Denon POA-A1HDCI 90

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Timbre Matching™

The human ear changes our perception of a sound depending on the direction from which the sound is coming. In a movie theater, there is an array of surround speakers so that the surround information is all around you. In a home theater, only two speakers located to the side of your head are used. The Timbre Matching feature filters the information going to the surround speakers so that they more closely match the tonal characteristics of the sound coming from the front speakers. This ensures seamless panning between the front and surround speakers.

Adaptive Decorrelation™

In a movie theater, a large number of surround speakers help create an enveloping surround sound experience, while in a home theater there

THX Ultra2 Cinema

THX Ultra2 Cinema mode plays 5.1 movies using all 8 speakers giving you the best possible movie watching experience. In this mode, new THX processing blends the side surround speakers and back surround speakers providing the optimal mix of ambient and directional surround sounds.

DTS-ES (Matrix and 6.1 Discrete) and Dolby Digital Surround EX encoded soundtracks will be automatically detected in Ultra2 Cinema mode if the appropriate flag has been encoded.

Some Dolby Digital Surround EX soundtracks are missing the digital flag that allows automatic switching. If you know that the movie that you are watching is encoded in Surround EX, you can manually select the THX Surround EX playback mode, otherwise THX Ultra2 Cinema mode will apply processing to provide optimum replay.

Boundary Gain Compensation

If your chosen listening room layout (for practical or aesthetic reasons) results in the most of the listeners being close to the rear wall, the resulting bass level can be sufficiently reinforced by the boundary that the overall sound quality becomes “boomy”. THX Ultra2 receivers and controllers contain the BGC (Boundary Gain Compensation) feature to provide an improved bass balance. BGC can be selected by choosing “THX Ultra2 Subwoofer–Yes” from the “Boundary Gain Compensation” section of the THX Audio setup menu.

Troubleshooting Information Zone-Multi Control Remote Playback

are usually only two speakers. This can make the surround speakers sound like headphones that lack spaciousness and envelopment. The surround sounds will also collapse into the closest speaker as you move away from the middle seating position. Adaptive Decorrelation slightly changes one surround channel’s time and phase relationship with respect to the other surround channel. This expands the listening position and creates—with only two speakers—the same spacious surround experience as in a movie theater.

THX Ultra2™

Before any home theater component can be THX Ultra2 certified, it must incorporate all the features above and also pass a rigorous series of quality and performance tests. Only then can a product feature the THX Ultra2 logo, which is your guarantee that the Home Theater products you purchase will give you superb performance for many years to come. THX Ultra2 requirements cover every aspect of the product including power amplifier performance, pre-amplifier performance and operation, as well as hundreds of other parameters in both the digital and analog domain.

In addition to improvements to the power amplifier with respect to previous THX Ultra standards, three surround modes have been added: the THX Ultra2 Cinema mode, THX Music Mode and THX Games Mode.

THX Music Mode

For the replay of 5.1 multi-channel music the THX Music Mode should be selected. In this mode new THX processing is applied to the surround channels of all 5.1 encoded music sources such as DTS and Dolby Digital to provide a wide stable rear soundstage.

THX Games Mode

For the replay of stereo and multi-channel game audio the THX Games Mode should be selected. In this mode THX ASA processing is applied to the surround channels of all 5.1 and 2.0 encoded game sources such as analog, PCM, DTS and Dolby Digital. This accurately places all game audio surround information, providing a full 360 degree playback environment. THX Games Mode is unique as it gives you a smooth transition of audio in all points of the surround field.

ASA (Advanced Speaker Array)

ASA is a proprietary THX technology which processes the sound fed to 2 side and 2 back surround speakers to provide the optimal surround sound experience. When you set up your home theater system using all eight speaker outputs (Left, Center, Right, Surround Right, Surround Back Right, Surround Back Left, Surround Left and Subwoofer) placing the two Surround Back speakers close together facing the front of the room as shown in the diagram will provide the largest sweet spot. If for practical reasons you have to place the Surround Back speakers apart, you will need to go THX Audio Set-up screen and choose the setting that most closely corresponds to the speaker spacing, which will re-optimize the surround sound-field.

ASA is used in three new modes; THX Ultra2 Cinema, THX Music Mode and THX Games Mode.

THX™ Surround EX™

In 1999, a new surround system was launched simultaneously with the release of the movie “Star Wars Episode I”. “Dolby Digital Surround EX” is a new movie sound track that greatly enhances the sense of spatial expression and the positioning of the surround channel sound. The result is 360 degrees of movement and moving sound effects that seem to pass right over the listener’s head. This system was developed jointly by THX and Dolby Laboratories, fusing THX’s idea of improving spatial expression and achieving a uniform 360 degree sound positioning with Dolby Laboratories’ matrix encoding technology. Emphasis was placed on compatibility with the existing system Dolby Digital 5.1 channel, and the new “surround back (SB) channel” was added to achieve improvements over the conventional

5.1channel system in terms of the positioning of the sound at the rear, the acoustic image of sound moving from the two sides to the back as well as sound moving from the front to the center rear with the multi surround speaker systems used in movie theaters, thereby enabling various types of surround sound. The surround back channel signal is a matrix-encoded signal inserted into both the Dolby Digital SL (surround left) and SR (surround right) channels. Upon playback, the signals are decoded by a high precision digital matrix decoder within the Dolby Digital decoder into the SL, SR and SB channels and output as 6.1 channels of signals. With the AVP-A1HDCI, the signals further undergo Home THX Cinema processing to achieve a THX Surround EX system. Even without the proper environment for playing the SB channel, Dolby Digital Surround EX signals are 100% compatible with existing 5.1 channel playback systems, so they can be played as such. In this case, the SB channel signal is produced as a monaural signal from both the SL and SR channels, so none of the signal components are missing. The effects specific to THX Surround EX (the sense of spatial expression and the positioning of the sound), however, are the same as with conventional 5.1 channel surround systems.