DVD-A & SACD Help (1 Viewer)

[Eric_Connelly]

I just picked up my new HT setup including a Yamaha RX-V2600 and a Yamaha C950 DVD player.

It supports DVD-A and SACD. I did not realize that you needed a different setup for SACD, meaning the 6 channel cable.

I bought 1 DVD-A, The Globe Sessions by Sharyl Crowe.

I sorted out the entire setup and listened to quite a few CD's and watched a few movies and have been very impressed. The speakers are Defintive's 7002's, CLR2000 Center, and the BP2X's for the rears.

I was pretty disappointed in the DVD-A. Mostly the 5.1 track. I get better sound from leaving in 7 channel Stereo than in Straight DTS/DD pass through.

Maybe its just the DVD I bought but I was not impressed, not just in the 5.1 track but the sound quality over CD.

First off, can anyone recommend a GOOD DVD-A. I don't really care what genre it is, I just want a good clear 5.1 channel recording to 'show off' the system I guess.

I know it must come down to authoring also. Is SACD held to a higher authoring standard? The DVD I bought when playing the 5.1 track has no rears at all and they overblow the center channel.

Any tips would be appreciated.

 

[Tim Hoover]

Generally, no. There are proponents of each camp that say their particular format has inherently better sound quality, but there are turds and gems of each type.

Just a thought: have you calibrated the audio output of your hi-rez player?

 

[Eric_Connelly]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll pick up one up on Monday.

Define calibrate. My RX-V2600 does its own auto calibration with a microphone. I have been told, by both the staff at the store and people who are far more into HT than myself that the Yamaha doees an excellent job with this auto calibration. There are 2 levels and my unit does the higher level although I forget the acronym.

I do not find a calibration option on my DVD player but if you have some hints I'll keep them in mind. The speakers probably only have 20 hours on them so I plan on redoing the cal once they break in a bit more.

Thanks

 

[Brian L]

Here is a link to a thread related to proper set-up of DVD-A and SACD players:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...22#post1800722

The link may not go direct to the post. If so, it's post #88.

The post is a bit outdated in that it makes little mention of the digital links that are available (iLink, DenonLink, etc.), but there is still quite a bit of useful info to be found.

As for good sounding discs, some of the classic rock stuff sounds excellent, such as Yes (Fragile), ELP (Brain Salad Surgery), and The Eagles (Hotel California). If you like big band, I would also suggest Bigg Phat Band (either of their titles), and for real solid bass, Blue Man Group (Audio. I don't find their 2nd release, The Complex, nearly as well done).

Merry Christmas!

Brian

 

[TonyD]

are you sure that sacd has arear channel?

some have a 2 channel stereo track.

 

[Eric_Connelly]

I had already done all of the calibration stuff listed in that thread but it didn't hurt to read through it again.

On the stuff I was listening to I had it on the 5.1 track, connected through optical, reciever set to STRAIGHT and I was getting the indicator lights for a 5.1 signal, just nothing was being sent to the rear. I assume this is more of a fault of the DVD-A than my system since everything else works fine.

I'll pick up the Beck DVD-A tommorow morning and see how it goes.

 

[Eric_Connelly]

I'm getting annoyed

I put back in the Sheryl Crowe DVD-A I bought and started going through things step by step.

I even went through the DVD player manual step by step and found this section:

6 Channel Discrete jacks
To reproduce multi-channel Super Audio CD and DVD Audio connect these jacks to your AV Recievers multi-channel input jacks.

Now I know this is true for SACD but I thought and was told that DVD-Audio would work fine over optical for multi channel.

The Multichannel light comes on the DVD player, as does DVD audio. But on my reciever which lights up how many channels its getting I am only getting left and right which sounds like crap since first off the bass channel is missing.

I know that everything is hooked up right. I can play DD, DTS, etc without a problem and the signal indicator shows its correct.

The DVD player even says its outputting 5.1 but I only hear left and right and the reciever says its only getting left and right.

Do I need the 6 channel for both DVD-A and SACD? I asked this question specifically after finding out SACD needed the 6 channel cable and was told it would work over optical by the salesguy and even that primer says it works over optical.

I guess I could go piecemeal some cables from in the basement and try it but I spent alot of time getting this all setup and placed in my rack nice and neat. It backs upto a wall with my LCD on top, a royal pain to pull it apart.

I won't have a choice of its discrete 6 channel only but I would I prefer optical if it will work.

Thanks

 

[Brian L]

You do need a 6CH analog cable for both hi-rez DVD-A and SACD, unless you have iLink, DenonLink etc.

Most DVD-A discs also have a 5.1 track in Dolby Digital. That would work via optical or coax, but its not hi-rez.

It seems like you are getting a downmixed 2.0 track via your optical or coax connection. In any event, you want to make sure that you select the 6CH analog input of your AVR.

Goog luck.

Brian

 

[LanceJ]

I am 99.99999% sure that is exactly what is happening.

And when playing a hybrid sacd's sacd layer-either stereo or multichannel-there will never be a signal from the player's Toslink or coaxial digital output.

Eric: since it's Christmas (guests to deal with, etc) and you might not want to fart around with your system's wiring right now, check to see if the Yamaha has an option somewhere in its set-up menu to play a dvd-audio disc as a dvd-VIDEO disc. All the Pioneers and Panasonics I know of have this feature and when it's utilized, you can then access the disc's Dolby and/or DTS 5.1 tracks which will then be available via the player's digital output.

 

[Tim Hoover]

Just to clarify: since you must use the 6CH analog outputs of your DVD player for hi-rez, you'll most likely need to calibrate the speaker levels and distances within the DVD player menu setup menu itself. The calibrations you performed earlier through your AVR will work great for DD and DTS sent via the digital connection, but will not affect the 6CH outputs.

