HFO DTS distortion fixed

Sean De Freitas

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.

avelanchefan

Sean I am a little confused.

Did you change the DTS field from enhanced to normal? I usually play my movies in "General" DD or DTS. But I cannot find a way to change it to "Normal".

Let me know what you did.

MxStYlEpOlKmAn

i have a yammer...theres a general...and normal in my case is 2 channel stereo and 5 ch stereo..........I FOUND IT!!! LOL! is says on my remote newayz DTS SUR and you press that twice and it goes to normal...that might be what he be talking about

Sean De Freitas

On the Yamaha remote, it is the DSP setting above the '9' key. Switch the dial to DSP and press the '9' key once and it says NORMAL. Press it again and it switches to ENHANCED. NORMAL has NO DSP setting, and is just as it was recorded.

Sean.

Sean De Freitas

With this NORMAL setting, the display on the AMP just shows either Dolby Pro Logic, Dolby Digital or DTS, depending on which way the DVD has been recorded. Sounds so sweet this way. Movies however do sound better in one of the DSP modes. Wierd really. Oh well, it's like I've bought another set of speakers.

Sean.

avelanchefan

Ok thats what I thought. I just wanted to make sure that I did not need to reread the manual again.

Glad you are liking the setup again.

jdavy

Don't you find the Eagle DTS DVD to be a great demo disc for your system?

Sean De Freitas

Yes, I would say it is THE demo disc I use.

Since writing all this, I have done something else which has helped. I have my speakers in a timber hifi cabinet under the widescreen TV. To listen, I usually take the left and right speakers out of the cabinet to widen the sound field. The centre speaker remains in the cabinet (and the rears are on a mantle piece and a furniture cabinet).

What I have now done is to line the hifi cabinet with sound absorbing foam, and now leave the left and right (as well as centre) speaker in the cabinet. While the imaging is slightly less than when they are spread further apart, the sound quality has improved by miles! It is now so accurate, you really are not aware the music is playing through speakers at all. I wind the amp up to about -20 db and the Eagles instrumentals and vocals are just superb. So clear and accurate!

Other DVDs which you could also use to test your system with similar audio quality are : Corrs - Live in London and Dianna Krall - Live in Paris. What an amazing set of speakers. Well done Matt!

Regards,

Sean.