Finally I can get this page to load at home. Something about our internet servers at work didn't want to let me open this webpage for the past several hours. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.
Quote:
| Ilkka wrote:
First I didn't believe this could be true, but after I run some tests of my own (NAD T743 AV-receiver), I must admit that he's being right. It seems that the Dolby decoder has a will of its own, it will set on the DRC if one doesn't have all five speakers enabled. Also downmixing to stereo seems to have an exact effect. The amount of DRC probably varies between soundtracks.
I measured a few scenes with a professional SPL meter with four different configurations: DD 5.1, Downmixed 5.1 'stereo', DD 4.1 (center disabled) and Downmixed 4.1 'stereo' (center disabled). In reality I don't have a center speaker.
DD 5.1 always gave the highest SPL result, the other three were identical, but always much lower level.
FOTP - 'barrel roll': ~10 dB difference
M&C - 'first round': ~18 dB difference
WOTW - 'lightnings': ~9 dB difference
Those are pretty big differences, don't you think?! No wonder I have always preferred DTS tracks over DD (since normally my center IS disabled). DTS doesn't contain any DRC information!
If you don't have all five (5) speakers enabled, you will lose great amount of dynamics and max SPL when playing Dolby Digital soundtracks. |
What, did you expect my "true story" was really a lie?
Thanks for putting it to the test with measurements though - would you mind if I posted just this section:
FOTP - 'barrel roll': ~10 dB difference
M&C - 'first round': ~18 dB difference
WOTW - 'lightnings': ~9 dB difference
at AVS? More people need to be aware of this. Sounds like there is a guy on this forum with an IB that is making the same mistake. I know Jon was really happy after we discovered the problem....his 100 year old house wasn't too thrilled though
