Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Dolby CAT150E

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Posted by Michael Harlow (Member # 1353) on 12-07-2003, 11:16 AM:

Ok, That Peter Hall at Future Projection is going to put a CAT150E card in my CP55. What does a CAT150E do?

Peter hasn't come back to me yet, he's a busy man!

Thanks

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-07-2003, 11:25 AM:

The Cat. 150E is the second to last version of the Cat. 150 card line. The Cat. 150 is the matrix decode (aka 2:4 decoder) in analog Dolby Cinema Processors ending with the CP-65. The Cat. 150F replaced it for cinema use but the Cat. 150E is still current for the Pro-Audio SDU4 deocder due to its increased dynamic range (pro audio is referenced to +4dBu as opposed to Dolby's 300 or 500mV "standard.")

Your CP-55 should already have a Cat 150 of some vintage (the CP-55 started life with the Cat 150C...a B with LEDs) unless it was a CP-55M in which case there is a Cat. 327A in there now.

In short the Cat. 150E (or F) will either repair any matrix decoding problems you may have or improve the quality of the decoding you may have.

Steve

Posted by Michael Harlow (Member # 1353) on 12-07-2003, 03:46 PM:

Many thanks for explaining that Steve, He is going to mod our CP55 for split surround so i guess this has something to do with it. [Smile]

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-07-2003, 04:05 PM:

The Cat. 150E has no bearing on the split surrounds. You will be getting a Cat. 441 though that will add the Rs channel and a cheesy EQ.

Steve

Posted by John McConnel (Member # 2000) on 12-07-2003, 05:22 PM:

Does optical sound offer split surrounds now?

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-07-2003, 06:10 PM:

No.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 12-08-2003, 01:54 PM:

Not unless you run it through a stereo synthesizer like we do...heh heh.

Posted by Peter Hall (Member # 695) on 12-10-2003, 12:26 AM:

Hi -

The "E" stands for "extremely good value" ! Your CP55 has a cat150D in it (ot maybe a B, in which case you will notice a hell of a change), which is fine but no where near as defined as the 150E. The E uses chips, in general the D uses Caps. (Well, sort of anyway) but the E sounds a lot better. Thought I'd bring one down and loan it to you for LOTR - as we're putting surround in I didnt want the initial response to the surrounds to be restricted by the performance of the card..

Is a blatant marketing ploy by our good selves - once you've heard the E you wont want to go back to the D. Sort of like making syre the car you take for a test drive has leather seats !!
See you tomorrow

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-10-2003, 09:29 AM:

The D still makes use of the older Tate chips
The E uses the Sanyo Prologic chip driving a pair of external VCA's the phillips TDA1074's
Also the D uses an analogue bucket brigade time delay the E and later does the dealy in dsp

Posted by Peter Hall (Member # 695) on 12-10-2003, 10:00 AM:

Gordon -

You are far cleverer than I !! No wonder Stuart speaks so well of you !!

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 12-10-2003, 10:04 AM:

Is the E fully DSP or just the surround? Is there no escape from this digital madness? [evil]

How do they implement 2:4 decoding on the Panastereo?

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-10-2003, 10:19 AM:

The time delay is the only dsp section on the 150e
The Panastereo and most other matrixs use descrete components to do the logic steering
They have also one of the cleaverest ways around the VCA issues as well

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 12-10-2003, 10:45 AM:

When was the change from the delay being on a separate card attached to the decoder card to it all being on a single card made? Was that when the delay went digital?

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-10-2003, 12:13 PM:

The 150E was the first single card decoder
The 150F use the analogue devices single chip set (same as in the cp45) and it has lower headroom than the 150E so not advised for Printmasters

As to the split surround issue the circle surround matrix can handle a split surround optical as could the original pentoptical card design (hence the pent for 5 channel)

The vector corrodinates of the matrix can be altered to get any channel position you want but channel seperation degrades the farther you are from opposing channels being 180 degrees apart

Posted by Christopher Seo (Member # 7) on 12-10-2003, 12:34 PM:

Very interesting, Gordon. So was split surround ever actually utilized for optical? Does this have anything to do with Dolby's Pro-Logic II?

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-10-2003, 12:43 PM:

to the best of my knowledge no split surround optical prints have been done except for Tommy. According to Ioan Allen Tommy was encoded with the QS scheme even in the optical using the pentoptical module and would deliver 5 channel optical playback from the first CP100

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-10-2003, 03:58 PM:

The 150E is by far the better of the decoder cards from Dolby. To really liven up your Cp-55 you could adapt the Panastereo decoder card.
Mark @ CLACO

Posted by Duncan Smith (Member # 1556) on 12-11-2003, 03:04 PM:

Yeah, I was wondering that too...is it linked with the development of Pro-logic II? Doesn't that use VCA's too? You also mentioned a problem with VCA's the Panastereo has overcome, what is the problem with VCA's?

