I am a big fan of the experience I get with anything DTS vs. Dolby. DTS-MA for movies is WAY more imersive than the best Dolby encoding. When playing something that doesn't have a DTS-MA track, but some form of Dolby, I find that I mess around with the different sound settings a LOT more. This is something that is shared by my family too. They usually don't like me to "tweak" anything during a movie or concert playback, but if it is a Dolby track (they don't know that it is a Dolby track) they are fine with my tinkering. It usually ends up on some combination of Audyssey, THX, and DTS Neo:6 with the corresponding Movie/TV/Music curves.
But hey, if John likes what he hears with the Dolby DPLII, then awesome. There ARE a lot of factors that would lead themselves to how there is so much variance, and you guys hit on it. The room is a huge one, the source material, and lastly, but just as importantly, the listener and their person preferences.
Nothing wrong with that at all.
