Marantz sr6400 (issues?)

[majeski2]

Hello to all,

Setting up my home theater system after just purchasing a 5.0 channel set of Fluance SXHTB speakers --> The reviews are wonderful for the cash spent. Will be getting them next week and will put in my 2 cents then. The system will be power by my Marantz sr6400 (this is a '6.1' avr), which I do not have much experience with in digital surround sound mode, and accompanied by a Polk PSWi 8M subwoofer (8") -- currently just hooked up to some real basic out of the box front L/R and small center speaker so that I can play and configure the Marantz correctly in digital mode. Maybe my problem here is that I'm testing everything off the cable box, music channels, movie channels -- the cable box is hooked up to the avr with a digital optical cable -- when everything is powered on and the avr is set up for sub and center the avr screen shows dolby digital signal and also has a schematic for which speakers should be firing, on common HD channels all speakers are illuminated on the display and the sub is firing, on other channels only L and R are displayed and the sub does not seem to be firing in digital mode as it should. When I had it on a music channel only L/R displayed and the center was not yet activated, once I activated the center channel the sub began firing hard and loud! The avr was is 'auto surround - dolby' mode and I thought my concerns were put to rest. The next day I turn on the system without anything being changed and the sub is not firing as it should. I confirmed that the sub is working with a manual T test and it sure does rumble (I even have it set at +2dB).

Bottom line here is when on digital input the sub seems to fire correctly RANDOMLY, like I said when I first activated the center channel the sub began to fire even only when L/R were displayed on the avr (auto surround digital dolby mode), and the next time everything was powered on it would not fire correctly. My problem could be that im testing with cable box digital audio (although when I connected my PS3 via optical digital and played a music CD I got nothing coming out of anything at all) -- Here is a page from the manual that could also explain my woes but does not really address this issue of when I had the sub firing on auto surround - digital dolby mode and the next day on the same setting it doesn't

I'm obviously a digital audio n00b -- any help here is greatly appreciated!!!!

 

[j_garcia]

1) For the PS3 to output via optical it has to be configured that way. By default it sends audio via HDMI only.

2) Yes, the problem is very likely that you are testing with a cable box because the audio is pretty much random depending on what you are watching. Use movies and music to do a proper test.

3) Run the test tones on the Marantz and this will tell you that things are correctly connected and working, but it sounds like they are.

4) Have you made any speaker settings adjustments yet? Sounds like you have the mains set to large which means when you get a stereo only signal there will be no sub.