Matrix Stereo or Stereo? (1 Viewer)

[John DeSantis]

This is a repost from about 8 days ago. I didn't get any response.. not one.. Anyway, I'd still like some help.

"I recently got the Digital package from my Cable Co. Of course it has numerous music channels. In the setup menu of the Cable box ( Motorola DCT 2000 ) it has a section for Audio. Within that area is a setting for compression. The choices are Heavy, Light, None. I run the Audio outs through my receiver. I need to select HEAVY to get the most output to the Receiver. Why is that? I would think Compression would have the opposite effect. Selecting LIGHT or NONE essentially lowers the Volume. It also has a selection for either MATRIX STEREO or STEREO That doesn't seem to change anything. Can someone explain what the Compression is doing and If I should use Stereo or Matrix Stereo?

Thanks

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

I have digital cable through Warner. I've noticed the same options but, like you, I really have no idea what they mean. If anybody knows, I'd also love to know the differences between the options.

 

[John Stone]

Within that area is a setting for compression. The choices are Heavy, Light, None. I run the Audio outs through my receiver. I need to select HEAVY to get the most output to the Receiver. Why is that?

In this case, compression is a setting for the dynamic audio range. Think of the "heavy" setting as "night mode", which has the effect of equalizing the volume for all sounds. "None" will give you closer to the intended dynamic range.

 

[John DeSantis]

John:

RE compression. It would seem that that's the case but why do I get less volume with the NONE setting? Still trying to figure out the Matrix stereo vs Stereo setting.

 

[Robert A. Willis Jr.]

This is what the music producers do to make your CD's sound louder and what many people did when recording Cassettes. The more compressed the music the lesser the dynamic range and then all of the music (both loud and soft) has the same level.

The best example of dynamic range that I can think of is Classical music. Remember how soft the low levels sound, sometimes you can barely hear the strings. So you keep turning the volume up and up. THEN the full orchestra kicks in and you almost blow your speakers. This is dynamic range.

What compression does (this is a very simple description) is to bring these extremes to some average and gives the impression that the music is louder. If you use low compression and listen to classical or jazz (because recordings from these genres are typically recorded with less compression) you will see that the loud passages are close to the levels of heavily compressed music.

Unfortunately, since the Motown days (and I am a big fan of Motown) compression and rolling off the high frequencies is a fact of life. During the early days of CD's this wasn't much of a problem because the state of the equipment didn't readily allow heavy compression without distortion (brick wall filters were not very forgiving). Ironically, as the equipment improved the sound of very popular music (rap, rock, r&b and c&w...) has become heavily compressed intoducing a different type of sound degradation.

Now this is an admittedly simple and somewhat vague explanation but I think it serves the purpose so any techies out there don't skewer me. :b

rw

 

[BrentPollard]

It is because in Heavy setting all sounds are set to be equally loud much the same as tv ads sometimes seem louder than the program it is inserted. Just set it to kight and turn up the vol.

Brent