I have a guy scheduled to come to my house and charge me $200 to make sure all my A/V settings are correct on our new home theater setup, but I feel like I’m so close to it all being workable that I thought I’d ask the last few questions here and maybe save that money. (My questions marked in bold.)
Here’s what I want to do:
Watch Blu-Ray (and regular) DVDs with surround, watch HiDef TV with surround.
Here are my connections:
I have the DVD connected to the receiver w/ HDMI and optical (receiver doesn’t handle audio and video via HDMI)
I have the set top box connected to the receiver w/ optical and connected to the TV w/ HDMI
I have the receiver connected to the TV w/ HDMI
I have picture and sound, I have all the surround speakers connected and working.
Is this the best configuration?
My other questions have to do with the receiver, so here is a link to the Denon 1609 user manual. (it’s the last manual on the list there…)
1. What’s this business about “Zone 2”? Is that when I have 2 additional surround speakers making it 7.1 surround? (Page 27) 2. Subwoofer Mode setup allows me to choose between “Norm” (LFE signal of channels set to small) or “+Main” (LFE signal of all channels). Which produces better sound? (Page 22) 3. What’s the difference between “On” and “On standby” button on front of receiver? (Page 37) 4. What’s with this button that allows me to choose between speakers A, B, or A+B? (page 38) 5. If I have it on “Auto Surround Mode,” it’s going to detect what kind of signal is coming in and set itself to the appropriate output (Dolby PIIx, Dolby DTS, Stereo) correct? If not, I’m worried about how to set this thing up so that I’m getting the right sound for the right signal (Page 28) 6. I did the auto setup of the Audyssey MultEQ using the little calibration microphone. All looks correct in the settings. I assume I can set Dynamic EQ and Dynamic Volume to on and all will be well? (Page 34)
Depends on the type of speakers. One of the modes will cut the bass from the front speakers and route it to the subwoofer instead. Good when you have small front speakers that don’t handle bass well. If your front speakers are full-range you don’t want this feature.
The receiver can drive an additional pair of speakers (B). Usually speaker pair B is something you have installed on the patio. So set to A=inside speakers only, B=patio speakers only, A+B both on at at once.
My speakers are small, so I would probably want it on “Norm” which would "Play low range and LFE signal of channels set to ‘small.’ " Correct?
And so this would be good if I had some speakers out on the patio and wanted to listen to music indoors and out. Do I have that right? Would these speakers be considered to be “Zone 2”? I’m having a hard time figuring out what Zone 2 is.
It sounds like when I toggle between A/B/A+B during a movie, I’m getting either part of a “full sound” or all of the “full sound” from my surround speakers.
Side note: I have the 3 speakers and subwoofer in front, and what I understand to be the “surround speakers” at either corner behind the couch. I wondered if these could be considered to be “surround back” speakers, but the only config in the manual that shows the back speakers in play also shows surround speakers shown at the sides (making it 7.1), which I don’t have. So mine are placed in the back and set as “surround.”
IIRC on the Denon receivers you can take two of the 7.1 surround channels and break them off as an independent stereo zone. So, for example, you’d set up a 5.1 system in the home theatre, and then in the den you’d have a pair of stereo speakers powered by the remaining two channels (the rear surround channels, I believe). You can then route a different input to Zone 2 than you have playing to Zone 1 - DVD going in the theatre, and CD playing in Zone 2, for example.
I’m too lazy to actually read the manual to see if I’m remembering correctly, though.
No, I think you’re right (now that I read what you say and piece together other bits I’ve read). It sounds like Zone 2 can be either additional surround, or speakers for a separate source (CD/iPod/Sirius) in a separate room.
I’m pretty sure I have mine set up correctly and don’t need to worry about Zone 2 at this time.
Save your money and cancel the guy. Unless he’s going to come in and do a full calibration on your system, complete with sound level meter and other test gear, you’ve already got everything set up as well as you can. But there are some more details to consider. First, let me answer your questions:
Yep. You’ve got it all wired correctly. However, I think you’re wrong in saying that your receiver won’t handle audio through HDMI. The Denon supports HDMI 1.3a, so it should support audio. What you may need to do to make that work is to go into your input assignment menu and make sure that the things connected with HDMI have their audio source set to HDMI and not your optical input.
Most home theater receivers support a second zone, which means you can have a pair of speakers wired up to it in another room, and have a separate source playing on those speakers. On the Denon, if you’re not using the back two channels (7.1 configuration) in your TV room, you can use the amplifiers for those for your second zone. If you are using 7.1, then you’ll only get pre-amp outputs for the second zone, and you’ll have to hook up an outboard amplifier.
Since you’re not using the second zone, the only time you should even think about this is if you find your back 2 channels are not working if you set up a 7.1 speaker system. In that case, you’d just want to check and make sure the output for them is not being allocated to Zone 2.
For almost any set of speakers you are likely to have, you want to set them all to ‘small’, and route LFE output to your subwoofer. I have a pair of main speakers that are floor standing, almost four feet high, and weigh about 80 pounds each, and they’re STILL set to small. The sub just generally does a better job of handling your low-frequency stuff than your mains do. As an added bonus, since the sub has its own amplifier, by setting your speakers to small you’re taking a load off the receiver’s amplifiers.
