Reveal your tips on tweaking your Pioneer Elite reciever SC05-37

[stevo]

I've noticed after reading posts in the past 2 years that quite a few Elite owners are uncertian how to properly set up their own recievers! It would be nice for all of you Pioneer Elite owners to share your tweaks and settings to hopefully enlighten others in fine tuning their own Home Theater Controll Centers! Hopefully answering questions like:

To THX or not to THX, while listening to HD audio?
DRC set to Auto or Off?
Auto Surround or one of the Direct settings
And many other tweaking gems

[Rob J in WNY]

Without a doubt, the SC series of Pioneer Elite receivers are among the most tweakable in the industry. I love it!

I have the SC-05 running a 7.1 setup and I can answer your questions - at least with my preferential choices. Everyone varies.

I like the THX surround for some 2-channel stuff, such as Netflix HD streaming (which comes in 2-channel stereo). Sometimes, I use it for CD audio or streaming media through the receiver's Home Media Gallery, but most of the time, I prefer to leave 2-channel music alone. I never use any surround algorithm for multichannel surround. I bitstream all movie audio via HDMI from my BD player for decoding in my SC-05.

DRC is always off. I want every bit of the dynamic range that the program material has to offer.

I generally do not use Auto Surround. I prefer Stream Direct so that all MCACC settings are applied, but no surround algorithms. Pure Direct ignores all sound processing, which some purists prefer.

I ran MCACC, but chose to adjust the 9-band multichannel equalizers myself. I have a personal timbre-taste and adjusted the EQs accordingly. I also had to manually adjust the speaker distances, as MCACC was a bit inconsistent on figuring those values.

I've been using Full Band Phase Control as I feel the resultant sound is more to my personal taste.