No sound at all (1 Viewer)

[Scott-Ss]

Im such a newbie. Just bought the Sony STRDE897/S receiver and am attemping to connect this thing myself. It is a 7.1 but am attempting to connect it as 5.1 as I aleady have the speakers in place. Cant seem to get any sound from anything. (Only have the hdtv and the dvd player connected) I noticed there are four stereo speaker outputs that i am not using. (only using the surround sound outputs) My question is, if im watching something that is not surround encoded will i get sound out of any of these speakers? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[John S]

The two most important speakers, are the front L/R, usually one of the sets of stereo outputs are the fronts.


I'm not to familure with that unit though. Connect a set of speakers to them, and see if it will produce sound in stereo mode at least.

 

[Scott-Ss]

Thanks. I actually have four stereo outputs (A Left, A Right, B Left, and B Right) and 7 surround outputs.(L/R Front Surround, L/R Middle Surround, L/R Back Surround, and Center Channel) I currently have speakers connected to all surround speaker outputs except L/R Middle Surround.(5.1) If I connect to the stereo outputs i wont get surround sound will I? Getting no sound at all right now, but i may not have something connected right as far as audio input...

 

[John S]

In looking at a rear pannel view...

The front speakers are supposed to be connected to the A pair.

The other speakers are surround / center / back...

In 5.1 you want A connected to your fronts, and the surrounds connected to your rear I believe.


Sounds like you may have your speakers connected to the Pre-amp outputs.. The connection you used is RCA? Or did you connect your speakers to the binding posts?

 

[John S]

The Speaker connect look straight forward to me...

It lables the Fronts for speakers A or B....

The surround is for your 7.1 side surrounds, your Back are for the 7.1 back surrounds, and your center is for your center.

For 5.1 pretty sure, you would use front A from your front left and right, then the back for your surrounds. That's it if you have no center channel speaker. center to center if you do have them.

You may have some connection input issues as well, but lets at least make the thing get some sound first, before going any further.

 

[John Garcia]

"BACK" would be the rear center in a 7.1 setup, typically, so you may want to try using the other surround channels.

You CAN get surround just using stereo inputs, but it will only be "matrix" surround and will not sound as good as discrete digital surround.

 

[John S]

So you saying on a 7.1 AVR, in 5.1 mode, the side surrounds are the proper ones to use?


On my Denon it doesn't matter, it just uses what you have assigned as installed.

 

[Scott-Ss]

Thank you John for enlightening me. It seems so simple now although it was quite confusing before. Im not at home right now, but i will try it as soon as i arrive home and see if i can get the thing working. By chance, can you tell me if it will hurt the unused channels while im using the 5.1 setup?

 

[John S]

It won't hurt.. All 7.1 / 6.1 AVR's are made to fully support 5.1 as well.

There are some digital assignmnets, that may also be going on as well. make sure the digital input you are using is assigned properly to the labled input you are using.

 

[Scott-Ss]

digital assignments? You completely lost me on that one. Ive read that sony is not too well liked in this forum, not sure why. The only bad thing i can say about sony right now is the documentation that came with this receiver is worthless... guess they figure if your buying something this complex you must know what your doing...

 

[John Garcia]

Sonys are very flexible and configurable, decent quality, but previous generations just didn't sound as good as the competition in the same price range. The downside of all that flexibility though, is they are often rather complicated to configure. The ES line is pretty good, but aside from them, I haven't seriously listened to the most recent -DE stuff. As a former owner of a few Sonys, I probably wouldn't go back to them.

What John S means by assignments is that you may have to go into the receiver's setup menu and assign the digital connection you have connected the DVD player to, to the "DVD" source selection on the receiver. This function is not always automatic. You will also have to make sure you have the digital audio settings correct in your DVD player (DD and DTS are set to "on" and "bitstream").

 

[Scott-Ss]

You people are geniuses!!! I hope to get home and actually here some sound come through my speakers. For 5.1 setup i would not actually use the "B" front speakers, right? Use the "A" front speakers for the front surround, the rear surround as the rear, and the center channel as the obvious choice. Am I starting to get this a little?

 

[John Garcia]

Yes, use the "A" connection, "B" will be unused for the fronts, and there should be no problem not using the "back" surrounds too. I am not 100% certain on which ones your receiver will use by default because I'm not familiar with its particular configuration, but the last 4 receivers I set up were all 6.1 and "back" was the rear center, so you'll have to see which of the channels give you sound when you configure it for 5.1. You may need to go into the receiver's speaker setup menu and tell it you are not using the "back", and make sure the side ones are turned on. Try it out and let us know what happens.

 

[Scott-Ss]

Ok. One last question. For some reason im looking at my manual online and i do not have a toslink port for my dvd player. the manual shows connecting it via a digital coax cable. I have plenty of other optical inputs but i would like to be able to click "DVD" on the remote and it actually be for the dvd player. (versus connecting it to the tv/sat input and having to remember that is for the dvd player) Can i go digital coax from the dvd player to the receiver and the go optical from the receiver to the hdtv? any clarity loss doing it this way versus straight optical all the way?

 

[John Garcia]

I'd just use stereo analog from the player to the TV. My dad's new LCD has an optical input too, and outputs so you can hook some small speakers to it for surround if you don't have a receiver, but since you are going to use the receiver to do surround decoding, there's no real benefit to connecting to the TV with optical.


This should not be a problem. I looked it up and it says all the digital inputs are assignable. IMO, coax is better than optical simply because it is a much more positive connection and I use it whenever possible.

 

[Scott-Ss]

Thank you. You and John S have been most helpful. Ill let you know what happens after tonight.

 

[Scott-Ss]

OK. have sound now. I have the AFD on and it suppose to pick up that the dvd im watching is in dolby digital and adjust accordingly. its not. it shows L, R, and SW... no sound from the rear speakers. I can force it into surround and get sound from the rear speakers, but my old one reciever was capable of that. I bought this one because at the best buy store it was scrolling the dolby digital... any help?
**EDIT** Have sound from rear speakers now, but the receiver is showing dolby prologic instead of dolby digital. DVD player is set to DD. using optical connection. Please help.

 

[John Garcia]

I can almost guarantee it is the DVD player's setup - go into the setup menu with no disc in the player. Go into digital audio and make sure DD and DTS (may need to turn on DTS too) are set to bitstream rather than PCM. This is quite commonly set to PCM by default and will give you stereo only, which AFD will try to apply DPL/II/IIx to.

Make sure the DVD has a DD/DTS track and that you have selected it.

 

[John S]

If your digital to the AVR...

It is either the Bitstream / PCM thing. (Bitstream is right)
Or you need to make sure on the DVD menu itself that DD5.1 is selected or DTS is selected. Some discs do not choose DD5.1 by default and you get what you are describing.

 

[Scott-Ss]

i have bit rate and layer as options. bit rate?