Bryan your not crazy unless I am also (ok my friends would say that’s not much comfort). I just ran a test and can confirm that I am getting an 8dB-10dB boost in the SPL from my subwoofer measured near-field with my radio shack SPL meter when using DPLllx. My mains are showing a corresponding drop measured near-field to the woofers. And that was switching between 2ch stereo+sub and DPLllx all crossovers set to 80Hz in both 2ch and multi-channel modes.
The net effect at my listening position is no change in the SPL so I never noticed this redirection. Is there any chance your subwoofer is near a wall or corner? Neither my subwoofer nor mains are corner/wall loaded so that might explain why you’re hearing the effect so much while I don‘t hear it even though I can measure it. Problem with that is lots of people corner load subwoofers so you’d thing more people would notice it.
If your sub is corner loaded you could experiment by pulling it out 3-4 feet from the walls and see if the bass “pump” diminishes.
Actually, I need to thank you for posting your question because I never really gave cinema mode a chance since it didn’t seem to do much for movies so I used music mode with 2ch movie/TV. I don’t remember trying it on music and am finding I quite like the effect. It definitely enhances the ambience but w/o the seeming flattening out of the highs the way music mode does on many recordings. Matter of fact just finished listening to two of my favorite 2ch SACDs Boston and The Bangles and actually think they sound better in cinema mode rather than 2ch direct.
Cheers,
Dean
