What will the Trinnov Optimizer do for 5.1 HT Audio?

Is it a self calibrating process similar to setting the reference level on a 990?

Will it make a big difference in playback for 2 channel and 5.1?

We don't know - no one has ever heard it in a consumer product.

As I understand it, Trinnov has more in common with Audyssey MultEQ or similar room correction software than with the basic auto setup offered by the 990. It sets distances and channel levels, much like the 990's auto setup does, but then it also applies audio processing separately to each channel (EQ, etc.) to try to compensate for room effects. The benefit of existing EQ solutions is a matter of much debate. Some feel that it is a "must have" feature that makes a huge difference, while others feel that it is a compromise work-around to proper room treatment that offers limited to no real benefit. The more advanced EQ solutions tend to land closer to the former than the latter (more "great feature" and less "useless feature"), but much like the SMS-1 the benefits will depend on how much is wrong acoustically with the space to begin with. Trinnov is also supposed to be able to correct for sub-optimal speaker placement, although I can't speak to the details of how it achieves that (haven't figured it out, frankly).

You haven't been able to figure it out because it is impossible to do in any meaningful way. There are a lot of "cheats" that can be done, but no amount of signal processing on earth can figuratively "move" a speaker from a sub-optimal position to a "optimal" one.

From the literature, it appears they are "mixing" between the 5 or 7 channels instead of sending them discretely to the correct speaker such that , say for a situation where your rear left surround is to far back, a small amount of the signal for that speaker would be sent to the left side surround so that the "image" of the sound would come forward from the actual speaker position slightly.

So they create virtual speaker locations using your actual speaker. It will work well in situations where your speakers are off ideal positioning in the horizontal plane, but physics ain't gonna change where one speaker in the system is too high.

The Audyssey in my system had a pretty noticeable effect. I have a 6.1 setup (two rear surrounds, the 6 comes from going phantom center, not single rear channel), but my speakers are placed basically in the exact recommended symmetry and position, so it is mainly correcting for acoustic issues of the room, not placement.

That said, it definitely improved the surround experience in my system. I ran for nearly 7 months without it, so I was well acquainted with the Onkyo 885's sound in my setup before I ran the correction and began using it.

It sounds like the Trinnov is at least a comparable system, so unless your room is spot on for spec and treated with very good acoustic control, I would bet most would find it a positive feature at least for HT. On SACD, I disable all the processing.

Basic old skool calibration would accomplish the same thing, ensuring that the SPL and delay (and by extension imaging) of each speaker is equal.

How so? Simply balancing the levels without remixing the channels so that portions of the signal for one channel are steered to another would not have the same effect.

Something like Logic 7 that had very good steering built into its processing, yes, but simple level and delay would not do this. You don't want each speaker to be equal to correct for bad positioning, you want each signal to be equal, and it may come out of two different speakers instead of the one it was destined for to do that.

A little OT, sorry...

While I'm looking forward to toying around with the Trinnov, I'm also amused by the disconnect between video and audio perceptions by HT fanatics.

They'll whine seven ways to Sunday if some color timing choice doesn't fully "represent the intentions of the director." And yet they'll post-process the soundtrack up the ying-yang without a second thought.

Trust me, the guys who engineer and master film soundtracks are artists the equal of anyone working on the film. Their artistic intentions are essential to the quality of the film and also deserve to be reproduced as they intended.

You do point up a weird disconnect. I think nobody really cares about good reproduction of sound any more.

You guys are right.
For me, anyway, TV, movies etc is and always will be secondary.

So then the industry accepted and endorsed THX post processing will also hinders percived artistic intentions as well? No. The truth is that no home theater will sound like commercial cinemas which was the original venue that the mix was intented. Also the video comparison isn't all that valid, for simple reason. The video even on BD is still compressed, and video just doesen't look like film no matter what.The sound however now can be master quality with no alteration at all depending on the studio's parctices, but the venue differences will be there just like I said earlier, so the so called artistic intents will be compromised regardless. Room correction software is useful just like room treatment to deal with each individual rooms, and have very little to do with artistic intentions.

