What happened? Poor matrix decoding in the digital age

[Eggplant]

I can't find anything that decodes stereo into MC (5.1) on modern equipment that works ANYTHING like analog decoders.

I'm not interested in buying any old equipment. I know the Tate is great, had one, sold it, moved on.

The thing is, my old $150 Paramount Pictures Dolby ProLogic (version I, the analog one) that I bought from Costco in the late 80's had a switch position that decoded stereo quite discretely. I know the chips in such units evolved from Tate technology.

Once we get to the digital world of Dolby PL II and DTS Neo, there is apparently no analogous (pun intended) choice.

DTS Neo is bogus. The music position doesn't even affect the front channels.

Dolby PLII? You gotta be kidding. I've heard of people using it for enhanced MC, saying it works "kinda like the Tate". Not true. It's basically "Triphonic": center front, left and right rears. No good for music at all, IMO.

My Denon has a Matrix position, which sounds like a primitive PLII position.
It's no good either.

What's going on here? I know PLII is a new entity, but did they just throw two decades of surround progress in the trash? With all the worthless digital effect positions out there, isn't there one legitimate way to derive "discrete" (as in non-ambient) 5.1 surround from stereo music?

 

[Scottmoose]

I can't find anything that decodes stereo into MC (5.1) on modern equipment that works ANYTHING like analog decoders.

I'm not interested in buying any old equipment. I know the Tate is great, had one, sold it, moved on.

The thing is, my old $150 Paramount Pictures Dolby ProLogic (version I, the analog one) that I bought from Costco in the late 80's had a switch position that decoded stereo quite discretely. I know the chips in such units evolved from Tate technology.

Once we get to the digital world of Dolby PL II and DTS Neo, there is apparently no analogous (pun intended) choice.

DTS Neo is bogus. The music position doesn't even affect the front channels.

Dolby PLII? You gotta be kidding. I've heard of people using it for enhanced MC, saying it works "kinda like the Tate". Not true. It's basically "Triphonic": center front, left and right rears. No good for music at all, IMO.

My Denon has a Matrix position, which sounds like a primitive PLII position.
It's no good either.

What's going on here? I know PLII is a new entity, but did they just throw two decades of surround progress in the trash? With all the worthless digital effect positions out there, isn't there one legitimate way to derive "discrete" (as in non-ambient) 5.1 surround from stereo music?

Quick answer: not really. I know that's not what you want to hear, but it's also true I'm afraid. Remember, PLII and DTSNeo6 were designed for the home cinema market, not music per se; therefore, they have a different set of priorities.

Then again, you might be being just a little hard on the new matrix formats. OK, they're not perfect, but they aren't that bad either in my experience. I quite enjoy listening to ye olde redbook through them. It depends on the reciever, and how well it implements them. Denon makes some cracking kit, but I would suggest that your reciever may be biased more toward the film, rather than music buffs. Denon did move away from the hifi market in general for a number of years, and has only (very) recently begun to move back toward music-oriented products.
It does make a difference, and it might just be that your reciever in this / these mode just isn't doing what you like, and, if you go down the drastic solution route, you may need to think about changing it. Something on the lines of a Marantz or Cambrige Audio might suit you better.

A cheaper way forward might be, if your Denon allows this, to try dropping the volume of the centre channel, or better, switching it out alltogether. That should hopefully improve things a bit. I've never liked centre channels for music much -it's a home cinema thing to improve dialogue imaging for off-axis viewers, and it does frequently take over when listening to surround music. Either of the above will help if you can do them. If you can't switch it out, try adding a resistor in the hot lead going to the centre channel. Doesn't have to be expensive, or of a massive value: grab a variety from your local electronics emporium and give them a whirl. Adding a touch of series resistance to the speaker will increase its Q for a start, and, more importantly in this case, reduce its efficiency, and hence, its level as compared to your other speakers.

I'd avoid the matrix position on your reciever unless you're listening to Brian Eno: it'll just work like a glorified passive ambiophonic setup, and derive very simple (mono, I'd guess) rear sounds from the stereo difference signal, and a centre channel from all the common information.

