Upmixing - where are we at? Have people compared upmixers?

[snickers]

Is there a new version if DSU? I know only the "older" one, that I've tried in the Lexicon RV-6

 

[dlaloum]

Is there a new version if DSU? I know only the "older" one, that I've tried in the Lexicon RV-6

Yes... the original " Dolby surround " was a matrix decoding system, later versions were called PLII, PLIIx....

Around 2012 ? Dolby released a completely new processor mixer, and that is today DSU.

PLII had been extensively developed by Fosgate, to work well with stereo inputs and music, then licenced by Dolby. So every time a licence was sold, some $ went to fosgate and now his estate / family.

DSU is completely new and hence has no fees payable to fosgate... it also works with heights, atmos, etc...

But plii works better with stereo. ( no longer an available option on current avr's)

 

[Sal1950]

But plii works better with stereo. ( no longer an available option on current avr's)

Possible your looking at the old PLIII with rose colored glasses?
I think the current DS is the best one ever.
YMMV

 

[dlaloum]

Possible your looking at the old PLIII with rose colored glasses?
I think the current DS is the best one ever.
YMMV

I could be ! Auditory memory is famously unreliable...

And I still think Logic7 was the best of the lot - but I have not had it in my system since circa 2007....

So yeah - who knows!?

I find DSU satisfying - but perhaps if they had included some of the PLII matrix logic, we would have the option for wides as well?

 

[Sal1950]

And I still think Logic7 was the best of the lot - but I have not had it in my system since circa 2007....

I've heard Logic7 quite a bit in the last few years and I'd say
Logic7 does a excellent job if you looking for just a nice ambiance
extraction. It's great at making everything have that concert hall illusion.
But I'd say the modern ones with the right music can almost extract something
that sounds close to a discrete recordings. With DS, be sure to enable center spread

 

[dlaloum]

I've heard Logic7 quite a bit in the last few years and I'd say
Logic7 does a excellent job if you looking for just a nice ambiance
extraction. It's great at making everything have that concert hall illusion.
But I'd say the modern ones with the right music can almost extract something
that sounds close to a discrete recordings. With DS, be sure to enable center spread

Yes, that is how I use DS...

 

[Sam Ash]

What I like about DPLIIx is the depth and balance it creates from front to rear. In other words, how it makes use of the surrounds in terms of isolating certain frequency bands and making use of the base surrounds creatively without being perceived as channel duplication or all channels stereo. It's a really good simulation of how dedicated spatial tracks sound sans height channels. How close the current version of DS comes to that level of experience remains to be heard. I'm sure someone here has had the privilege of owning/hearing both.

 

[dlaloum]

What I like about DPLIIx is the depth and balance it creates from front to rear. In other words, how it makes use of the surrounds in terms of isolating certain frequency bands and making use of the base surrounds creatively without being perceived as channel duplication or all channels stereo. It's a really good simulation of how dedicated spatial tracks sound sans height channels. How close the current version of DS comes to that level of experience remains to be heard. I'm sure someone here has had the privilege of owning/hearing both.

Sadly we need someone who has both simultaneously rather than sequentially...

 

[Jbrunwa]

Sadly we need someone who has both simultaneously rather than sequentially...

I can’t do simultaneous as I have PLii in a 5.1 system at one location and DSU in a 5.1.4 system at another. I like PLii better. The panorama/music mode in particular sounds better to me. Much better use and blending of sound. If I didn’t also have Auro3-d I would seriously consider another used AVR just to get PLii.

 

[snickers]

I can’t do simultaneous as I have PLii in a 5.1 system at one location and DSU in a 5.1.4 system at another. I like PLii better. The panorama/music mode in particular sounds better to me. Much better use and blending of sound. If I didn’t also have Auro3-d I would seriously consider another used AVR just to get PLii.

How would you compare PLii to Auro?
As far what I was able to test at home, for me it's: Logic7>PLii>DSU

 

[Jbrunwa]

How would you compare PLii to Auro?
As far what I was able to test at home, for me it's: Logic7>PLii>DSU

I like Auro a little better than PLii, mainly because of the finer grained control of small, medium, large options in combination with a variable strength parameter that i can dial for my preference.

 

[dlaloum]

With Logic7 and PLII - upmixing stereo was a core function, alongside with decoding Matrixed surround (the original Dolby Surround)

With current Dolby Surround (and DTS) - upmixing stereo is a secondary function, often even an afterthought.

So now we need to work through our available alternatives and find out what works best from a bunch of options for which Stereo is an afterthought

 

[prerich]

You'd be surprised. This made me write a somewhat lengthy post myself, detailing some system design quirks we have to deal with in the current surround (AVR) market situation.

First some background in my music listening and system integration preference evolution.

As soon as computers started to have descent affordable multichannel soundcards and signal processing tools, with some knowledge of small-room acoustics and psychoacoustics, a good 2ch solution for small and narrow rooms looked like this: a modular 3-way system with woofers in a corner, crossed as high as possible (~250Hz?) to a monitor speaker in correct elevation. An Allison-type system, if you will, with room correction dealing with residual problems - modal peaks and SBIR effects. As the speakers were close to boundaries, a tunable room correction was quite robust (as in effective in a large spatial region) getting rid of unwanted very-early reflections up to a very high frequency (think almost up to 1kHz/34cm wavelenght). What remained was too early high frequency reflections, but that was easily taken care of with very thin absorption. A definite no-no in acoustics, but as they say - Exceptio Probat Regulam...

