Why no ProLogic on 3.1 setups?

[fusioneer]

Hi Keith,

I have a Fusion 8100 and I believe this applies to the UMC-200 as well. I have a 3.0 setup and it seems that Dolby ProLogic II modes are only available if the surround speakers are there.

My interest is primarily in creating a center channel from stereo sources, for speech intelligibility. Past receivers allowed PL II in this setup and I found that PL II Music (i.e. the flexible one) with center width reduced to 1 or 2, depending on how I felt about ambiance, produced the best results.

On the Fusion, I can't use it if I don't have surrounds. I can use Neo:6 but it's not as good; the problem is that Neo Cinema, like PL II Cinema, is too center-happy and Music is too stereo. It seems that the Center Width parameter does not apply to Neo modes, only to PL II.

The other reason to want PL II specifically is that some sources are encoded that way to transport surround through stereo. Admittedly it's hard for me to figure which are and aren't, and it's hard to claim that Neo doesn't decode the info just as well, but right now I'm not fully satisfied with e.g. Netflix stereo movies. I've long ago lost interest in surrounds but center makes a big difference.

I remember reading somewhere that the creator of PLII himself uses PL II Music with tweaks and never uses Cinema. I feel the same about Neo Cinema. Speaking of luminaries, srrndhound if he's still around.

I'm wondering if the other receivers (Denon, Marantz, H/K) were getting creative with the spec or if it does provide for 3.1. If the former is the case and Emotiva wants to be strict, perhaps Center Width could be made to work with Neo as well.

Thanks for your time!

[bootman]

Why not enable the surround channels and not hook anything up?
It isn't like you will lose any data anyway.

BTW did those older receivers have a setting called three channel logic?
That wasn't Pll.

[fusioneer]

bootman: I'm pretty sure that the matrix modes *will* throw away data if the speakers aren't actually there. They certainly do for the center, which I've noticed accidentally.

In any event, it would be very inconvenient to have to switch surrounds on and off when using full 5.1 sources, where the surrounds need to be mixed into the fronts and I would *certainly* lose some data.

The setting was called PLII, not something different. It obeyed the PLII parameters in Music mode.

[moovtune]

If you "long ago" lost interest in surrounds perhaps you should re-examine today's use of surround channels. Long ago the surrounds were mono and bandwidth limited. Today they are full range and actively stereo. I don't know anything about how netflix presents its movies. If you're talking about more recent films and they are presenting them in stereo rather than 5.1, then perhaps the issue is with the way they downmix to stereo. Also, mixing the surrounds into the fronts may be causing you to lose some data anyway due to phase cancellation - especially in the music where many times the surrounds are just left/right channels with a delay added (especially for TV scores).

[The History Kid]

Which older models were these?

The only thing I can think of is Dolby 3 Stereo which was like a quasai-Pro Logic. I never liked the mode personally, but that might have been because I had a 5.1 setup (my first rather).

[fusioneer]

Feb 5, 2015 14:07:13 GMT -5 moovtune said:

If you "long ago" lost interest in surrounds perhaps you should re-examine today's use of surround channels. Long ago the surrounds were mono and bandwidth limited. Today they are full range and actively stereo. I don't know anything about how netflix presents its movies. If you're talking about more recent films and they are presenting them in stereo rather than 5.1, then perhaps the issue is with the way they downmix to stereo. Also, mixing the surrounds into the fronts may be causing you to lose some data anyway due to phase cancellation - especially in the music where many times the surrounds are just left/right channels with a delay added (especially for TV scores).

Well, my views on the amount of clutter I'm willing to put up with to watch movies haven't changed. If anything, quite the opposite. And the more channels they add, the less I'm willing to follow suit. Sort of like what happened between me and Gillette.

I'll let the amp deal with the surround mixing, but I'm very reluctant to have them just thrown away. That's not really what this is about -- it's mostly about that center channel. The surround side discussion was in relation to telling the amp that I have a 5.1 setup, and that just seems like a bad idea.

[fusioneer]

Feb 5, 2015 15:46:36 GMT -5 The History Kid said:

Which older models were these?

The only thing I can think of is Dolby 3 Stereo which was like a quasai-Pro Logic. I never liked the mode personally, but that might have been because I had a 5.1 setup (my first rather).

It was ProLogic II. And also Logic 7 on the H/K. And Neo, which does work on the Fusion. All of them worked the same, except without synthesizing surrounds. I just want ProLogic because of the control parameters that apply to it and not to Neo. I would also be okay with just Neo if the center channel width in particular worked to "contract" the center like it does for PLII Music.