Dolby 6.1,who 'e worried about not havinig it... (1 Viewer)

[Greg Kolinski]

I just recently finished a 2 week receiver buying disaster,really just lots of time spent ,but ended up getting an HK 520,mostly do its ability to run my 4 ohm speakers.I ve only had it going a couple of days,so its just past the "wow its hooked up and works" stage .There is a lot I haven't messed with,just been trying to decipher the "dead sea scrolls" that is called a manual So far I love it,this receiver kicks butt.Only thing is the lack of 6.1 Dolby.Manual says I can hook up external amp and run 6.1 and 7.1 channels out of it??
But where would the 6.1 program come from,the 520?? I believe the 7.1 programing is in the receiver ,just no outputs.Im real new to the nicer stuff,see my many posts in the last 2 weeks Just a bit confused,so if anyone can shed a little light on the 6.1-7.1 stuff it would be great!! I know the HK 525 has all that ,but Im just used up the budget buy about 300 already So if you guys can give me some more "pity"replies to help me out I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks
Greg Kolinski
more confused than ever,
will trade car diag/info for HT info
20 year Auto dealer tech

 

[Jerome Grate]

If you have an old pro-logic receiver, you can accomplish the same thing by connected the old receiver to surrounds for psuedo set up or follow the directions as listed in the manual. Your old receiver will be your external amp, you'll just need the extra speakers. If your old receiver is Dolby Digital Ready, then that's even better.

 

[AaronBatiuk]

Jerome,
Greg will not need a pro-logic receiver, just any old stereo receiver or amp. I assume that the HK 520 has pre-amp level outputs for one or two surround-back speakers. Any old stereo amp (or mono, if he wants only one speaker) will work fine. The limitation is in the 520's lack of amp channels, not a lack of decoding abilities. The old pro-logic receiver trick was for pre-surround-EX receivers. It would decode the 3 surround channels (L, R, back) out of the normal 2 (L, R).

Greg,
This is a minor point, but there is no Dolby "6.1". Both Dolby and Lucas/THX (who jointly developed the format) refer to it exclusively as "Surround EX". Since the rear-center or, more accurately, the surround-back channel is always matrix-encoded into the two surround channels, it is not a true 6.1 format, and neither company ever refers to it as such. On the other hand, dts has developed a true 6.1 format, "dts-ES discrete" (dts-ES matrix is not a true 6.1 format for the same reason as DD-EX).

 

[Jerome Grate]

Aaron, thanks for clearing that up.

 

[Chris Purvis]

I think these posts may be a little confusing -

The H/K 520 DOES decode dts-es discrete (i.e. real 6.1) if you have it set up to do so (and amplification for the rear channels). If you used the pro-logic stereo-3 trick to extract dolby digital-EX material from the surround left and right you would have to forego dts-es unless you were willing to swap wires around every time you switched between them.

You could as stated use a stereo receiver (or amp) to drive the center surround pre-outputs from the 520 but they will only become active with Logic 7 or dts-es material. That's different from using a pro-logic receiver to get both left surround, right surround, AND center surround from the left and right surround pre-outs (which you should not bother to do - let the 520 drive the left and right surround speakers directly).

Further - the 520 provides two surround center outputs (which is where the 7.1 comes from) but the output from them will be exactly the same with dts-es if you connect them both up. In other words, you only need to use one of them to get the full effect with dts-es material.

With Logic7 the output from the two of them could potentially be different, but you are limited to using Logic7 with 2-channel source material anyway.