trad then you should use the original DPL.

Aye, I don't know but I don't think current Denons *generally* support DPL in any way. Mine certainly doesn't. The only option is "Dolby Surround" instead, much to my dismay.

How accurate it is I can't really say because I don't have anything to compare it to, but I know that I'd like to upgrade to an AVR that has both DPL and 5.1 outputs as analogue so that I can experiment with things like looping my analogue Dolby Surround / Dolby Pro Logic matrix decoders into the chain. I can't even use them with the Denon at all because it only has 2ch outputs as analogue and the 7.1 stuff is digital only. There are more expensive models than mine that have the analogue outputs at the very least, but that would've been way outta my price range at the time anyway.

I wasn't quite such a pernickety nightmare human back when I bought the thing, otherwise I probably wouldn't have... but apart from that it honestly has been quite impressive.

[alleycat]

I think I've got a similar AVR to pipefan, I only have Dolby Surround as an option. Must be too new, but still sounds great.

[pipefan413]

I think I've got a similar AVR to pipefan, I only have Dolby Surround as an option. Must be too new, but still sounds great.

I've found that it tries to get a bit too fancy with the steering sometimes which is a bit irritating. For instance, if you switch Dolby Surround on with a 2.0 mono track, it puts a bunch of atmospheric low frequencies into L+R and the rest to C. Which doesn't sound right imo. The DTS modes however actually do actually route it all to C. I wonder if that's a legacy behaviour mimicking what Pro Logic used to do, but I wasn't paying attention enough to remember back when I actually had a Pro Logic AVR...

I also noticed the other night that it was adding the Dolby Surround matrix decoding / upmixing on top of a track that was already 5.1 the other day which appears to be a result of me having set it to use Dolby Surround on discrete 2.0 tracks. That struck me as stupid and annoying because it means I have to manually switch off the Dolby Surround mode every time you switch into a discrete track that's >2.0 and switch back to matrix decode things like 2.0 PCM (mono / Dolby Stereo / Ultra Stereo). It wouldn't be so dumb if it was just upmixing the surrounds to 7.1 or something but no, it was on a 5.1 speaker arrangement and was screwing up a bunch of things usually when there was music (e.g. at one point when characters started singing it abruptly recognised music and routed it all to L+R which was really jarring since their voices had previously been coming out of C). At least seems to have different memory for tracks with and without a "surround" flag, I think, but there are many tracks with no surround flag (e.g. you can't set it for PCM/FLAC) that are still meant to be matrix decoded, so...

EDIT: To be clear though, with actual 2.0 matrix encoded tracks, Dolby Surround sounds fine as far as I can tell. I often feel like the surrounds are barely detectable regardless of whether I calibrate using Audyssey or manually just subjectively using my extremely imprecise human earholes (I don't yet have an SPL meter or anything, I want to do that at some point) but that could very well be completely correct for all I know. I haven't felt there were any horrid phasey sounds coming from the surrounds or from anywhere else but that could just be because I can hardly hear the damn things from where I usually sit, hahah.

[allldu]

So are there older AVR's with lossless sound capabilities that also have an original Pro Logic, I wonder?

[spoRv]

So are there older AVR's with lossless sound capabilities that also have an original Pro Logic, I wonder?

If you mean DTS-HD MA & Dolby TrueHD plus Pro Logic I, yep, there are - until around the first years of 2000.
There were at least some (few?) Marantz with both Pro Logic I & II, DTS Neo 6 and Circle Surround II - IMHO the best to get, at quite low price; the x400 series - 4400, 5400, 6400, 7400.