What is this option CX?

On certain discs I can change the audio button for CX-1L / CX-2R / CX-STEREO on other discs this is not possible to do changes.
Is this a noise reduction feature or what?

Watching my Japanese disc of The Hidden 1987 which is in mono audio.
When I change the audio button I can get CX STEREO for this movie.
I don't get it, what does CX actually do here giving me STEREO?

Please would you explain?

CX is a noise reduction technology by CBS designed to both reduce overall audio hiss/noise and make the audio signal smaller so there is more space for video
CX works only on discs that either are stereo, or are mono with both channels on the analog track being the same. On your disc, since the disc uses both analog channels for one mono track CX is able to be used, and on 99% of discs with it is autoenabled already

You are conflating two concepts.

CX is a noise reduction system for the analog tracks. It automatically comes on and usually isn’t possible to turn off. I can’t think of any reason to turn it off.

The Stereo/L/R thing is you flipping through each channel or both.

There are no mono LDs. Mono movies are dual mono on LD. You can listen to either channel or both, the results will be the same.

Thanks for explaining.

Discs which can't switch between CX settings but only change between analog and digital audio CX noise reduction is automatically enabled.
CX lowers or removes noise for better audio quality?

On most players, disc with a signal to auto turn on CX will lock it on, preventing it from being turned off

CX lowers noise for better audio quality, yes

CX was also added for this reason per its Wikipedia page.....

While CX greatly improved the audio quality of LaserDisc's FM audio tracks, its primary reason for adoption was to decrease the amount of interference between the right channel's FM audio carrier and the video carrier's first chroma sideband. Without CX, strict filtering during mastering and playback as well as keeping color saturation below 75% on the master were required to keep any interference below −35 dB, which ensured that no beats or other artifacts were visible in the demodulated image.


You can read the entire entry here....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CX_(noise_reduction)

Great info, thanks buddy

When I play discs which can shift between CX settings I should always keep it in CX-STEREO mode for best audio quality?

In most cases, you don't have to do anything.

CX in a high percentage of discs already have a flag in place to turn it on and prevent the user from overriding it (as crashoveride already stated). Thus, you simply let the player do its thing. On Digital Sound discs, it doesn't even matter at all since the digital tracks do not utilize CX so it's irrelevant.

On the rare analog audio only audio discs where there is no flag and thus you can choose to keep CX on or off, you should probably look to the jacket or the disc itself for the CX mark as that would mean the disc is encoded but you have to manually turn it on. If there is no CX logo anywhere, best to keep it off.

Also, as signofzeta mentioned, don't get hung up on this "CX-Stereo" indicator. They are two separate things. The reason you see it is because you must have one of the newer players where Pioneer combined all the Digital, Analog, and CX functions into one button on the remote (e.g.: "D/A CX"). On older players, we have two buttons labeled something like "Auto Digital Analog" and "CX".

That's correct my remote has the Audio D/A button.
This feature is for the newer players?
Mine's a Pioneer CLD-R7G.

When playing discs I always press the button switching to analog sound as I prefer this over digital sound.

You prefer LD analog audio over PCM digital, seriously?

There is no real reason to select analog if you are able to listen to digital.
Digital is essentially CD quality , Analog is comparable to a FM radio station.

Honestly speaking..... I've never really bothered to ever compare the digital tracks to an analog track so I can't really say the former is significantly better (but definitely not worse) than the latter.

On the few occasions I have switched between the two tracks, there were times that I thought they sounded the same and other times one can hear that the digital tracks are louder (I assume the dynamics is what I am hearing). In addition, on the many discs I have that are analog only (e.g.: the Japanese edition of Laputa comes to mind), they do sound amazing but of course I have no reference of a digital track to compare it to.

In any case, the sound quality difference between digital and analog tracks are also player specific. Supposedly, the analog audio processing of the later players are worse than the first gen HeNe laser players and digital audio does sound better on players w/ the multi bit DA converters (although that doesn't matter as much if you run the S/PDIF out of any player to a better outboard DA converter or AV Processor).

In any case, I would still prefer listening to the digital tracks. They are simply better quality and Pioneer knew this (why would they have introduced it in 1984 if it wasn't?). And the obvious reason why the analog tracks remain is simply for backward compatibility for pre-digital sound players which are now far and few in between (not to mention we know Pioneer & Dolby knew the analog tracks were very devalued by the fact they sacrificed the analog right channel for AC3).

The only reason I'd use the analog tracks is if the digital track was mastered incorrectly (quite a few Toei anime releases, namely the DBZ movies, suffer from this!) or there's bonus features on the analog tracks

I also have a R7G, but I don't recall "CX-Stereo" being the text displayed. When cycling Audio D/A, it would not let me turn off CX at all, and would just go through Digital stereo, analog stereo, digital left and right, and analog left and right

Digital on most movies will be louder than the analog. It’s also quieter. Redbook has a higher SNR than analog LD audio so this will always be the case unless someone screwed up.

CX is not a relevant concern for %99.99 of all LD owners. If the disc is CX encoded then you want it on. There are very few decks ever made that will allow you to turn it off if the disc is CX encoded.

Older players had a button that cycled between L, R, and Stereo. When Digital sound was implemented it then was changed to cycle through all four tracks. Since a CX button was pretty much useless they integrated the button for that into the audio button so it basically does nothing unless you had a pre-CX disc and you wanted to turn the CX off. I don’t know of a single disc that I would want where this is even possible. I’ve been an LD user for 30 years and I’ve never once switched off CX.

Just forget about it.

Other than a severely rotted Discovision disc, I think the only analog-only LD without CX I have is https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/11199/98 ... ey-of-Wind . I did some capture tests on it a while back, and you could hear things like the disc spinning up in the audio signal.

Assuming proper mastering, an analog track with CX should be excellent quality though. IIRC Hi-Fi VHS has a slightly better SN ratio, but I doubt it would be noticeable.

WOW I wonder what the deal is with your setup, I've only ever heard issues when its an older disc and poorly mastered, not from
spinning like a turntable ever.

Lots of older anime and Japanese discs have no CX if I remember correctly, don't know why they didn't adopt the CX as much but
I think I remember reading from disclord once something else came out they didn't need to push the CX stuff, or maybe it was blam1 who said it?? Or someone else I can't remember right now.

But its CX people, who cares, its on the disc and only some older players can shut it off and from what I remember as a kid I couldn't
tell any difference with it on or off and I grew up with a nice sound system, not amazing but nice.

i only have a two channel stereo without a AC-3 demodulator can i use PCM Digital on this setup?
The analog audio is so much more alive like listening to a vinyl record
When I watch Cobra I always turn the analog audio on even if it's louder on digital.

The same issue occurred both with a DVL-919 and an HLD-X9 directly into an ESI
U86XT, so pretty sure it wasn't the setup. I'll see if I can dig up the captures again if you're interested.

Just for people reading this in the future this statement is not true.
Analog sound from LaserDisc is similar to a FM radio station.
Digital is far more cleaner and is basically full CD quality

Pretty much agree with this, if I’m honest I’ve heard some rather decent hi-fi stereo tracks on VHS/SVHS tapes but none of the analog audio tracks that I’ve yet experienced on LD in the last 30 years of living with the format struck me as anything special tbh and certainly nothing like vinyl LP, serviceable at best maybe. The PCM digital audio on LD especially so when fed to a high quality off board dac sounds simply amazing.