DPL-IIz someone care to explain?

[Esreuter]

Hey forum,

now i read the dolby website so i get the basics of dpl iiz.

what i wonder is this my AVR sony 5600ES, says in the manual to enjoy pl2z, your height speakers will be wired into the front B terminals. and you must run your AVR in the speakers A+B mode. (balls out)

there there is the little *

* states that when in PL2z mode, music or movie, sound can not come from the front and surround rears simultaneously. its either or. you also have the option to choose where you want the sound to come from, priority from the front highs or from the surround rears.

my question is this, well you guys know me by now my questions are always wordy, is the PLIIz legit or is it like the sony DCS, their weird version of surround sound that really is not surround sound.

second, i understand the usefulness of the heights, dolbys demo has a helicopter fly from front stage to back and then one from back to front. in that example it makes sense. but what about the guns and war going on to your side and behind you? does it just stop? this is where i start to get lost.

another example on he DD website is a rain scene, and shows all speakers active and making the sound envelope you, like its really raining on you.

well if you cant have front heights and surround rears at the active at the same time, how is that possible? maybe i am not understanding something but if by installing front heights and you negate your surround rears then your kinda wasting a set of speakers right?

orrrr, is is because its sony and they like to do weird things and my avr just cant handle true PLIIZ?

please help clear me up.

i need to know if i need to order another set of speakers!

this stuff is like a curse, never stops. oi!

but its fun

ESR

[tonyb]

DPL2 is really a music mode, not a surround mode, hence the either or. I do believe newer avr's have the dpl2 in all channels though. Could be wrong, but I never use it anyway.

[mdaudioguy]

DPL2 is really a music mode, not a surround mode, hence the either or. I do believe newer avr's have the dpl2 in all channels though. Could be wrong, but I never use it anyway.

Not exactly. Dolby PLII was initially created for 2-channel sources to simulate 5-channel surround sound. PLIIx expanded this to 6 or 7 channels, while PLIIz expands it further to add height channels. PLIIx and z processing can be applied to Dolby Digital 5.1 sources. They also usually have implementations designed specifically for music OR movies. A Netflix streamed movie with only a 2-channel soundtrack often sounds pretty convincingly like a true discrete, multi-channel soundtrack when PLII processing is applied.

[kuntasensei]

To the OP, your receiver clearly only has 7 amp channels, meaning you can choose to use 2 of the channels either for height or rear surround duty. IMHO, if you have space to properly place rear surrounds, you'll get more out of that than you will with height channels. That said, if you ever step up to an AVR with 9 channels of amplification, height channels with rear surrounds sounds AMAZING. I'm using DPL-IIx + Audyssey DSX to create height channels instead of DPL-IIz, and flyovers sound real as hell... and the front soundstage seems to cover the entire wall the way theatrical speaker arrays behind the screen do. It's definitely a nice effect.

So if you have room for rear surrounds with correct placement, do that. If you don't, height channels can definitely add to the sound of your setup. But if you have a choice between the two, stick with rear surrounds. With all the 7.1 material hitting theaters now, that will be more important to have than heights, as impressive as they can be.

[Esreuter]

ahhhhhh.

so it sounds like its still gimicky.

the movies are not mastered in 9 separate channels yet.

as i read some stuff last night i noticed this as well.

ill have to wait until there is some movies mastered in 9.1 to really enjoy the benefits.

thats good. gives me time to save.

[tonyb]

Not exactly. Dolby PLII was initially created for 2-channel sources to simulate 5-channel surround sound. PLIIx expanded this to 6 or 7 channels, while PLIIz expands it further to add height channels. PLIIx and z processing can be applied to Dolby Digital 5.1 sources. They also usually have implementations designed specifically for music OR movies. A Netflix streamed movie with only a 2-channel soundtrack often sounds pretty convincingly like a true discrete, multi-channel soundtrack when PLII processing is applied.

Correct, my bad for not going there. Original pre dolby digital days sound format. Now they have expanded it to do more of what you already pointed out. Personally, I've never used it other than for music and even that I thought colored the sound too much so I pretty much never touched that feature whenever it was available. Of coarse others may dig it but for me it was too gimmicky.

[kuntasensei]

ill have to wait until there is some movies mastered in 9.1 to really enjoy the benefits.

Don't hold your breath on that happening in theatrical releases. But don't shy away from it just because there isn't any discrete material for DPL-IIz or DSX Height. Both methods are designed to work with existing mixing standards. In the case of DPL-IIz, it is basically used to recreate out-of-phase sounds in the surrounds that normally image over your head in the theater. That works in the theater because the speaker arrays are mounted high enough over your head that placing a sound out-of-phase in them effectively makes them act like a dipole above you, giving that sound generalized above-your-head ambience. This doesn't work in the home due to speaker placement, so Dolby's solution is basically to analyze the left/right surrounds and shift part of the out-of-phase audio to the height channels so that the combination of the heights and surrounds can give the impression of the sound being over your head. Because mixers already place sounds this way theatrically, DPL-IIz does get quite a bit of overhead info, though most of the time it remains very subtle.

DSX does something similar, but is a little more aggressive. It effectively analyzes the mains and surrounds and calculates what the overhead reflections would be based on these channels. I find it to be a little more effective method of steering sound to sound like it's above you, though DPL-IIz is probably more in line with what you hear in the theater. I find that DSX tends to work better with games, to the point that I can actually hear people fire from above me in Halo: Reach.

Onkyo's latest AVR, the 1009, will be introducing DTS:Neo-X, which is DTS' variant of height channel synthesis. We'll see how that turns out, but for now, I'm perfectly happy with Audyssey DSX in my 9.2 setup.