THX' stated purpose for being is to ensure that the audio quality as it is produced by the artists is translated as accurately as possible. THX simply certifies that equipment is capable of fulfilling that goal. I would find it strange if we have any THX certified room correction equipment out there as that equipments goals is to do exactly the oposite of what THX wants.

That is correct. THX, either professional or consumer, has nothing to do with a film's production or post production cycle, and certainly has absolutely no involvement in any creative decisions made on a dubbing stage.

THX was created solely to create a "standard" for the playback chain in theaters. Later, those THX standards were made available for implementation into dubbing stage acoustics and equipment. Still, no processing of a creative nature is performed with the THX name on it.

All THX does is certify that certain equipments meet the technical standards which THX deems necessary.

THX has certified most of the Onkyo receivers and preamps that have Audyssey room correction installed.

Room correction equipment does not run counter to THX's stated goals as if done correctly will actually help a user's system properly reproduce what the director and sound engineers created.

I would expect that THX can certify the receiver without taking the Audyssey into account because it can be turned OFF. THX won't care as to what processing you do downstream of the signal once it is generated from the player thru the SSP. THX appears to certify the output after the DTS/Dolby logics are applied but not beyond that because the codecs are used to process the original soundtracks in the editing phase and as such are part of the sound.

That is incorrect. These are all DSP based signal manipulations, that is part of the current THX Ultra 2 processing.


http://www.thx.com/technologies/index.html

Movie soundtracks are edited/mixed in it's original PCM form. The lossy codecs are not part of that, those are simply "delivery" formats for theatrical or home versions.

How so? THX commecial cinemas are built from the ground up to achive certain requirements, that is not what's going on with HT's, nor there is such requirement and THX realizes that so a digital manipulation is the only way for them. I would actually be surprised if THX itself wouldn't have come up with it's own Room correction system soon. If you look at some their current processing like RE-EQ and boundary compensation, they are already doing some of that.

Yes, DSP processing can be part of the THX spec for consumer playback, but I'm totally missing the point of your post. My original point was that THX had no input on the creative side of the dubbing process - it's only standard having to do with a soundtrack's playback (and kind of an unnecessary one at that).

Your original point was about more then that and you quoted the part I was responding to. The point is that people tend to think that THX is nothing more then the old TAP standards originally it was created for. A lot happened since for the HT market which has something to do with this thread don't you think?

I still don't get the drift of the point you are trying to make. If it is that much has changed since the original THX specs were established, that is true, but having been involved in the film sound industry since 1984, overall, I think that much of the change has been in details and not overall working practice.

Hun, it certainly seems that THX is headed towards making its own room correction devices. The Utra 2 specs are still only standards THX requires to be in a receiver/SSP in order to attain that stamp of approval. They certainly have taken great steps to allow HT users to experience a cinema like quality. Altec pointed out earlier that THX was ORIGINALLY set up to standardize cinema playback to ensure that the artists intent was met. It also appears that Audyssey and the Trinnov systems are similiar in nature to the THX desire to offset the limitations most of us have in our home theaters due to space and placement of equipment. While the Audyssey system appears to be very accurate fpr analyzing speaker placement and the Trinnov system appears to allow a user to compensate somewhat for poor speaker placement, the THX system wants simply to translate the cinema experience to your home using technologies which will mix/enhance or attenuate signals from various channels of your HT to accomplish its stated purpose of translating the artists intent to the viewer/listener.

Anything THX thinks it can make money at, it will do. THX computer speakers anyone????

Is it true that Sony never applied for THX qualification certification on their receivers because they didn't want to have to pay for it?

I don't know about Sony, but that's exactly why Outlaw never applied for THX certification: cost that inevitably resulted in a higher price to the consumer. They felt that the potential "gains" weren't justifiable for the associated cost.

I suspect that some solid parallels could be drawn between THX and ISO certification - not in what they specifically represent technically - but rather the market forces that caused them to come into being, their success (or not), their acceptance (or not), etc. One is in the consumer's face (THX) while the other is well hidden behind the scenes (ISO). However in between sits the manufacturer, who needs to go through one heck of a juggling / balancing act to decide if he wants to play - or not. And based on tons of first hand experience with ISO I think it's largely a crock, you can guess how I'm leaning with THX.

