Surround Sound - New to this - Surprised it doesn't have it's own topic

[New2SurroundSound]

Hi...new to Netflix and new to surround sound and new flatscreened TV.
My first few rentals were in SS. Are most? From the posts I read not really. Is it safe to say that after a certain year, all movies are made for SS? Rented a Bruce Springstein concert last week. First SS we got. We were so happy w/ it!
OK, so just looking for advice for the whole SS thing along with HDTV. Your comments would be welcome.
Thx.

[Movie Man Andrew]

Y'know, I read an article that clearly explains the difference between DTS-MA and Dolby TrueHD(as well as comparing them to uncompressed PCM). As it turns out, they're both compressed onto the Blu ray discs with jumbles of numbers that are taken out during in the compression process, leaving the compression scheme with empty spaces. The player then fills in those spaces with what it determines was part of the original master that was in the cinemas, and based on the quality of your player, what you end up getting for any of these tracks is an identical of the original studio master that was part of the theatrical release. Of course, to get the best, your system has to support these tracks, but regardless of that, your receiver should be worked to it's best.

For calibrating my Home Theater System, I just use the THX Optimizer on some of my DVDs. Though, I admit, I hardly have to adjust the picture on my TV. It already came with everything at optimal levels. It's pretty easy to use as well for the sound. I'm not sure about calibrating the speakers, but it works fine.

[New2SurroundSound]

Thank you all for your replies. When I click the link in my emails to read your replies I am getting a frozen page. It worked at first but until tonight I have been unable to get here. (Seems like a server issue on the Netflix side) We have enjoyed having SS for the DVDs we have rented so far, as well as for baseball games (Met fans here). Some of your replies are technical and a bit over my head. We decided against getting Blue Ray right now because so much is changing and we felt it would come down in price. I have a Sony system and I haven't yet been able to figure out how to set up the Presset stations for FM radio. OK, did I mention I was 50? LOL I'm pretty tech saavy but some of this has been a bit of a learning curve for me. Thanks again for all your replies! :)
I shut off the thing to get your replies in email because it wasn't working. How do I turn it back on?

[Belgand]

At the bottom of the page is a link to "follow" the conversation and get an e-mail when there is a reply.

Sorry for being overly technical. I realize it can be a lot at first, but I tend to think the best approach is to give the basic answer and then try to explain all of the details that inform that answer. You might not always understand everything at first, but there's nothing worse than getting an incomplete answer that makes a lot of assumptions. Especially since that means it's more confusing when you encounter the many exceptions to the rule.

I know I keep pushing it, but the the Home Theater Forum, especially their primer has a lot of information aimed at newcomers that is generally very readable and thorough.

[Movie Man Andrew]

Yeah, I agree. It can get overly technical. Most people like to walk, first, but I sort went into an all-out sprint with the HD stuff. Just make sure you have an HDMI cable with your player to get your DVDS up-converted, at least. And if you already have cable/satellite, you'd have to subscribe for your company's HD services. I may have already said that, but a lot of people are clueless about that.

[Belgand]

The THX Optimizer is actually not a very good calibration tool due in part to the way it's mastered (long story short, but it's basically only good for that one DVD, not a reference standard).

Very, very few TVs come with default settings anywhere close to reference. Brightness and black level are usually the biggest problems and red push can be pretty common as well.

Calibrating speakers doesn't take a lot of time, but it is important. Basically you want all of your speakers to be at the same volume at reference level. On most enthusiast systems volume is measured in decibels from reference with reference showing up as 0 so rather than listening to volume at "10" it would be "-20 dB" or "+5 dB" with reference level almost always being louder than you want to listen to things at.

Basically you do a few things. Almost all receivers will let you set the distance of all speakers from the "sweet spot" which is the ideal listening position. You just enter the distance in and it adjusts the delay so that sounds all reach that point at the same time. Then you get out the SPL meter and using either a test tone on a calibration disc or an internal test tone on your receiver. Often the reference tone is 65 or 75 dB. The purpose of a reference tone is that all the speakers are adjusted so that at the sweet spot a tone from each speaker registers the same number of decibels. This ensures that, for example, your left surround isn't louder than your right surround and makes things sound uneven or that yours surrounds aren't playing things louder than the sound designers intended them to making an effect change from subtle to pronounced.

The last standard adjustment is related to your sub-woofer. You'll want to set your speaker's "size" which generally refers to saying a speaker is "small" if you want the low frequencies to be passed to the sub-woofer instead of that speaker or "large" if you want it to handle low frequencies. The cross-over determines the frequency level that where that sound will be passed to the sub-woofer instead of the speaker. You'll probably want to read the manual that came with your receiver as well as the specifications for your speakers when setting this up. For example, human hearing is between 20Hz and 20 kHz. Most true sub-woofers can play sounds down to and in the case of a good sub below 20Hz (I don't want to start an argument here, but even if you can't hear it there tends to be psycho-acoustics that make you notice it... it's not just one-upmanship about how low your sub goes). In comparison most small bookshelf speakers don't do low frequencies well. Even many large floorstanding speakers don't do as good a job on them as a sub-woofer dedicated to playing low frequencies. In these cases a common setting for a crossover is 80Hz. Everything above 80Hz goes to your speakers (and many receivers offer assignable crossovers for each channel so if you have really small surrounds that don't go as low as your main speakers you can adjust that too) and everything below, plus the dedicated LFE (.1 channel) goes to the sub-woofer.

Again, the specifications of the speakers will show how low they can go (and you generally want to give them a bit of room as well) and your receiver should have help in showing your how (and hopefully why) to set things up correctly. If not, well, as I suggested earlier the Home Theater Forum has a nice primer with plenty of descriptions on how and why to do these sorts of things.

[Movie Man Andrew]

O.K. so I did already calibrate my speakers. My Sub was just 2 points higher in volume. And, yes, I set the speaker size, placement, and distance from the listening position a long time ago. But, thanks anyway.

And.. Wait, you're saying that if I set my small speakers to large, the sub-woofer would have deeper base effects?

And if the THX Optimizer isn't that good, can you please name some that are?

[Belgand]

No, setting your speakers to large will just send the low frequencies to them. It won't give you deeper bass and if your speakers can't give you a flat response at low frequencies (i.e. you have small bookshelf speakers and set them to large) then you'll just make things sound worse.

Instead of the Optimizer I suggest either Digital Video Essentials (also available on Blu-Ray) or AVIA II. I prefer DVE, but some people consider AVIA to be easier to use. Links to both are in my earlier post. The one consideration is that if you rent them from Netflix you won't get the color filters that you need to calibrate color correctly.

[Movie Man Andrew]

O.k. good. They're set to small.

Figured. After spending 4-5 hours looking at web search results and seeing the same thing over and over in every set of instructions, one kind of gets the idea. I'm going to get a DVE disc(originally for HD DVD, but it went from long wait to the save list on my que. They really are phasing out the stock, are they?) right here and already sent back another movie today. I can get color calibration done on my own, so thanks.

[Movie Man Andrew]

What!? Nothing? C'mon! Its' already on page 3!

[Movie Man Andrew]

Hey, what the blue lens on a pair of 3D glasses? Would that work(He asked doubtfully)?