950 specs question

Can anybody explain what Cirrus Extra Surround and True Stereo Bypass do?

I'm brand new on this forum and I did do a search for these answers and came up blank.

Thanks

There's not a lot of info available on either of those. I'll offer what I know (based largely on the 950 specs they released in a "latest news" post a couple months ago):

Cirrus Extra Surround: Outlaw's working with the company Cirrus for most or all of the DSP development (including the bass management), and Cirrus has apparently just finished developing a DSP system for decoding digital AND analog sources into 5.1, 6.1, or 7.1. I'm guessing that applies to DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 sound tracks (which can then become 6.1 or 7.1 in a fashion similar to the 1050's Surround 6.1 mode), as well as two-channel sources like VCR or CD inputs. I'm not certain, but I suspect it will be similar to Dolby Pro Logic II in some ways (that's sort of what the basic concept makes me think of) with the addition of the center surround(s). Hopefully we'll learn more shortly.

True Stereo Bypass: This is simpler, and sort of cool. In normal operation, any stereo analog input (CD player, VCR, turntable through a phono pre-amp, tape deck, Dreamcast, whatever...) is converted to digital, processed digitally, and converted back to analog before being sent to the amp. You will be able to set up any analog input on the 950 (both audio and video inputs) to bypass the digital realm and go straight from input to volume control to amp unaltered. It will not let you do bass management or any sort of processing (like DPL II or the Cirrus Extra Surround), but it offers a way to preserve the original signal as much as possible.

[This message has been edited by gonk (edited December 06, 2001).]

Thanks Gonk,

Will the 950 have a 5 channel stereo mode similar to Denon or Onkyo?

Since it has been previously announced that it would not, you can be the first to know it will offer a five/seven channel stereo mode (depending on speaker configuration).

Scott

Woah. That's pretty cool. Thanks, Scott! (Certainly a better answer than the "I don't know" I was going to offer...)

OK, I've got to ask. How does the 5 channel stereo mode work? Does it work with a regular 2 channel stereo input, and somehow extract 5 channels from that?

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

Another question about the 950. I noticed that the output DACs are 192 kHz, 24 bit jobs, according to the latest FAQ (which happens to be from 10/25 so may be out of date). Is any sort of upsampling or smoothing done on lower resolution inputs, such as the 44.1 / 16 from a CD player connected digitally? Do the DSPs always process the signal internally at the 192/24 rate? When analog inputs are digitized, at what rate are they digitized?

Maybe this seems like a silly question, but it just seems to me that if you've got DACs capable of those kinds of resolution, you could get a better quality signal from a CD quality input by somehow mathematically smoothing the curves, even if you aren't going to get any better dynamic or frequency range.

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net