CD Plays Badly In DVD=>HomeTheater System

[Bonden]

First, Hello. I'm glad to have found this forum. Don’t know much about quality sound, but trying to learn.

Have a Sony DVD player and a cable TV box feeding an old Kenwood "6-channel" "Audio-Video Surround Receiver VR-517" via RCA cables. It works great (for us) playing DVDs, cable TV and cable music channels and will go as loud as we care to listen.

Volume on the Kenwood amp unit is indicated in numbers and larger means less volume.

The problem is when we try to play music CDs in DVD player. They sound somehow distorted and just generally low quality. All 6 speakers are working. While we usually play music and movies on a volume setting of about 25, the CDs require that the volume setting be turned down to 40 or 50 to get our usual volume, and a little red/orange light reading "clip" on the Kenwood unit comes on and off every few seconds as the CD plays, and it seems to come on more when the music is "fuller" in content. The more the "clip" light comes on, the worse it sounds. Does this make sense?

Seems like the DVD player, while playing CD, may somehow be sending too strong a signal to the Kenwood unit?

Is there some setting I have wrong or maybe a different way of connecting that would make this work better? Any advice appreciated...

 

[bikdav]

You're Not Alone

My guess is that is probably a quirk with the Kenwood receiver. I have a Kenwood 1070VR with that annoying clip light and occasional distortion. It tends to "clip" very easily at the DVD player inputs. The other inputs on mine "clip" also if the recorded material is loud enough [easy to make happen]. If you can adjust the input level on that 6-channel input, try lowering it and see if that reduces the problem. I'm not sure as to why the sound level is lower with CDs as opposed to DVDs, unless the CD format is recorded at a lower level than DVD [which I found on occasion]. My Kenwood is now in my secondary system since it has been hard to dodge that problem.

 

[TLS Guy]

First, Hello. I'm glad to have found this forum. Don’t know much about quality sound, but trying to learn.

Have a Sony DVD player and a cable TV box feeding an old Kenwood "6-channel" "Audio-Video Surround Receiver VR-517" via RCA cables. It works great (for us) playing DVDs, cable TV and cable music channels and will go as loud as we care to listen.

Volume on the Kenwood amp unit is indicated in numbers and larger means less volume.

The problem is when we try to play music CDs in DVD player. They sound somehow distorted and just generally low quality. All 6 speakers are working. While we usually play music and movies on a volume setting of about 25, the CDs require that the volume setting be turned down to 40 or 50 to get our usual volume, and a little red/orange light reading "clip" on the Kenwood unit comes on and off every few seconds as the CD plays, and it seems to come on more when the music is "fuller" in content. The more the "clip" light comes on, the worse it sounds. Does this make sense?

Seems like the DVD player, while playing CD, may somehow be sending too strong a signal to the Kenwood unit?

Is there some setting I have wrong or maybe a different way of connecting that would make this work better? Any advice appreciated...

The problem has to be with the Sony player.

You will have to attenuate the signal with one of these in each lead at the back of the Kenwood. You will need at least two, but you might need four by your description to stop the clipping, from you description of the volume discrepancy. So you would stack two in each lead back to back.

The problem is the DVDs may be too quiet with the L-pads inserted and you would have to have them in for CD and out for DVD, which would be inconvenient.

You are not getting true discrete surround with that old equipment, only "fake" effect. An significant update is in order which would be your best solution.

 

[audiofox]

If your DVD player has optical or coax digital audio outputs, you might try those (see pg 13 of your Kenwood manual) to see if that solves your problem.