Now, one thing you want to do is calibrate your audio system. Your Denon receiver should have come with a microphone for automatic calibration. Follow the receiver’s directions and run your auto-calibrate, which will correct your audio output for room acoustics, distances between speakers, etc.
On puts full power to the receiver, lights up the displays, etc. Standby just keeps a small ‘keepalive’ circuit warm. You want the receiver in standby whenever you’re not actively watching/listening to something.
You can have two sets of main speakers, and switch between them. It’s purely an electrical switch of the signal path. Unlike Zone 2, which has its own separate sources, amplification, etc., the A/B switch just routes everything to one of two sets of speakers. You’re not using it, so just leave it set to A.
Yes, it should. To test this, put in a movie that has a DTS soundtrack, and make sure your DTS indicator lights up. Same with Dolby Digital. If you’re listening to 2-channel sound, the Denon has a bunch of ‘sound fields’ you can set up to multiplex the sound into all channels. I think you can do the same thing in some of the surround modes as well, but I’ve never used that particular receiver.
You’ll always want to make sure when you’re using a DVD or Blu-Ray that you go into the disc’s menu and select the highest-quality audio track. For a DVD, that would be DTS. If you have a Blu-Ray player, you want to go into its settings to make sure that it decodes “TrueHD” audio inside the player, and doesn’t just pass the bitstream to the receiver, since that particular Denon receiver does not have any of the HD audio decoders.
Cool. If you’ve done that, check to see if it switched your speakers to ‘large’. Some of the auto-calibration systems erroneously do that. If it did, set your speakers to small, make sure your LFE crossover is set to 80 hz (the THX standard), and you’re good to go.
How about calibrating your video? The vast majority of HD sets I’ve seen are improperly calibrated (the sets are usually calibrated by the factory to look bright and punchy in a store, which means your brightness is probably set too high, your color is probably set too high, and other settings may not be calibrated correctly). Properly calibrating your TV can make a huge difference in image quality.
A very good investment is Digital Video Essentials, a Blu-Ray disc that will help you completely calibrate your home theater system.
One last thing - where are you placing your speakers, and what kind of surrounds do you have? Another very common error in home installations is incorrect placement of the speakers.
If you have dipole surrounds, they should be mounted on the side walls of the room, slightly above the listener’s ears and directly across from the listening position.
If you have forward-facing surrounds, they should be mounted so they are slightly behind and at the same height as the listeners, either on the walls or on stands. Surrounds should be at least 3-5 ft from the ears. If you’re not sure what kind of surrounds you have, let me know the model of the speakers and I can tell you.
Others (including me) have been confused about this, but this particular (i.e. crappy) Denon model for some reason does not support audio via HDMI (specifically states so in the manual—Page 10). I have to use an optical cable for digital audio.
Just got my DVE disc yesterday from Amazon! I’ve been closely following a geeky “Panny settings” forum and am learning all about this stuff. I still have the TV on the break-in settings (i.e. crappy, crushed blacks & such) and have run a break-in DVD a couple times already (gradated full screens of grays & colors that play like a slideshow. People say that the newer models don’t really require this, but I figured it couldn’t hurt).
In a way, I wish I hadn’t done this break-in DVD because it seems that on a few of the lighter gray screens, I can see a 5" glow that looks like what I would imagine image retention to look like (although it’s not really where a station logo would be—it’s higher and farther from the side than most station logos), but I got this TV directly from Panasonic, so I’m not (too) suspicious about it. 99% of the time I can’t see it (that 1% being when a scene fades to white, but how many times does that happen in movies?) so I’m trying not to focus on it. Will keep the TV on break-in settings for another week or so and then I’ll work on getting it calibrated with the DVE disc and see how closely that matches an average of other users’ posted settings.
I’m not at home now, but the home theater speakers are RCA. Got them at Radio Shack about 5 or 6 years ago (wired and installed them myself, as a matter of fact!!). Not an expensive set, as I recall. Similar to this type of thing They’re small, mounted on stands. The rear speakers are 3-5 ft from us, behind the couch on either side. 2 front are on either side of the TV, with center right at the bottom of the TV and SW at floor left.
Thanks for recommending that I save my money! One of the only reasons I called this home theater guy is because this Denon manual reads like an engineering textbook (makes too many assumptions that I have background knowledge about receivers!) and I’ve been close to blowing my brains out (figuratively) on several occasions, but once I got it all basically up and running, I felt like I was too close to the finish line not to get there by myself (and with the help of you fine people)!
Interesting about Denon’s HDMI. I’m not sure how they can call themselves 1.3a compatible if it doesn’t support audio through HDMI. But whatever. Denon’s been doing a little too much creative marketing lately. They make good stuff, though.
With your surrounds, the optimum location is not directly behind you, but about 30 degrees behind and to the side.
