DTS Neural Surround: Your opinions on it?

Mocha90210

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I think it depends on your theme. Mine is blue when it is off. So solid color should mean off, and white means on.
I just checked. Mine is the same. White means on, blue means off. I'm using the default colour scheme. 'Solid colour means off, white means on' sounds like a good rule of thumb. You can also confirm using the sound menu options.
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jpyle490

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I test drove a '16 Civic Touring over the weekend. I'm rather particular about audio quality so I wanted to make sure it wasn't something that would cause me frustration. I got it sounding fairly decent, so I moved on to playing with other things. I decided to purchase the car. I picked it up Monday, and even driving it off the lot I knew something was off (with the audio). Analog FM sounded absolutely dismal. Even digital sources like my iPhone, while better, weren't right. 20 minutes of messing around with it...and it was the neural setting. Once I remembered to turn that off, it was back to acceptable.

Neural is rough. The only question is how rough it is for various input sources and styles of music. For the record I can't stand SiriusXM, either. It sounds raspy and yucky. Was that a hi-hat, or a coffee can full of nuts and bolts? Can't tell.

But I digress. Neural, at least for me, is a "what were you thinking!?!?" option. It will be enabled in my car only if I loan it to a friend and I want to play a joke on him.
 

2016TouringSLC

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Just trying to figure out what DTS Neural Surround is. I know it has to deal with taking 2 channel input and converting it to 5.1 channel output. Just wanted to see if anyone uses it, and whether or not it sounds better than keeping it off.
It's basically the old Dolby Pro Logic (not Dolby Digital) except in a DTS flavor that takes a 2-channel audio source and converts it to 5.1 sound (2 front; 2 rear; center; and subwoofer). It does this by various means, but basically it sends mono information to the center speaker and it sends out-of-phase information to the rear channels. Thus, whether DTS Neural augments or degrades the audio signal is very much dependent upon the quality of the source material and whether it was mastered for stereo or surround sound.

As a general rule, I like it for acoustical music like jazz, classical, instrumentals, etc., but I turn it off for rock and roll. I find it works best with an iPod at 256kps or greater, but highly compressed sources like mp3s at 128kbs, Sirius Radio, and many FM stations sound worse with it on.

But if it sounds good to you, then use it.
 

RedTouringMA

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Can someone confirm that a white icon
means neural is on and a red icon is off?
Correct, if you're using the red color scheme
 


Diversion

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I seem to like it mostly.. Neural was turned off when I bought the car and after a few days I turned it on and at first I hated it but now i'm liking it more and more.. Seems to "upscale" the audio some but not too much..
 

d1zguy

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I seem to like it mostly.. Neural was turned off when I bought the car and after a few days I turned it on and at first I hated it but now i'm liking it more and more.. Seems to "upscale" the audio some but not too much..
All it does it convert the stereo signal into 5.1 and when it does that the center speaker become the stage for voice.

DTS nueral actual kills bass in all songs; i've left it off because of it.
 

mzubb

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Neural sounds better for me for most music. It sounds crisper, more range, more 3D. Bass sounds better and less muffled.
 

Ataricade

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Neural sounds better for me for most music. It sounds crisper, more range, more 3D. Bass sounds better and less muffled.
Yeah I like it better myself as well makes the music more three-dimensional
 


JohnnyL

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I'm not a fan of it. It's been off 99% of the time.
 

Rickmeister 48

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It makes my system sound good enough that I don't have to pay more to upgrade it. It makes everything clearer, and gives more bass.
It does not center the vocals into the dash speaker either in my car.
Some one states that it depends on your source material. If you record low quality, your gonna get low quality playback.
 

MuffinMcFluffin

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I've grown to like the Neural sound, but what I noticed is if you are a rear passenger seat you are not going to hear the vocals as well. People always ask me to turn my music down when sitting in the back, because they are getting overwhelmed by other noise that isn't the main instrumentation. I guess it's designed for at least the driver's seat when it comes to the cabin. I haven't confirmed this by sitting in the back of my own car when it plays, but I can certainly believe the notion.

Anyway, what if I have a 5.1 audio file (like in WAV format)? Will it mix it down to 2.0 then upmix back to 5.1 and create its own virtual sound, or will it recognize my channels as they are and play it like that, then and there?
 

josby

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I noticed is if you are a rear passenger seat you are not going to hear the vocals as well. People always ask me to turn my music down when sitting in the back, because they are getting overwhelmed by other noise that isn't the main instrumentation. I guess it's designed for at least the driver's seat when it comes to the cabin.
I don't know for sure about the DTS algorithm, but it probably works similarly to the Logic7 upmixer in the DSP I'm using, which sends only sounds it determines will add to the ambiance of the overall sound to the rear speakers. So if you're sitting in the back seats, the sound coming from the rear speakers definitely sounds weird. My DSP has a seat-position setting (Driver, Passenger, Front, or All) so you can set it to All when all the seats are occupied to eliminate this issue, but I guess Honda cheaped out on writing such a feature into the headunit software.

Anyway, what if I have a 5.1 audio file (like in WAV format)? Will it mix it down to 2.0 then upmix back to 5.1 and create its own virtual sound, or will it recognize my channels as they are and play it like that, then and there?
My guess would be that the headunit will choke on a 5.1 WAV file. But if you have a stereo WAV file that was downmixed from a 5.1 file, it should play back pretty well with DTS Neural. Downmixing to stereo uses some kind of phase tricks to encode the surround channels in, which most upmixers can recognize and do a reasonable job of extracting those surround channels back out. And creating a center and sub doesn't really require encoding, it just requires a good algorithm to build them from stereo.
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