| Video Noise January 2002
 The
Onkyo TX-DS989 A/V Receiver Upgrade -- Part One
More and more home-theater components are appearing that
boast an upgradeable design. One of the justifiable fears is that what you buy today will
no longer be up-to-date in a matter of months. Increasing numbers of home-theater
electronic component manufacturers are addressing this fear by making products that can be
upgraded to add new features as they become available.
Upgradeable how?
Manufacturers have two paths to make components upgradeable
-- hardware and software. Hardware upgrades usually involve swapping an older circuit
board for a newer one or adding a circuit board by plugging it in to an empty slot much
like upgrading a computer. Hardware upgrades can be somewhat tricky. Many of them are
installed by dealers or technicians.
Most surround processors and A/V receivers in recent years
use DSP (digital signal processing) chips to perform all the various surround-decoding
functions. Those DSPs need a microprocessor and software to tell them what to do. The
software that controls them can be made accessible from outside of the product’s
chassis. Connect the component to a PC, start the custom installation program, follow the
instructions, and you end up deleting the old software and replacing it with newer
instructions that expand the functions the DSPs perform.
What the Onkyo TX-DS989 upgrade includes
I spent some time, before any upgrades, growing accustomed
to Onkyo's flagship A/V receiver, the $3200 TX-DS989. This sophisticated 7.1-channel A/V
receiver includes a ton of functions, which are detailed in the review. The
TX-DS989 that I used originally shipped with all the surround modes that were available at
its launch, which included Dolby Digital, THX Surround EX, Dolby Pro Logic, DTS, and THX
Ultra certification. I familiarized myself with the sound of standard Pro Logic by using
it to decode a variety of stereo and Pro Logic-encoded stereo sources. Pro Logic
processing in the TX-DS989 is in the digital domain so signals that start as analog are
converted to digital, processed, and then converted back to analog.
Onkyo advertised the upgradeable nature of this unit from
the beginning. Sure enough, it wasn’t long after the TX-DS989 was released that new
surround modes hit the market. The new modes included Dolby Pro Logic II, DTS-ES Matrix,
DTS-ES Discrete and DTS Neo:6. Each feature has its uses, which are briefly detailed
below.
Dolby Pro Logic II was touted to be a technically important
improvement over the original Pro Logic in that it would produce 5.1 discrete channels
from stereo sources. (Pro Logic originally produced four channels of sound with no LFE
channel -- the surrounds received the same mono signal.) DTS-ES Matrix is the DTS answer
to THX Surround EX. It is useful for creating 6.1 sound for almost any DTS 5.1 movie,
though it really is most impressive with DVDs that are DTS-ES Matrix encoded. DTS-ES
Discrete is the DTS leg-up on Dolby (Dolby Surround EX uses matrixing, not a discrete
rear-center channel) because it provides full 6.1-channel discrete encoding within the DTS
soundtrack and is fully backwards compatible to standard DTS 5.1 decoding. DTS Neo:6 is
similar to Pro Logic II in that it is intended to make multichannel sound from stereo
sources. However, Neo:6 produces 6.1 channels of sound if your system has 6.1 channels,
while Pro logic II is limited to 5.1 channels of sound. Like Pro Logic II, DTS Neo:6 has
Cinema and Music modes that adapt the logic to the needs of these two different sources.
Besides adding all the new modes described in the previous
paragraph, the upgrade also adds the ability to digitize analog inputs at 96kHz/24-bit
resolution and extends the delay range for dialogue sync. The latter allows you to re-sync
the soundtrack with the video if you happen to have a system or disc that needs it. Some
progressive-scan processing can slow down the video enough that it is no longer in sync
with the audio. The TX-DS989 had this capability before, but the upgrade just increases
the adjustment range.
If you’d bought a more typical A/V receiver that
wasn’t upgradeable, the only way you could add these features to your home theater
would be to replace the A/V receiver with a newer model, which is not something most
people would want to do right away.
The kit
When you order the $49.95 E-Upgrade1 kit for the TX-DS989,
you get a CD-ROM, an RS-232 serial cable to connect the TX-DS989 to your Windows
2000/98/ME PC, logo stickers for the front panel, and the 24-character password. You
provide the serial number of your TX-DS989 when you order the upgrade kit online or from your Onkyo dealer.
Onkyo creates a custom CD that will only update your TX-DS989 by using the serial
number as a key.
Doing the upgrade
There was nothing terribly difficult about performing the
software upgrade. The process essentially involves reprogramming the 4Mbit (512KB) Flash
memory in the TX-DS989. It turned out, however, to not be the quick one-step process I was
hoping for.
The connection is a serial port, and that implies
data-transfer rates that crawl rather than fly. For most users, there is a lot of
customized information stored in their receiver that might get wiped out, much to the
consternation of the happy owner who had made all the adjustments over a period of days or
weeks. The initial steps involve backing up all the customized settings to your PC so they
can be restored when the upgrade is complete. This is a nice touch.
I installed the upgrade CD-ROM using a wizard like those
used for typical Windows applications. When the wizard is done, you launch the upgrade
tool that provides step-by-step instructions for the process. To put the TX-DS989 in
program mode, you must press and hold three different buttons at the same time
(Open/Close, DVD, and Main Power). This is a two-handed move unless you have an 18"
finger-thumb spread on one hand. The red standby LED near the power button flashes while
you are in program mode so you know you have the receiver set correctly to perform the
update.
After selecting the correct port on the PC, the upgrade
menu appears and you progress through a series of steps:
- Backup customized settings to PC
- Program DSP1
- Reboot receiver to make new DSP1 code active
- Reprogram DSP2
- Reboot receiver to make new DSP2 code active
- Restore customized settings from PC to the receiver
- Reboot receiver to load restored parameters
This process takes, on average, 30 to 60 minutes depending
on how fast your computer is and how fast the serial port is communicating with the
receiver. Each time you enter a programming mode, you have to press a different
combination of front-panel buttons to set the receiver to the correct mode for each
operation. There was a little more user intervention than I was expecting, but it was
manageable. If you make a mistake, just start the upgrade over again. You can’t
really hurt anything permanently.
Upgrade aftermath
All the new features bring significant changes to the
TX-DS989’s menus. The CD-ROM contains a 12-page owner’s manual addendum. Reading
these new pages is not optional! You’ll miss out on a tremendous amount of
adjustability, if you aren’t aware of the new power at your fingertips.
In addition to new processing modes, you get some new
functionality as well:
- Ability to set different subwoofer levels for Dolby Digital,
DTS and MPEG.
- Thirteen new adjustments that can be applied to Pro Logic II
or DTS Neo:6.
- Twelve setup modes that allow you to use the LFE subwoofer
or not, use THX Re-EQ or not, etc.
- Ability to select a different surround mode for each input.
- Ability to use a different number of speakers for each
surround mode.
- Ability to set various effect levels for different inputs.
All the new functionality will be challenging at first
because there are so many new controls. Some of the effects are fairly esoteric and
produce only subtle changes in the sound, though all are important to the final results.
Dealers and custom installers will be of great help to less technically oriented owners.
It was amazing to see how seamlessly the upgrade was
integrated into the Onkyo TX-DS989. New and altered menus appeared in many sections of the
set-up menus, but they looked like they were all there right from the beginning.
Everything is perfectly integrated into the existing user interface. Even the text in the
front panel’s fluorescent display is updated with new messages. I can’t see any
difference between the upgraded version of the TX-DS989 and what I would expect of a new
receiver that had these features incorporated from the beginning. Next month, we’ll
examine the sonic benefit of all these new toys.
...Doug Blackburn
db@hometheatersound.com
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