Sony never applied for THX certification because their quality control is so bad that they'd never be able to meet the spec.

Oh, I don't believe that for a minute.

Sony never met a spec they didn't manipulate. You can't lie about your specs and meet THX cert.

I have owned over a dozen Sony electronic products and have only had ONE issue that was fixed under warranty. So I can not confirm your claim of bad quality control.

Your last two posts seem biased and generalized. Sony is the "ONLY" company to manipulate specs? Welcome to capitalism motivated by human nature. But I digress from the thread's intention.

My next question would be...what is the "purist" way to listen to a film's original dubbing, unfiltered, uncodeced, unDSP'd, unTHX'd? Pardon me if this question is ignorant. Most movie formats are done in DolbyDigital, or DTS?? Or PCM the basic format with processing applied afterwards?

Gonk It sets distances and channel levels, much like the 990's auto setup does, but then it also applies audio processing separately to each channel (EQ, etc.) to try to compensate for room effects.

Does the processing happen "realtime" or just during set-up?

The absolute best and most accurate way to listen to a soundtrack (or music recording for that matter) is to use absolutely no processing (not even THX), in the format which uses the least lossy compression. Then acoustically treat the room and set the speakers up in their intended, optimum positions instead of relying on Trinnov and Audyssey gizmos.

The Sound and Vision forums have excellent threads about proper acoustics management and speaker positioning.

Re Sony, I have two items, a VCR that I've almost never used since buying it a year or so ago and a CD carousel also little used since getting a Pioneer universal player that, by the way, has worked perfectly. The carousel had a problem while under warranty but the replacement unit has worked flawlessly, so my experience doesn't strongly support BloggingITGuy's opinions.
I find the whole discussion about the Trinnov optimizer literally unreal, since not one of us has heard it in action. If we're going to engage in this sort of thing why choose a historically respectable topic, like how many angels can dance on the point of a pin?

I have heard the Trinnov professional system.

Great - my apologies. How did it impress you (or not)?

It did it's job, but I still maintain that the best way to tune a room / system is with a skilled operator in conjunction with the proper RTA gear. Much of the details in tuning a room is knowing how, and how much to deviate from "ruler flat" in order to yield a system which sounds less "Hi-Fi" and more musical.

The programming in the Trinnov and Audyssey cannot possibly take into consideration the subtitles which must be considered to make a system be as good as it can be (no matter how powerful or trick the computer programming might be). Only a skilled and thinking human at the controls can do that.

Thanks for the quick reply, Altec. It does raise the question whether it's worth while to change from the 990 to the 997 and losing the phono input for the sake of something of such debatable benefit. (At least until one really needs three HDMI inputs.)

Re less "Hi-Fi" and more musical deviations from "ruler flat", is there any benefit to a 2-db-per-octave rolloff starting at 2 KHz? (That's about the same as -5 db at 10 KHz, which I think is settable on the 990.)

Re "take into consideration the subtitles", do you mean "subtleties"?

Your messages, and Gonk's of course, are among the most consistently interesting in this Saloon.

The rolloff your mentioned is close to the THX "X" curve recommendation. Generally, it is desirable to have a gradually falling response as measured at the listener's ears so that the high end is down a few dB. This balance gives the best, most natural sounding presentation. The exact amount of this rolloff is determined by the specifics of the acoustics of the room and the placement of the speakers.

You are always going to achieve better results by taking care of any "problems" with response etc. by making sure the acoustics of the room are in order. Trinnov and Audyssey (and EQ in general in anything other than an active system) are band-aids.

Altec,

I am not disagreeing with you, but I do want to point out something. Your comment reminds me very much of the fighter pilots I used to talk to who claimed that there was no way a computer was going to fly there plane better then they could. They all firmly believed that it would take a "skilled and thinking human at the controls" in order to fly the plane at its best. Well guess what, computers have come a long way baby and there isn't a snow balls chance in hell that those fighter pilots could fly there planes today without the computers making the actual decisions on which surface to move and to what degree. Now granted these are very different fields of engineering, but it won't be a surprise to me when computer based systems are doing a better job at room correction then we the "skilled and thinking" can ever do. I will admit that we might not be there yet, but I would bet that we will be before very long.