That system worked, because the music source was a computer and I could somewhat tolerate the quirks of 2ch listening. Well not any more! I like to turn my head, listen at different spots in-room, face different directions, enjoy music socially etc. and I still demand a believable illusion. (regarding usability, don't get me started on black-box appliance vs 'computer' subject...) Also, even with head-in-a-vice situation, there are problems with 2 channel stereo, first identified almost 90 years ago by Steinberg and Snow. Sadly 3ch is not standard medium today, so we have to come up with 'something' to deal with the idiosyncrasies of 2ch and unstable phantom sources.

Enter upmixing. First some background. You could think of 2 distinct methods getting rid of 2ch problems - make the whole room a sweet spot (think of an infinite large equilateral triangle) using WFS techniques or use ambisonics-inspired techniques, popularized by Michael Gerzon. The idea is to map phantom sources to arbitrary number of physical speakers. Luck would have it, all-in-one boxes had excellent, TUNABLE variant integrated. Either Griesingers Logic7 (Lexicon/HK receivers) or Dolby PL2 Music (everyone else). Or you could use a passive matrix, but I still prefer all-in-one 'black box' solutions to custom 'tinkerware'.

Sadly all the all-in-one solutions (AVR-s ) in the market make some (stupid?) assumptions about small room acoustics and their users competence setting them up, so they cater to lowest-common-denominator. So no flexible bass management schemes and customizable room correction filters AND most don't have pre-outs, even if you would like to come up with a solution yourself. But you can get excellent upmixing and with some external multi-sub scheme the modal region is taken good care of.

Now enter 'immersive' era. For the first time (yes, lets discount quad, multich SACD/DVD-A for laughs...), the music industry is on board with immersive mixes. Like with early stereo, most of them are stupid gimmicks, but there are folks who know how to correctly capture and render ambiance. BUT - all the legacy material is left in the dust. No more tunable upmixers, only DSU and NeuralX with full-on effect (yes, Auro is bankrupt and who knows what happens to Auromatic upmixer, that some TOTL AVR-s can update to with an add-on licence - but for how long?).

So for legacy music listening, outside custom solutions, a 20 year old Lexicon MC-12 still remains the pinnacle, SOTA if you will. Solely due to customizable Logic 7. Paradoxically, I would consider in today's market the most basic, cheap AVR-s, that still come with 'PL2 Music' SOTA . If only they had pre-outs...

Did I mention that music upmixing, to be good, also requires identical speakers above modal region, in same elevation and in similar acoustic settings? You wouldn't use dissimilar L-R speakers with different elevation, would you? I didn't even touch the ambiance extraction side of upmixing, that is a large topic in itself.

I'm using customizable 6 Axis...Citation 7.0 going through my 7.1 Multi In on my Marantz AV7706. Bypassing the AV7706 and using either my own filters for bass eq (biquad or manual entry)...I also have Dirac for PC as an option (havent tried that yet...im currently using convolution for left and right and manual filters taken from REW for the subs). I just had the most enjoyable session in a while with upmixing! May not be accurate ...but the sound is oh so relaxing....just wow!

 

[Steve Dallas]

This thread convinced me to take another swing at this. I have a Denon 4700 AVR configured to 7.2.2. I tried DSU with Center Spread turned on. It was better than I remember, although I felt the center channel was still too strong, as was the subwoofer output. I enjoyed the experience, but still preferred stereo. I may copy the configuration to another preset, tweak it, and try again.

What came out of the surrounds was mostly ambient, as if the stereo channels were played 10 decibels down with digital reverb added.

 

[Dj7675]

DSU with center spead on is very enjoyable. Auro3D upmixing can be good, but IMO requires some fiddling. The thing I absolutely hate is how much bass it adds. You spend all this time/effort to get your bass right and the upmixer boosts bass a lot. You can adjust sub trim down etc, but you shouldn't have to do that. A preset is a good idea to make the change if the bass is too much.

 

[krabapple]

Sadly we need someone who has both simultaneously rather than sequentially...

Dolby has made that all but impossible, short of hooking up two AVRs , one with DSU, and an older one with DPLII, to switchboxes for rapid comparison. Or capturing the multichannel output of both to digital files, and comparing them.

I know of no AVRs that offer both DPLII and DSU.

 

[krabapple]

I've heard Logic7 quite a bit in the last few years and I'd say
Logic7 does a excellent job if you looking for just a nice ambiance
extraction. It's great at making everything have that concert hall illusion.
But I'd say the modern ones with the right music can almost extract something
that sounds close to a discrete recordings. With DS, be sure to enable center spread

DPLII did that, and one could even tweak the amount of 'discreteness', using Dimension and Panorama controls.
(DPLII could also, not surprisingly given its ancestry, correctly decode one of the legacy matrixed 'quad' formats: QS)

DSU clearly prioritized 'home theater' users, i.e., screen watchers, rather than music listeners.

 

[snickers]

Dolby has made that all but impossible, short of hooking up two AVRs , one with DSU, and an older one with DPLII, to switchboxes for rapid comparison. Or capturing the multichannel output of both to digital files, and comparing them.

I know of no AVRs that offer both DPLII and DSU.

I think only the Yamaha CX-A5100 Pre has booth options

 

[valerianf]

"DPLII did that, and one could even tweak the amount of 'discreteness', using Dimension and Panorama controls."
Clearly it is the best option for music: I am using it every day.
Is there a way to get the same adjustments with a more recent upmixer?

 

[dlaloum]

"DPLII did that, and one could even tweak the amount of 'discreteness', using Dimension and Panorama controls."
Clearly it is the best option for music: I am using it every day.
Is there a way to get the same adjustments with a more recent upmixer?

Not much adjustability to DSU I fear...