Surround Sound Doesn't Sound Like "Surround Sound"

Re: Surround Sound Doesn't Sound Like "Surround Sound"

There could several sources for your problem.

1) What kind of audio cable do you have connecting your DVD player or XBOX to your tv? Is it just the red and white cables or do you have a digital coaxial or fibre optic cable? In order to be able to get Dolby Digital or DTS sound, you will need a digital coaxial or fibre optic/toslink cable. These are digital cables, whereas the red and white cable is analog so it cannot pass digital surround sound audio to the receiver. You can buy these for cheap online or at local stores - just avoid Monster cables if they are significantly more expensive than others that are available near you. You won't notice the difference in sound and you're just getting ripped off.

2) Do you have your speakers connected properly? Your receiver should have the ability to run through a test to play sound out of each speaker individually to make sure that they are all connected and in the right outputs of the receiver. Check the manual for this.

3) Make sure that you have the right settings on your DVD player and XBOX. You need to turn DTS on in your DVD settings menu, and probably for your XBOX as well.

4) Make sure that you have the receiver set to the right sound processing option. Look in your manual for which setting is needed to get Dolby Digital or DTS. My Denon has an "Auto" mode that will switch from Stereo to Dolby Digital whenever it senses a digital signal, but that only happens when I have the right cable coming into it (point 1), and the audio source is sending digital sound (point 3).

Try those four steps and you should be good. If that still doesn't work, you could give us more details about what DVD player you have, and what audio settings you have the receiver at when playing movies or games.

Re: Surround Sound Doesn't Sound Like "Surround Sound"

The list above should be enough to debug your "no sound at all from rear speakers" problem. For a quick check, you can use the level calibration available on the receiver to send a signal to all of the speakers. This will send a white noise signal to each of the satellites, and tell you where the signal is being sent. So it will say something like RR for right rear...and the sound should be coming from the right rear of your system. This will tell you if you have all of the speakers connected correctly.

Even after doing all of the above to get the rear channels working, you will stil need to calibrate your speakers. There are several links on how to set the levels of each of your speakers, so I'm not going to describe the process.

If you have the rear levels of your system set too low, you aren't going to hear the information. If you have them set too high, they will be more of a distraction. It is important to calibrate your speakers to truly get good surround sound.

Many of the newer receivers have an auto-calibrate feature that will do this for you. I looked up your receiver, and it does not have an auto-calibrate, so you will have to do this by hand....

Re: Surround Sound Doesn't Sound Like "Surround Sound"

you need optical or digital coax cables going to your receiver from dvd and (or) cable box, x-b box. seems to me your just using rca cables which is only left and right. you can feed the signal to your tv with rca calbes but for surround sound you need to hook directly to your receiver.. if you feed your signal from dvd player to tv make sure you connect your audio to downmix on dvd players. which should say downmix out l+r...

Re: Surround Sound Doesn't Sound Like "Surround Sound"

Optical are also called Toslink, and you can get them at your local Radio Shack. They have a Radio Shack model which is around $20, as I recall and Monster which are overpriced. Here is just one of many.

RadioShack.com - Cables, Parts & Connectors: Acoustic Research PRO II (PR-181) 6-Ft. Optical Audio Cable


The other cable is Digital Coaxial Audio. Make sure its not standard Coaxial which is the kind of connector that connects from the wall to your cable box, with the little pin in the center that screws in. Digital Coaxial audio cable is a different animal.

Radio Shack has both. And most are easy to find locally. Optical is preferable, but both are excellent. Happy hunting!

Re: Surround Sound Doesn't Sound Like "Surround Sound"

you go from your cablebox to your receiver via optical or digital coax on your receiver you have those little square plugs, you should have at least two or you might just have little slots with a cover, their small. you should have at least two optical and three coax inputs, don't forget to assign your channels unless it is automatic...

Re: Surround Sound Doesn't Sound Like "Surround Sound"

I'd take the TV's speakers out of the equation entirely, and only feed your sound from the cable box and devices to receiver to speakers.

Re: Surround Sound Doesn't Sound Like "Surround Sound"

I looked up the specs on your receiver:

"Video and Audio Inputs: The Yamaha HTR-5930 offers component video switching and can switch three high definition and progressive-scan sources without degrading video quality. There are four composite RCA video inputs. The receiver has three digital audio inputs (one coaxial and two optical)"

So, you will be able to connect up to 3 digital audio inputs - one via a coaxial cable and two using optical cables....

See what your components will output - and buy a cable for each of them...

Looking at the X-box 360 specs - it seems you can have either a coax or a digital output - here are the cables:

Xbox.com | Accessories - Xbox 360 HDMI Cable

"Utilize the Optical/RCA Audio adapter for enhanced sound in non-HDMI supported stereo systems. Feel confident connecting your console to high-definition equipment with the quality you expect from an authentic Xbox® product. "