After you have the 6CH outputs hooked up and calibrated, be sure to check and see if your DVD player is set to "DVD-Audio" mode and make sure the SACD portion is set to read either the "2CH" or "Multichannel" area. Some players come factory preset to read the CD layer on hybrid SACDs.

 

[Eric_Connelly]

Thanks for the replys.

Yes there is a seperate setup for the Multi-Channel in on the Yamaha. Also in the DVD player although I always wondered why there was one in the DVD player itself since the reciever took care of it all.

My biggest worry was how I was going to setup the inputs but it looks like Yamaha was smart enough to allow you to use the multichannel in conjunction with any other input. Meaning I put it on DVD, get the video out on the TV since I've tied the HDMI and optical input together. Pushing the MultiChannel in keeps me in the same HDMI mode and looks at the multicchannel.

The Yamaha DVD player is very easy on the portion to select what it is playing. The unix does come up and say DOWNMIX when it starts to play a track.

The tough part is going to be finding them. They are not the easiest things to come across. Parts Express doesn't have them but tommorow morning I'll go out and see what I can dig up.

I just wish they were more clear about this when I bought the equipment. The only problem with the Yamaha right now is the fact that it only has 2 HDMI inputs so I have 1 item going in component(cable, DVD, OTA), plus the opticals. I placed the DVD player where it is because of the lack of cables going from it.

Owell....just time to rearrange. I paid more for DVD-A/SACD I might as well use it.

Thanks again

 

[Will_B]

Both SACD and DVDA camps decided to keep the multichannel decoding within the SACD/DVDA player as a security measure. Thus, you need a multitude of cables to send the mulitchannel music to your receiver. Everyone agrees with you that it would have been much nicer if the mulitchannel signal could be sent across one single digital cable to the receiver. But they feared that would make it easy to pirate the recordings. So, SACD and DVDA are stuck with a gazillion wires in back.

 

[Paul.S]

Even on Christmas day, these hi rez connecion issues don't abate!

No disrespect intended, Eric, but it's remarkable to me that--four + years on--we're still having these conversations, even with a well-endowed (equipment-wise) non-newbie such as yourself.

Recommended DVD-As include seconds on Tim's mention of the Beck and Brian's mention of Hotel California. Ronstadt's What's New is terrif. And Metallica pounds and slashes.

-p

 

[Eric_Connelly]

Paul,

I've been on the site for a long time and mostly it centered around the video part of things.

This is my first real purchase into HT as far as audio goes. I just got this setup less than a week ago.

That all being said I went out searching for 6 channel cables with no luck.

I bought 3 sets of 2 decent channel cables, nothing overpriced, but nothing cheap.

It was worth the absolute pain in the rear of moving everything around. My CD collection is useless now

I am amazed...I went to the store and Borders was out of everything except for REM's new CD/DVD-A. I bought that along with Dead Can Dance's "best of" CD and Lisa Gerrard's new CD.

I put in Sheryl Crowe's DVD-A from a few days ago, picked the multi channel input and really I was amazed. Then I put in REM's DVD-A and it was even more impressive. We're not huge REM fans but the production quality was great.

I'm listening to the Sony SACD sampler that the guy at the HT store gave me.

The whole setup was well worth it. Now I really hope this format takes off.

Last question...are there multi-channel regular CD's?

As I'm typing Dead Can Dance came on and its playing as multichannel but its a regular CD. I have played regular CD's via the multichannel and just gotten the fronts as I would expect.

Thanks

 

[Paul.S]

Yes, DTS (lossy compression).

Which Dead Can Dance album did you buy?

-p

 

[Eric_Connelly]

I found my answer. I had selected multichannel output on my DVD player so it mixes it and sends it out that way. I do find it does a better job than picking 7 channel stereo on my reciever and its one less button for the wife to push.

We bought Memento: The very best of Dead Can Dance.

We're big DCD dance fans but with the advent of MP3's and iTunes we picked up alot of their stuff via iTunes and now all of that is pretty much out the window since I can now hear every little thing.

I told my wife the exspensive part is going to be building the software collection, not the hardware

We're shopping as we speak.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

You are overblowing the center channel because there is no bass management when you bring in the 6 analog signals. You are sending full range audio to your center channel, and the bass portion is probably causing it to distort. This is the biggest pain with regards Hi-rez audio: their "security" concerns means you have to deal with bass mananagement in the analog domain. And there's only one solution as far as I know: the Outlaw Audio "ICBM" box. www.outlawaudio.com/products/icbm.html This acts like a crossover network. So rather than SIX analog cables you end up with TWELVE analog cables clogging the back of your system.

 

[Manus]

Dennis,
There is another ( albeit expensive) solution . In a Meridian Digital Theatre the Dvd-A ( not Sacd) signal is transferred digitally using 3 coax. cables and bass management is also performed in the digital domain.

It sounds so 'right' its scary good.

~M~

 

[Eric_Connelly]

First off let me clarify that the problem I had with the center being overblown was the way I had it connected. I was using the optical input and letting the reciever mix it.

Now with the 6 channel cable hooked up I don't have the problem beyond on a couple of tracks poor mixing.

Still I do not understand the problem since there is a seperate output for center and for subwoofer, is it still mixed?

If this is a big problem they do make a version of my center channel with a built in 8" sub which in itself isn't important but that also means it has a built in cross over, I could really turn down the bass and basically strip it out of the center if my thinking is correct.

 

[mylan]

C/L/R 2500 has a built in 8"sub.