Rear surrounds, no sound in movies

[snake1]

I recently connected 2 rear surrounds to my current system (to make it 7.2), but I'm noticing there is no sound coming out of them during movies. Side surrounds have always worked flawlessly. If I change listening modes to all ch. mono or all ch. stereo then I hear them fine, but not during movies. Any ideas? Did I miss something in the setup process? On a side note, when I installed them, I did not re-run Audyssey auto setup. I went in manually and set the levels, distance, and crossover. Any help would be grealy appreciated!

My AVR is an Onkyo tx-nr809, if other details are needed just ask.

 

[lovinthehd]

While Audyssey would automatically set levels/delays, not sure what you did....

What are you using for source and sound modes?

 

[mtrycrafts]

You may have to go back to the menu and reconfigure it to 7. setup and then try some program that is pressed in 7.1. Also make sure the levels are matched to all channels either auto setup or with an SPL meter and internal test tones.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

You’ll need to make sure what soundtrack is on the disk. If it’s native 7.1 your avr should be set to “multichannel” if the BD player is set to pcm. If the soundtrack is 5.1, set the listening mode to PLIIx. That will upsample from 5 to 7ch. Push “home”, and scroll up/down to listening mode, and scroll right/left to get the one you want.

 

[yepimonfire]

You either need a discrete 7.1 track or an up mixer to derive rears. Try switching to Dolby surround or Prologic iix


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[snake1]

Source is usually the PS4 through the Onkyo but I will check to make sure the PS4 set to PCM. If I remember right, there isn't much content that is 7.1 natively, I was just wondering which setting would upsample it to 7 channels. I'll try the prologic iix setting. Multichannel is the default setting but I noticed yesterday that during a movie, only 5 channels were on. I just want the rears working, whether its native or upsampled/matrixed in. Thanks guys! I'll go try this and report back tonight.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Source is usually the PS4 but I will check to make sure its set to PCM. If I remember right, there isn't much content that is 7.1 natively, I was just wondering which setting would upsample it to 7 channels. I'll try the prologic iix setting. Multichannel is the default setting but I noticed yesterday that during a movie, only 5 channels were on. I just want the rears working, whether its native or upsampled/matrixed in. Thanks guys! I'll go try this and report back tonight.

PLIIx will do what you want. Check the back of the case, and/or the disk menu to see what is actually on the disk. Fwiw, when I added rear surrounds, I was surprised to find how subtle the effect was. As time went on, I decided to A/B some scenes to see what was happening since I basically left PLIIx engaged al the time unless I was watching a 7.1 disk. What I found really disappointed me. I discovered that my “side” surrounds, in 5.1 playback provided much better imaging, and surround effect without the rear surrounds in play. When using PLIIx, it my rear sound field is turned in to a blob. Basically for movies, I’ve stopped using PLIIx. Whatever is on the disk is what I use. If that happens to be 7.1, then great, as native 7.1 works as good as native 5.1. It’s just that upsampling is actually a downgrade. I use an onkyo 808 btw. The new Dolby surround upsampler is reported to be excellent however, and I’m looking forward to that.

 

[snake1]

Will being in ProLogic IIX affect the other speakers during movies or will it be the same?

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

it will only affect the surrounds, and rear surrounds. The short version is, the decoder will extract what is deemed appropriate for the rear surrounds from the side(normal) surrounds. Since there isn't any "coded" rear surround information, it has to come from somewhere. The problem is sometimes it puts sounds in the rear that should only come from the sides. It's matrixed surround, like how the old dolby surround used to pull ambient sounds from the soundtrack for the surround speakers. IME, it just doesn't work, and if you are at all fussy about surround imaging, I think you'll find the same thing I did. I do still enjoy native 7.1 tracks played back as such. I just feel that the old upsampler doesn't work. For some music though, I like plIIx. It can be kinda like a sci-fi film track, with electronic sounds coming from all over the place. I'm really curious as to your findings after some quality seat time.

 

[snake1]

Well, got it all set up and going now. Multichannel works well for all native 7ch material and so far PLIIx works well for movies and games. As a small detail I noticed as I was playing Black Ops 3 in multichannel, that it was apparently coded for 7ch. Pretty sweet while shooting zombies as well! If any opinions change I’ll be sure to post them up. Thanks for the help, especially William!

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Hey! Just glad I could do some good, and glad it’s so for you. Curious to see how you like PLIIx after some more time with it. I love those zombie sounds coming from behind. It’s actually pretty creepy. I’ve never gamed with turtle bay or anything so I can’t speak to that, but gaming in 7.3(hopefully 7.3.4 soon) is pretty awesome.