Factory "settings" are not really settings, they are a general starting place. I doubt 1 in 300 machines can actually stay at the factory settings for their entire crop and make a profit.
You have to prioritize what you want to accomplish. If the straw is really important, you may not be able to keep up with the neighbors that dont bale the straw, or you may have a slight increase in loss, etc.
"Here" in grass seed country, we have allways in the past, baled the straw off behind the combine. We are changing that now, but the point is, some setting changes and performance goodies have made a world of difference in the straw windrow behind the machine. If the picture shows up here, it will show 2 windrows behind 2 IH machines. The right row is mone with a 1680, specialty rotor fully equipped with Gorden rotor bars, and the left row is a 2388 with the stock specialty and stock bars.
The balers really liked the gorden bar rows as they were even and the tractors did'nt have to constantly change ground speed to keep the amount of slices per bale just right.
Its a common thing for people to want to keep sharp edges on their concaves and near new rotor bars in their machines. Usually this is a good thing, but they dont bale the straw so....... A wore out concave and a near smoothe set of bars will help with the straw as well as with the standard rotor, removing the straight bars from the rotor. If you have'nt allready done so, you can easily remove the maize seperator bars and install the straight bars with out the teeth.
Keep the machine full. !!!! If you cant keep the rotor full of material, it cant transport the material rearward very well and will chew the straw to bits. It takes lots of material to make the transport mechanism work well in a rotor machine.