so apparently dolby is releasing their new Dolby Pro Logic IIz system.

its about a 9.1 system with another pair of satellites preferably placed high above the front satellites, aimed to provide ambience and atmospheric sounds, such as rain for example.

http://www.dolby.com/consumer/technology/prologic-IIz.html

a quote from their description:




im currently kind of curious of how it will simulate older recordings.

what are your thoughts on this system? will you run and upgrade, or wait to see how it develops, or is 7.1 well enough for you?

Hell, 5.1 has been enough for me for many years now. I don't have many movies that support 7.1 surround sound. I have a couple of DVDs but they aren't true 7.1, they are 5.1 with some slight ambient noise added to the extra channels (I don't consider that proper use of the extra two channels). I do have some Blu-rays that go up to 7.1 surround sound but again, 5.1 is more than enough for me.

I do have a 7.1 surround sound speaker system in my living room and it runs Dolby ProLogic II. It took me approximately 5 years to go from 5.1 to 7.1 and even then I was thinking about just going 5.1. However, the speaker package I purchased came with 7 speakers and it actually would have been more expensive to purchase 5 speakers (there was some discount on the Klipsch speakers bringing them down to $2000, it would have cost me $3000 to get 5 speakers separately).

It is nice that Dolby wants to continue their ProLogic technology for future use but it won't make me upgrade to a 9.1 system especially since I don't have anything with 9.1 channels and I doubt that movie companies are going to support it anytime soon (at least with Blu-ray). I hardly ever use Dolby ProLogic II on my two systems anyway. I always use a stereoX2 setting when listening to stereo music (it plays the left channel on both the front, rear, and side speakers and does the same thing for the right side), everything else I have uses digital 5.1 or 7.1 channels. I have a whole bunch of DVDs, Blu-ray movies, and my satellite receiver pumps out either PCM stereo or Dolby Digital 5.1 (depending on the program, most of them are 5.1).

As with DPL II, it will only mean something when there's content specifically encoded for it, and since this one makes you add 2 speakers, even then it might not be too compelling. DPLIIx doesn't have any specific content for it, and it can sound weird when using it with 5.1 movies. Sometimes when audio should be heard from both side speakers instead they join in the back surrounds.

DPLII is great (at least to me) because there is specifically encoded DPLII content, mainly PS2 and Gamecube games, which didn't have enough power at their disposal to do full discrete digital multichannel (as the Xbox did). It is really pretty great, but movies never needed it.

There are plenty of PS2 games that support true 5.1 surround sound. The power of both the PS2 and GameCube are not at fault here. The issue with the GameCube is that Nintendo didn't add a digital optical out port, it only had RCA left and right. The same thing with the Wii. It is more than powerful enough to output true 5.1 digital surround sound but Nintendo didn't add a digital audio output, only analog. I do agree with you though, Dolby ProLogic II is pretty good when playing content that is made to take advantage of that.

There are no PS2 games that I know of that support in-game real-time Dolby Digital. I think there was one that supported DTS, but I don't remember, and IIRC since there was no dedicated hardware for on-the-fly multichannel encoding, the processing power for the games themselves had to take a hit.

Oh, I didn't know that about the Wii. In this day and age it sucks, it was bad enough that it didn't do HD. I luckily bought an OLDer Gamecube when they were available, and had the "digital" video out, but yeah, no digital audio.

There were probably about 10-15 PS2 games that supported DTS output. NHL 2002 as far as I am aware was the first game to ever support discreet 5.1. NHL may also have been the only game to actually support 5.1, I would guess all the other games were only 4.0 output. Encoding the extra channels wasn't really worth it as you got most of the effect you needed out of the quad setup. CPU hit probably wasn't as large as people might think it was. Most of the DTS games were from EA, but Activision also put out a game or two in DTS, and the biggest game to ever use it would have been GTA Vice City.

DTS was a clear winner in sound quality and channel placement over Dolby Pro Logic, which was the only other option that was feasible when these first DTS games came out. Pro Logic II decoders were introduced after these first DTS games, and Pro Logic II was a major improvement over Pro Logic. In fact it was good enough to make DTS encoding fairly redundant once the PL II installed base was significant enough. It was easier to use PL II instead of DTS because PL II didn't cost any CPU. I am pretty sure this is why the DTS PS2 games dried up, otherwise we would have seen more of them. PL II still had some problems on game hardware like the PS2 - for example interior panning could not be achieved without a significant cost. The cool thing about PL II decoders is that video games already encoded their Pro Logic output to specs that Dolby advised developers to use to target PL II long before it actually came out. So you could have plugged some really old PS1 game that supported Pro Logic into a PL II receiver and got some pretty good surround.

Myself I think the ever increasing numbers of speakers being recommended to us is a bit ridiculous. I would have been fine stopping at 5.1. I think most people just don't have space to strew 8 speakers around their space, let alone the up to 10 being proposed by IIz. Its not just the number of speakers that is an issue, it is the channel assignments of the speakers, and their exact geometry. There are all sorts of 5.1/6.1/7.1/9.1/etc specs that have them all in different places. What is a person supposed to do, move their speakers around when they listen to content designed for different speaker standards? It is not just a problem for consumers, it is a problem for developers. I think the industry is cutting itself off at the knees for not better standardizing in these areas.

That said, I've always thought height speakers would be a nice addition instead of more speakers in the horizontal plane.

I am a bit confused about the whole IIz intention though, it sounds like they don't expect people to target the top speakers? And content will just magically fall into them appropriately? Hmmmm..... the last thing I really want as well is another matrixed sound tech. Companies love to roll these proprietary strange formats out so that they can collect licensing $$$. If it was just PCM over a digital pipe, no money in it for them - so I think we often get inferior technology pushed on us for their benefit, not ours.

I should have said true 5.1 surround sound instead of Dolby Digital. My mistake. The PS2 had the necessary hardware for Dolby Digital/DTS 5.1 decoding/output but we all know that it wasn't the easiest console to develop for (back in the day). As previously pointed out, the processor really didn't take a hit when it came to audio decoding. The main issue was the entire setup that Sony used for the PS2. It was different and took developers years to finally start producing games that were on par with the Xbox (although it came out one year after the PS2, it was more graphically advanced right from its launch). Developers are lazy. They would rather make a game for the console that is easiest to program for and then port it over to other consoles. It is a shame that a company doesn't want to take the time to learn a console and come out with a program release for it.



I use my Wii on a daily basis. Then again, I am open enough to own all three current generation consoles. The Wii offers something different and has the most unique controls ever. I enjoy my Wii when it comes to games that I pick up and play without really worrying about my overall progress or anything like that. I use my PS3 and Xbox 360 for games that require more devotion such as Resident Evil 5 or Grand Theft Auto IV. The lack of HD doesn't really hurt the console as the Wii was never advertised as being a graphical powerhouse anyway. The simple games look good. I do think that true 5.1 surround sound output would have helped the console as that would have made games more immersive. I see no excuse not to have full Dolby Digital/DTS 5.1 in this day and age especially when my 5 year old notebook can process that type of audio just fine.