Impressioni da oltreoceano(fonte AVSforum), non l'ho tradotto perchè il traduttore mi faceva saltare fuori una schifezza!
Evidentemente non sono l'unico psicoacustico
I got mine late last week, blown away by the sonic improvement over the 5000, not sure if it's the YPAO or what but it's better and I've only felt the need to tweak one speaker by 0.5db whereas before I was constantly messing about as something seemed "off" (it was like that with the 5000, a UMC-1 and an RX-V2500), this is the first time I've had the "wow, it's properly integrated and no blanked over my speakers" in this room since I ran an old Marantz which had no room correction.
Using the latest auto-downloaded firmware: 1.6/2.2, Sony VPL-HW50ES, Speakers/subs: 7 x Emotiva ERM-6.3, 2 x ERD-1 (presence) and 2 x 550W Rythmik F15HP. Soft furnishings, carpet and heavy curtains.
Rambling thoughts:
Atmos is really good even with my crappy speaker layout (4 x surrounds near the ceiling due to a narrow room and open rear access) and bi-pole presence speakers. I did test with a couple of "cheapo" 1" + 3 drivers" direct speakers sitting on top of the bipoles and the height positioning was much improved, I'll install ceiling ones whenever I get a new room.
I also discovered (and this may apply to the 5000 too) that the adaptive DRC only seems to work well if the overall dynamic range settings is adjusted to something other than max, i.e. it needs to be set to match the room first. I had always had that on max as I didn't like the sound (5000) with it on standard or min, however, setting standard and then turning on the Adaptive DRC has given me a very nice effect. The sound stage matches the size of the room (small 5m x 3.4m) much better now.
The DSU is just stunning (or something else has changed from the 5000 to the 5100). On the 5000 listening to The White stripes, 7 nation army, the "twittery" effects near the start of the track (listen with headphones if you don't know what I mean) were only audible in stereo mode, with DSU they are not lost. Additionally, DSU seems to just increase the height and depth of the soundstage without screwing things up, e.g. Mr's Osbourne's voice is properly placed in "Behind the wall of sleep". I also notice far more sound in the "inbetween" spaces between the fronts and the centre. I'm hearing stuff in the background on e.g. Sabbath's "FX".
Panning is accurate and smooth, you can kind of hear vocalists moving around slightly rather than being locked in place.
Despite still using direct, the video output seems a bit more vibrant, the colour saturation/contrast mainly, I can use a "calibrated with blue filter" setting (which is also the projector's default) instead of having to crank it up, I wonder was the CX-A5000 compressing some of the data to do the overlay? I don't think it's placebo as I was not expecting any change to the video.
The improved OSD is nice too (should have been like that on the 5000).
There is some "bad" though, the HDMI sync time seems to be massively longer, in the order of 10 to 15 seconds versus 5. I hope they can fix this in a future firmware.