I'm just curious about experiences with the following scenario.

I have a Yamaha DVD-S796 DVD Player that has an option to, from what I can understand, accentuate the center channel. They call this "Cinema Dialogue" and it's supposed to play all dialogue at a louder volume. My concern is what effect this has on the 990's processing of Center Channel data (assuming it changes the feed to the 990), of course I'm also making an assumption that Yamaha's definition of "Cinema Dialogue" basically means Center Channel. I am currently experimenting with the audible effects however as you can imagine between system re-calibration and auditioning in the two modes this will be a lengthy process however one that I'll be doing regardless. I am however very interested to hear your thoughts on this, opinions and any experiences.

Thanks

Well, for one thing the Yamaha could only apply that enhancement when it was doing the decoding of the Dolby Digital or DTS signal. In other words, it will only work with the multichannel analog output. The digital output goes straight through the player to the 990 with no processing by the player. Likewise, settings in the player like speaker distance, bass management (large/small speakers), and channel trim will only affect the multichannel analog output - and with the way the 990 handles the 7.1 Direct input, they can all be "zeroed" out (no delay for speaker distances, no trim on speakers, all speakers large and sub on) as a general rule.

Based on my experience with a Yamaha DVD player (the DVD-S1500), I suspect that going straight to the 990's DAC's will sound the best. If you'll be connecting multichannel analog anyway (perhaps for DVD-Audio and/or SACD), you could still do a comparison between digital input, multichannel input without "Cinema Dialogue," and multichannel input with "Cinema Dialogue."

Good point as I hadn't considered that, It (my yamaha) doesn't have multi channel analog output (only 2 Channel) however what you said makes sense as some of the enhancements may be to improve sound from standard two channel sources. I use the digital output only so this explains why I'm finding it so difficult to hear the difference .

Yeah, if its only analog output is stereo, then the dialogue mode is probably related to how it downmixes the center channel.