Sorry if that's a lot of questions but this is a really interesting thread!

Ta.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-11-2003, 04:37 PM:

VCA are the basis of all forms of gain rideing and when they operate in the real time domain as in noise reduction they introduce artifacts that can be audible as pumping or breathing and distortion
The better the VCA circuit is the better the finished product is.
For years most matrixs used the TDA 1074 chip or the SSM serries from analogue devices some circuits put them in side chains of the audio path ofthers in the direct audio path
beyond that it gets messy

Posted by Sam D. Chavez (Member # 1841) on 12-11-2003, 08:38 PM:

Gordon,

I believe the 150C version was the first without the Tate chip. This coincided with the use of signal presence LED's (my doing). These LED's made troubleshooting processors ever so much easier.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-11-2003, 08:51 PM:

I always felt the there was an improvement with the 150c in steering and the leds were a nice touch

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 12-11-2003, 09:19 PM:

quote:
The 150E is by far the better of the decoder cards from Dolby. To really liven up your Cp-55 you could adapt the Panastereo decoder card.

How?

quote:
These LED's made troubleshooting processors ever so much easier.

Indeed! Thank you, Sam!

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-12-2003, 09:48 AM:

Smarts DSP version of the 150 as a replacement card is an excellent sounding implementation of new technology for an older processor

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-12-2003, 10:14 AM:

The Cat. 150F is just fine as an implimentation of the Cat. 150 and, for me, has been the most reliable.

Steve

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-12-2003, 10:23 AM:

The 150F lacks the headroom of the 150E and has had some issues with distortion and overloading when used with printmasters just as the cat 222SR/A has

Posted by Michael Harlow (Member # 1353) on 12-12-2003, 02:12 PM:

Peter Hall of Future Projections LTD (shameless plug) has put the cat150E in in place of the 150D i had. Strewth what i difference! I'm keeping the CAT150E, sorry Peter, you ain't getting it back! [Smile]

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-12-2003, 08:17 PM:

The Cat 150E is still used on new SDU4 units due to the headroom issue...other than that it is an excellent deocder and even has "auto balance" so if your Cat. 69 is out of balance compared to the film you are running it will slowly shift the balance back.

Steve

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-12-2003, 08:54 PM:

I've never had a 150E fail that I can remember, or any card fail in an analog Dolby Processor in the last 10 years. Can't say that about Dolby Digitally based processors though....

I can only assume that Steve must have gotten some that were from a bad batch [Wink]

.
Mark @ CLACO

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-12-2003, 09:10 PM:

Some 150E's failed due to overheating and the imfamous molex sockets on the power regulators
but very few had a problem
Now of course there was the problem of the heatsinks falling off the transconductance amps on the 150 c and 150D that created lots of headaches

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-12-2003, 10:21 PM:

Gee Gord,
Ya mean to say that Dolby had screws come loose on their sinks? I would bet that had sourced those from the same manufacturer of the set screws used in the ISCO Blue Stars....... [Roll Eyes]

?
Mark @ CLACO

Posted by Peter Hall (Member # 695) on 12-13-2003, 02:07 PM:

Peter -

Did you say "strewth".... I'm from NEW ZEALAND - NOT AUSTRALIA !!! We dont say "strewth" - we have a variety of similar and yet slightly more consise expressions (if you listen carefully when we're around you might just be lucky enough to hear one of these rare expressions, but I'm sure use here woulndt be apt !) which serve similar purposes ...

Glad the 150E is OK

Have a good Xmas

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-13-2003, 02:43 PM:

Mark the heat sinks in question were just glued to the top of the 14 pin dips

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-13-2003, 10:50 PM:

Na, Never had any heatsinks fall off them, or work loose. I guess I got cards from the good glue batch. Thought you were talking about the regulator heatsinks.
Mark

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-14-2003, 12:16 AM:

Mark,

As to the Cat. 150E failures...I've had them all through the production run. The two popular modes of failure:

1. Piss-poor soldering... every single one of them I've come across has cold solder connections and voids in the solder...heck some holes didn't get ANY solder flow.

2. Dumb idea about trying to socket the voltage regulators....if you have a Cat. 150E....pull it out right now...find the voltage regulators (they are on the "HOT" bar) and push those leads in their sockets all of the way...this is an offshoot of the various power supply molex connection failures. However, the Cat. 150E suffers from the fact that with the heatsink, the leads barely reach their sockets...note the sockets are gone for the Cat. 150F.

As to Dolby's Digitally based processors...the CP-500 has had its lumps (just had a power supply go).

The CP-650, on the other hand, has been 100% for me. There are some really stupid design issues (like the three grey buttons on the front panel for the curious to get into trouble with) but I've yet to have to replace any cards or go driving to a theatre to recover a crash. It does only takes a day and a half to boot up though! Of the new processors I deal with, the CP-650 is the reliability king, at the moment.

Steve