Best
Scott

 

[neil wilkes]

ProLogic, or Dolby Surround, was a development of the old SQ system, with the routing going to L,R,C,S (monophonic) instead of L,R,Ls,Rs.
ProLogic II, despite the incremental naming, was not a development of ProLogic at alll but an entirely different system designed - as Dolby are at pains to point out - not for music at all but for cinematic use.
I can attest to the Cambridge Audio range's usefulness here - the DPL II on the Azur 540R has several different modes rannging from a so-called "Music" mode through cinema, matrix (which is indeed very monophonic) to a custom setting.
Neo DTS simply seems to place the rear speakers by means of a panning system as opposed to any math on the signal.
There are also several DSP surround algos built in too - ranging from "passthrough" which again acts like a panner, through cinema, concert, music club etc. all producing slightly diferent results.

Another good reason that most of the unwrap modes produce very little real effect on modern albums is the prevalence of brickwall limiting used in RedBook. This type of processing will always cause any surround processing to be at best hit & miss, and at worst useless. You simply cannot expect to remove all the dynamics & resulting subtlety from a record, and still have it decode in much the same way a digital "remaster" of the old SQ encoded master tapes will also kill the matrix deader than Jacob Marley.

 

[mandel]

Once we get to the digital world of Dolby PL II and DTS Neo, there is apparently no analogous (pun intended) choice.

DTS Neo is bogus. The music position doesn't even affect the front channels.

Dolby PLII? You gotta be kidding. I've heard of people using it for enhanced MC, saying it works "kinda like the Tate". Not true. It's basically "Triphonic": center front, left and right rears. No good for music at all, IMO.

My Denon has a Matrix position, which sounds like a primitive PLII position.
It's no good either.

What's going on here? I know PLII is a new entity, but did they just throw two decades of surround progress in the trash? With all the worthless digital effect positions out there, isn't there one legitimate way to derive "discrete" (as in non-ambient) 5.1 surround from stereo music?

Hmm. DTS Neo does little for converting stereo to surround. On the other hand I find it gives good soundstaging for stereo, particularly on classical music.

I have heard lots of criticisms of Prologic 2 (music mode) similar to what you are saying there about "Triphonic". I have never noticed an effect like that when using it. Be interested to know what PL2 settings you are using? I've found that anything except the defaults (Centre Width 3, Dimension Standard, Panorama Off) sounds unbalanced. With the defaults some music has fairly noticable surround elements and other music has little or none.

 

[Eggplant]

Be interested to know what PL2 settings you are using?

Settings? What settings?

I wasn't aware my Denon had any PLII settings. There are settings for Neo6 (Music and Cinema), and a brief explanation for each. But nothing for Dolby.
There are positions with names similar to those you mentioned, but they appear to be separate effects (not options for PLII). But who knows; the Denons are the most haphazardly designed, inscrutable equipment I've ever dealt with.

Could you tell me some make and model #s of receivers that have the PLII settings you mentioned?

 

[Cai Campbell]

I'm in complete agreement that no "modern" synthesized surround method has come close to the Tate or Variomatrix. There is one exception... I think DPLII does a very good job, but it still falls a tad short.

eggplant, I have to ask the question, why didn't you hold onto your Tate until something at least as good came along? I would never give up something on the blind hope that things would get better...

 

[winopener]

Settings? What settings?
Could you tell me some make and model #s of receivers that have the PLII settings you mentioned?

If a new receiver is not an option, check out the dvix-compatible dvd players; most of them offers DPL2 decoding *with* full DPL2 options. Got one two weeks ago for a friend and price was 35 euro, so they are a cheap investiment even for a "test drive".
The only problem, of course, you need 6 analog in on the receiver, to be shared with dvd-a player, sacd and so on...


BTW, good ol' Circle Surround sometimes does a decent job, especially pumping the rears of 4-5 dB.

 

[mandel]

Settings? What settings?

