XR Pro and 3d LUT profiles

Got my Optix XR Pro from yall right before the end of the year, thanks for shipping it out on a day I figured you would be closed!

I have looked around on the net and can not find much info on these type of profiles. The documentation does not have much either so I thought I would see if someone might be able to shed a little light.

I have made a few profiles and compared them using Microsoft’s color control panel. I made a Matrix profile some a 3d LUT profiles using the default compression, 20% compression and no compression.

The three 3d LUT profiles all have very close gamuts as far as the 3d image the color CP makes. The gamut get a little bigger as you decrease the compression. However all of them have a smaller gamut than the matrix profile. The uncompressed 3d LUT profile is pretty close but the points or ends of the map all go a little farther on the matrix.

The documentation says the 3d LUT profiles can give better soft proofs of saturated colors but that seems strange being that the gamut of the profile is smaller. It also says that using more compression will result in less saturated colors but they may be more pleasing. That seems a strange statement to me because I want to see the colors in my images including the saturated ones.

I read that the 3d LUT profiles can cause banding if not made correctly as far as the amount of compression. What is the process to go about finding the correct amount if any compression? I would think that the 3d LUT profiles would be the way to go but it seems you need to know how to get there.

I am using the system under WinXP Pro SP2, I have one LCD and one CRT monitor I keep profiled, I use PSCS2 for editing/soft proofing and I use AdobeRGB as my standard working color space from my Canon 20D RAW files. I do a lot of soft proofing using Bill Atkins profiles (my favs are the XR1 and CS1 depending on the image and rendering intent).

Thanks for any info you can give.