Happy New Year to You All!

I knew that somebody would bring up that argument. Trust me, it is not a grudge of mine against "automation". I'm all for computer integration whenever it can be done truly better than what a human could do.

In this case, we aren't there yet.........

Things are not necessarily as easy or clear cut as they may seem on the surface. In tuning a room / speaker interface, the devil is in the details...details only a human ear/brain can know and process. Tuning a room for best musical presentation is really equal parts science and art. Sorry, there isn't much "art" in the fighter pilot example you cited.

I think tuning a piano is more like tuning a room in that it requires some degree of independent intrepretation of both the technical data and the realities of how the system sounds to a real human ear.

Present day computers are not very good at the "art" part. They can only mimic. They are in a sense a blunt instrument which can only impress a pre-programmed set of instructions upon the data received - in this case by a relatively "dumb" sensor (the microphone array). The programmers who write the instructions cannot possibly know, or take into consideration the unlimited subtle variations in individual rooms, speakers, layouts, and yes, preferences of real humans with real ears.

Perhaps in a world a couple decades down the road when this can be done at a price that somebody other than the Pentagon can afford. But not today, not in a real-world consumer product.

In the meantime, my advise is still to optimize the room's acoustics and the layout of the speakers. Doing this will greatly reduce or eliminate the need for equalization and other DSP processing.

My greatest fear is that manufacturers will market devices like the Audyssey and Trinnov to consumers, giving them the false impression that they do not need to give any thought or concern to the acoustics of the room or where they place the speakers...that these gizmos will make everything "perfect".

That is the farthest thing from the truth, and is just as misleading as telling people they can eat all they want, and some "magic pill" will keep them from gaining weight.

It is a good discussion which won't be decided by anyone in the near future. I hope that the Trinnov systems graphical output will help a lot of us make better decisions as to room enhancements. It would really be useful if it allows adjustments to be displayed real time on the GUI so we can see the effects of some of the changes.
Right now I have a 9 foot fake Xmas tree right in my sound field and it sits in the exact spot where my usual listening area is. I recalibrated the 990 (after the wife recalibrated me)to try to account for it but I can't wait till it is gone

I agree this an interesting conversation and only time will tell the final outcome. For me though I look at Trinnov as being another tool in the tool box. I myself have always believed that the path to a quality listening experience begins with the room itself. Therefore I will always address the basics and take the Trinnov or whatever other gizmo they can dream up and exploit it to the fullest. If it can help in creating a better listening environment then all the better. If it acts to reduce the quality of the environment then I will simply not utilize it.

I will say that I agree with altec in that many less informed users are going to think that this is the silver bullet they have all been waiting for all these years. But what's a guy to do... some people still think mp3's sound good. Anyway, it is ultimately up to the end user to educate themselves and if they choose not to do so then shame on them. All the advertising and marketing that takes place these days one has to be cautious. I know there are people out there like my parents who cannot work a telephone let alone successfully intergrate a new technology like Trinnov or Audyssey into their listening environments. But, there again I feel it would be wrong to sit still and not move forward with such technologies which could yield benefits for those willing to experiment. If nothing else it will be a fun way to waste a weekend.

Does anyone know what the difference will be between the professional version of Trinnov and the one crammed into the 997? The Sherwood rep was quoted as saying:
So if the 997 is using the "professional filters", what is the difference? The 997 comes with a "4 Microphone Capsule Acoustic Probe" and the Trinnov professional version has a "microphone array composed of 8 omnidirectional microphones." I'm sure that Trinnov mic is not cheap, but surely there is more under the hood than just different microphones since the pro version goes for $13k and the 997 is going to sell for $1,400. Are we getting the full optimizer and then the rest of the difference lies in the recording/mixing/hardware aspects? I just question how we can get Trinnov optimization for such a cheap price (considering that's not all the 997 does).