I wasn't aware my Denon had any PLII settings. There are settings for Neo6 (Music and Cinema), and a brief explanation for each. But nothing for Dolby.
There are positions with names similar to those you mentioned, but they appear to be separate effects (not options for PLII). But who knows; the Denons are the most haphazardly designed, inscrutable equipment I've ever dealt with.

Could you tell me some make and model #s of receivers that have the PLII settings you mentioned?

There is your problem I think. Do you even have a choice between PL2 for music and PL2 for movie?

Both my Yammy recievers have the options (HTR-5640RDS and RX-V340RDS) and I'd guess any new Yammy would too.

 

[neil wilkes]

On my Cambridge Audio amp, repeated pressing of the DPL II button will cycle through the options of
Music, Movie, Matrix, emulated, custom.

As for Circle Surround - sorry, but yeecch! Worst buy I ever did.

 

[BrownRB]

I share the same frustration as you, eggplant. My Integra receiver does not have the option to customize the PL-II settings - wish I'd have known this when I bought it.

 

[Lucanu]

I don't have a modern MC amp but I can listen to DPLII thru dvds or satellite when played in my pc with nVidia codecs. The results sometimes get me sick and other times it's pleasurable, maybe depends on the stereo source to be not much stereo at all.

But it's true, oldest surround systems are better than these DPL or DTSneo.

 

[ss9001]

Dolby PLII? You gotta be kidding. I've heard of people using it for enhanced MC, saying it works "kinda like the Tate". Not true. It's basically "Triphonic": center front, left and right rears. No good for music at all, IMO.

eggplant,
My sentiments exactly on D PLII and I have IIx. It's too center focused for my taste on music. I've tried adjusting the center, dimension and panarama parameters and in most cases, I do not get the sense of a discrete surround field as well as with Variomatrix or Audionics/Tate. Only exception I've found so far is a Telarc jazz recording, "Spies", that was recorded in Dolby PL and it sounds pretty discrete with IIx.

IMO, QS Variomatrix and Tate still outperform all the Dolby and dts matrix decoding schemes for creating MC fields from 2 channel.

Have you listened to Lexicon's Logic 7? The Lexicon crowd on AVSForum swear it's superior to DPLIIx for music. And Meridian has their Trifield surround processing mode. Neither Lexicon or Meridian processors are low cost. HK incorporates a slimmed down version of L7 in their receivers. I had the opportunity to hear a Lexicon MC-12 in a custom-built room dedicated to home cinema, but my demo time was only it used to decode discrete movie tracks, so did not hear Logic 7 on music. And in analog, 2 channel mode, it sounded fantastic with this guy's speakers and room acoustics. It might be worthwhile to give it an audition, just to confirm there are no digital equals to Sansui/Tates for "discrete" matrix surround.

ss9001

 

[winopener]

On my Cambridge Audio amp, repeated pressing of the DPL II button will cycle through the options of
Music, Movie, Matrix, emulated, custom.

As for Circle Surround - sorry, but yeecch! Worst buy I ever did.

as for surround synth, it all depends of what material you listen to with. For sure cs isn't a "one-size-fits-all" processor but there's something that comes thru nicely.

 

[Guy Robinson]

On my Cambridge Audio amp, repeated pressing of the DPL II button will cycle through the options of
Music, Movie, Matrix, emulated, custom.

As for Circle Surround - sorry, but yeecch! Worst buy I ever did.

Mine has music and movies for PL2. I hate Circle Surround as well. Doesn't sound good to me at all. I tried it a few times and immediately switched it back to PL2.

 

[deepsky4565]

I completely agree, the modern digital surround synthesizers do not do as well as Tate/Variomatrix/Old Fosgate technologies. I actually got it from Dolby that they watered down the front back seperation of Fosgate's matrix for DPLII. No amount of tweaking settings will bring it back. Don't sell your good analog gear expecting DPLII to replace it! Logic 7 is nice, and possibly "better" than DPLII but it isn't up to the better analog solutions either.

