CGolf,
The difference between Pure Direct and Straight Effect seems a little confusing, but it's really not.
I've owned several Yamaha receivers over the years and to keep things simple, it pretty much boils down to this.
Pure Direct is basically used when listening to 2 channel sources, cd's, FM radio, ect. Pure Direct allows you to bypass the units decoders and DSP processors, and turns off the video circuitry and front panel display in order to enjoy high fidelity sound from analog and PCM sources.
Straight Effect on the other hand is primarily geared towards downmixing to 2 channel. Meaning, you can still enjoy 2 channel stereo playback from multi-channel sources.
You can use a subwoofer with this program when the SWFR or "BOTH" is selected in "BASS OUT".
In Straight mode, 2 channel stereo sources are output from only the left and right speakers. Multi-channel sources are then decoded straight into the appropriate channels without any additional effect processing.
Hope that helps explain the difference between the two modes a little.
Sutter