Finally, if it’s easy to do, you might consider putting your center channel above your TV instead of below it. Human hearing is far more directional vertically for things near the ground than things in the air (probably because we evolved with most of our threats being on the ground). Therefore, it’s easier to tell that the dialog isn’t coming directly out of the screen when the speaker is below the TV rather than being above it. If you don’t hear that now, or aren’t bothered by it, don’t worry about it. But if you’re constantly noticing that the dialog is coming from below the screen, try moving the speaker above.
Why is the STB plugged into the TV via HDMI instead of the receiver? As you’ve described it, to go from watching the STB to the DVD, or vice versa, you have to switch the receiver’s input and the TV’s, too. If you plug the STB into the receiver’s second HDMI input, you just have to switch the receiver.
I came in here to offer some help, but after reading this post the only thing I have to say is listen to Sam Stone - everything he said is right on the money. Nice job, Sam.
I actually prefer mine set up that way because often I’ll turn on the TV to watch a program and just want to use the TV speakers (the news, old sitcoms, other crappy cable shows) without turning on the receiver. When I want to watch good quality HD shows, movies, or DVDs, I don’t mind turning on the receiver and setting the input properly before settling down in the easy chair.
I may not have communicated that last bit well: If you drew an imaginary box and the speakers were in each of the 4 corners, then we would be sitting inside that box about 2 feet in front of the back wall, in the middle.
These stupid flat panel TVs don’t allow the center speaker to be placed above them (without drilling holes). I haven’t come up with a hackneyed solution to that yet…
Good question, maybe it’s that I have the DVD plugged into the TV slot on the receiver at the recommendation of the home theater guy, and there was some reason that the STB couldn’t be plugged into the other HDMI slot and make use of the other optical input, but honestly now that’s all a little hazy (see that’s what happens when I have half of the equation figured out but somebody comes in with a different way to skin a cat and then I get all kerfuffled…) so I guess for now I’ll just use flex727’s idea: sometimes I just want to listen to easy, crappy TV!
I thought my Dad was the only one who did this! I helped set up his home theater and he was adamant that I leave it an option to play the audio through the TV or the receiver. Something about watching old Andy Griffith shows not being right if it’s through the fancy speakers with a subwoofer. At least the new all in one remote we got him for Christmas should cut down on the remote clutter (he had at least 6 separate remotes… yikes).
I just put in The Dark Knight (blu-ray). I can hear air in the surround speakers (they’re “live”) but “analog” is showing on the receiver display and the only sound I can hear is coming out of the TV speakers. Optical cable is showing a red light, so it’s working.
W.T. F.?
I mean, just when I think I have this thing licked.
I don’t know what it is with this DVD player. Or maybe it’s the Dark Knight disc—I can’t access a DVD menu on it to even see if there’s some kind of sound setting I should be choosing. I have the inputs set correctly on the receiver—I’ve checked it a million times. Maybe there’s some other effed up teeny setting that’s throwing this whole thing off. As I was “getting to know the receiver better” last night, I probably set something to “on” that should be “off”—but how the hell do I know? All I know is that it says “stereo dvd- analog” on the display.
I’m so mad I refuse to watch this movie until it’s fixed.
Why can’t this be easy??? (boy, what a change from my positive attitude of just a few hours ago…)
This doesn’t add up to me. If your receiver does not send audio through HDMI, how could you possibly have audio from the DVD player ending up coming out of your TV speakers? Either you have the DVD player connected directly to the TV or the receiver is using HDMI to send audio. Could you clarify?
Check in the DVD menu to see if it’s trying to play Dolby-HD or True-HD. Your receiver can’t decode that. Switch to a DTS or Dolby Digital track (usually found under ‘languages’ on the disc menu).
Another thing to check - your DVD player may have a setting for whether it should route audio through the HDMI or optical port. It may be defaulted to have the audio routed through HDMI.
Look for othe audio options in that mention. There might be settings to choose whether the DVD player does the audio conversion or whether it should just send the bitstream to the receiver. That may be set to have the player decode. Change it to Passthrough. Or if it’s on Passthrough, try changing it to the internal decoder (you may not have this option at all, but some machines do).
Home theater equipment is still far too hard to set up. HDMI helps greatly, but it’s far from plug-and-play and needlessly complex.
…I…can’t answer this…but sound is definitely coming out of the TV speakers. With the HDMI going from the DVD to the receiver, and the receiver going to the TV via HDMI, and the optical going from the DVD to the receiver. There is definitely this printed in the Denon user manual:
For some reason I cannot access a menu on this DVD (it’s the Dark Knight that has a movie disc, a special features disc, and a digital download disc—I’m playing the movie disc—it goes right into the movie and all menu functions are not allowed), and my audio options on the DVD player are TCP (or some kind of 3-letter option I can’t stop the movie again or manthous will kill me), bitstream re-encode, bitstream audiophile.
I’ve been closely following a geeky “Panny settings” forum and am learning all about this stuff. I still have the TV on the break-in settings (i.e. crappy, crushed blacks & such) and have run a break-in DVD a couple times already (gradated full screens of grays & colors that play like a slideshow. People say that the newer models don’t really require this, but I figured it couldn’t hurt).
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