Amp DSP Settings for Music DVD

Sean De Freitas
Sean De Freitas Posts: 52
edited September 2002 in Electronics
Thought this might interest some. A number of times people, including me, have mentioned distortion on the DTS track of Hotel California, on the Eagles' Hell Freezes Over album. It is where the drummer starts pounding the conga drums in the opening sequence. At that point, the sub woofer would just overdrive and sound aweful.

I, and I guess others, thought it must be just a bad recording. However I discovered my problem was from an incorrect setting on my amp. I have a Yamaha RX-V620, and have been listening to all my music (DD and DTS) on the 'General' DSP setting. Apart from this track, I have been perfectly happy with the sound, except from the other night when listening to other music DVDs I though I could hear a little bit of distortion (or more correctly, confusion) in the sound, when the volume was at -30db or louder.

Another read of the Yamaha manual and I discoveredd something I had missed on 1st read. I switched to 'Normal' which removes all dsp (digital sound processor) fields, and just plays the DVD exactly as it was recorded, and 'voila', no distortion. I played the Hotel California track, and also, the congas were spot on! boy, did I feel a dummy! I listened to other music DVDs, and I could crank them up louder with absolutely no discernable distortion.

I should mention, my setup up is a set of Polk RM6600 sats with the 350 sub. Prior to this revelation, I was starting to think I may have reached the limit of the sats, as I was starting to get a bit disappointed with their sound at loud listening levels. No more though.

I hope this may help others from making the same dumb mistake.

Regards,

Sean.
Post edited by Sean De Freitas on

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