Originally posted by Rene S. Hollan:
Restricting variable mixing to those modes for which it "makes sense", i.e. as variable PLII extraction and making downmixing separate, makes the documentation more complicated
No one is "restricting" variable mixing. The feature isn't there because there's simply no use for it. You're confusing extraction with mixing. Extraction is already being used in the matrix decoding modes, so allowing it to be variable is easy.
There is no mode that uses variable bleeding of discrete centre content. Since it's not there to begin with, how can it be restricted to certain modes? It doesn't exist, period, despite what you may want to believe.
Also, it doesn't add any complication to the documentation of the modes. Different modes have different features. You just have to deal with it.
Personally, I don't buy that line of reasoning. Outlaw could always offer a "novice" and "expert" mode with the "novice" mode disabling possible but likely not useful combinations.
Outlaw isn't in the business of designing surround processing and lossy compression technologies like PLII and DD (respectively). They're buying those technologies off-the-shelf from Dolby. Likewise with DTS's technologies.
Outlaw can't change how those modes work (even if they knew how to) because those are licensed items and as such have to adhere to the specification of the license. Outlaw isn't holding back; the 990 comes with practically everything Dolby has to offer for home theatre systems.
And that is optimized for a particular distribution of on-axis and off-axis listeners/viewers.
Bleeding discrete centre content to other speakers helps neither on-axis nor off-axis listeners. The triple-mono result induces comb-filtering and smears localization. That's why no one has done it. It's a useless feature and not worth wasting time/resources implementing in home theatre products.
Rather than crunching numbers for a simulation of what you
expect to hear, you really ought to try actually listening to the results of what you're proposing.
I'd like my pre/pro to have connections for seat sensors and remix appropriately depending on where the audience is sitting...
...and robots that lift the speakers up and down depending how tall or short you are. That would really be useful (and easy to implement).
A separate analog mixer, controlled by the microcontroller would work too, but why on earth should I need that when there's a perfectly good digital mixer implementation likely present in the 990?
There
isn't a mixer present in the 990. Just because you believe that one is there doesn't mean that reality will somehow accomodate you by making a mixer suddenly appear in the 990.
This opens up control of the unit to hackers, who might develop really useful control software models, some of which might eventually get folded back into internal software upgrades offered by Outlaw.
Win for hackers, win for Outlaw (who get free control software development), and win for future customers.
Now it's "hackers"? (I feel like I'm in a sitcom but just don't know it yet.) What can I say, except that Outlaw and Dolby and DTS are not manufacturing products designed with software hacking in mind.