DVD-A/SACD player questions

[jimsiff]

Just checked the manual out Curtis. Page 32 says that delay times set due to unequal speaker distances from the listening position are not valid during SACD playback.

I wonder if they do this because they'd need to downconvert the 1 bit DSD output to some sort of PCM for the bass management/speaker correction to function? Interesting...

[curtis]

Here's a good read that addresses that:

http://www.hometheatersound.com/equi...on_dvd2900.htm

[Nicholas Mosher]

Odd. That guy said when he turned the filter off his sub was 15dB down, not up. Hopefully this will be my case. Then I can simply adjust the levels of my speakers down to match the sub on the 2900. Seeing as you can't adjust levels up with the 2900, I really hope my sub isn't hot with the filter off. If it is, I will have to turn the sub gain down to match the 170s in DVD-A/SACD. Then with digital out to my 950 (for DD/DTS) I will have to turn down the levels for my monitors to match the sub because its output will have been turned down for SACD/DVD-A. I think I have that right...

This way I won't ever have to play with levels in my 2900 or 950, and the sub gain can be left as is.

[curtis]

I think for DD/DTS output, he is refering to when the 2900 is doing the decoding. If the receiver or pre/pro is doing it...it is just a raw stream.

I think I went through all of this when I set up my 2900. I have the filter set to off and I have no issues with bass as far as I can tell. I will check again with a meter when I have time....but right now, it sounds excellent.

[Nicholas Mosher]

When using the 2900s processors for DVD-A/SACD with the Filter "Off", the manual says you will get a 15dB spike in the LFE channel (of course I will have to check this). Which means I would have to decrease the gain of the sub to match the 170s.

With the sub gain physically turned down to match the 170s in DVD-A/SACD, wouldn't it be too low when using the 950 processors for DD/DTS? Which means I woulsd have to turn down the levels in the 950 setup to match the sub with DD/DTS.

I guess I'll find out when I get my sub

[curtis]

Right....but what is interesting is this statement from the URL I posted:

The other issue with the DVD-2900’s bass management is in the speaker-level settings. Unlike the level adjustments in receivers and my Panasonic DVD-RP82S DVD player, a user can only reduce levels, from a default setting of 0dB to a minimum of -10dB. The trouble is that my subwoofer is down 15dB at the Denon’s factory default of 0, which makes matching subwoofer and speaker-level outputs impossible using the DVD-2900’s pink-noise generator. What I ended up doing was to reduce the speaker level to -10dB and adjust the bass down in respect to the recording until it sounded right. This was a major pain.

[Nicholas Mosher]

Yeah I'm actually hoping the sub will be down rather than up. Then I can simply leave the gain knob on the sub alone, and adjust the 2900 settings for the 170s down (if the sub isn't down more than 10dB that is). If the sub is at all hot with the filter off for DVD-A/SACD, or it is down more than 10dB, I will have to recalibrate my 950 settings for DD/DTS because I will have had to adjust the gain knob on the sub. The 950 is fairly flexible though, so it won't be any trouble. While the 2900 will be sending full-range signals to the 5 170s, I'm going to use the analog base management in the 950 path to cross them over at 80Hz. That should take some stress off the 170s.

I'll have to play around with it too.

[curtis]

It will be interesting if I find something "wrong"....because it sound pretty freaking good right now!