The amount of compression in modern CDs does seem to have a negative effect of surround synthesis too. Older recordings also have a compression to keep channel levels balanced, and plays havoc with surround processors as well, just try the Beatles I Should Have Known Better. You'll hear lots of "pumping" but it is not the processor, but the source material. I have found CDs mastered correctly without maximization techniques can produce breathtakingly discrete performance with my Fosgate 3A. DCC gold discs, MFSL, Steve Hoffman style masterings.

Happy surround listening!!!

 

[neil wilkes]

IMO, QS Variomatrix and Tate still outperform all the Dolby and dts matrix decoding schemes for creating MC fields from 2 channel.

ss9001

Surely we are missing the point here.
DPL II and matrixed Neo DTS systems are not meant to synthesize a surround track from a stereo one.
They are designed to matrix a surround track into stereo instead....
Upmixing is always going to be a poor relation, although it is possible to get good results you will not do this repeatedly, or using the same methods every time.

Electronically recreated surround through any of these systems will work properly only when the stereo file is itself a matrix encoded one. Or Q-Sound, or one of the various enhanced stereo 3D types.
Straight redbook stereo CD's?
By and large, they don't sound any bloody good in stereo they are so compressed & brickwalled. Think about what that does to the dynamics, and then try to think about how these systems work:
C = L+R
Rears = (usually) phase tricks & comb filtering with a delay.
It will never be much good unless you take the stereo, load it up into a DAW and do the conversion manually. An algo ain't gonna take a stereo file & surround it up. You end up with Rhinophonic 5.1

 

[sspsandy]

I'm going to chime in here. I have a Fosgate RFQ5000 surround processor in my car, and it synthesizes surround from stereo sources beautifully. It does virtually as nice a job as the Tate in my home system. It does respond better to surround encoded material, but on many stereo recordings it creates a very discrete surround soundfield. What I read is that only the Fosgate RFQ5000 and the FAP-T1 processors have Jim Fosgates PLII decoding set up the way he intended, all the other PLII decoders in the various receivers were dumbed down because it was felt that the public would be using it primarily for movies, and would be annoyed by the overly discrete separation. If you can't afford to get a FAP-T1 processor (they are over $1000.00) the next best bet is a Fosgate Model 4 or a 3A. They can be picked up for $100.00 to $200.00 in good condition with remote and manual (which are absolute necessities). These units are the next best thing to a Tate, some actually prefer them.

 

[deepsky4565]

Niel,

I certainly don't want to disagree with you, but DPLII and DTS Neo ARE advertised as surround synthesizers of stereo music. I would agree that they work much better with surround encoded material. I remember the Dolby hype when DPLII came out claiming it was as good as discrete surround mixes!!! I bought one of the first receivers with it expecting far more than it delivered, namely poor performance compared to our older analog processors. If someone hasn't heard a properly set up discrete or good analog processor, they can sound "good". Too bad Fosgate doesn't still make a state of the art processor with the capability to be aggressive.

 

[Lucanu]

Taken from DTS neo 6 help from Audigy 4:

(I have to translate form Italian guide)
The DTS Neo 6 function integrated in Creative MediaSource makes users with 5.1 or 6.1 systems capable of create 5 or 6 full range audio channels from sources coded in two matrix channels.
Finally users with multichannel systems can experience a more richer and natural listening.

 

[Scottmoose]

Hmm. On the up side for the new types like PLII, they might not be much cop for ourselves, but they do actually have more to offer for our 2-channel loving friends. Ignoring the odd obsession with the centre channel (which can usually be avoided by dropping its volume, or just chucking the damned thing out), they can actually improve normal stereo by unfolding the recording, and placing the out-of-phase information in the rear channels, where it belongs, amongst other useful little tweaks. Also, having rear speakers drives a room much more evenly by evening up the pressure levels. A few stereo-lovers are actually finally coming round to realising this, and, in time, it might even, with a bit of luck, lead them into the multi-channel world. Here's hoping.
Only one problem though: you get the same results using a pair of dipolar or bipolar speakers anyway.
Best
Scott