<font color='#000000'>Does anyone here have a Marantz SR-4000, or some other Marantz receiver, and knows it in enough detail to be able to me some useful comments on the following problems? Here are the problems I recently discovered in my receiver:
Problem 1: WITH FULL SURROUND ON, SETTING THE FRONT AND CENTER SPEAKERS TO SMALL, BUT THE REARS TO LARGE, MAKES THE RECEIVER KILL (e.g. it sends absolutely no signal to) THE CENTER AND REAR SPEAKERS.
Problem 2: ALSO WITH FULL SURROUND ON, CHANGING ALL SPEAKER SIZES FROM LARGE TO SMALL BASICALLY MAKES THE RECEIVER LOSE THE LFE or “.1” CHANNEL.
I just recently upgraded to a full set of Paradigm home theater speakers, and I used the AVIA calibration DVD and a Radio Shack volume meter to set them up properly with my Marantz SR-4000 receiver. In doing so I found those problems. I sent it to service under warranty and it was returned with the message "all audio components working according to Manufacturer's specifications", basically they didn't do anything.
First of all, after connecting everything my initial setting had all speakers including the subwoofer set to “YES” (e.g. present) in the receiver, and fronts, center, and rears were all set to LARGE. I balanced the sound of the speakers and the sub at approximately 80 dBs under these initial and temptative settings using the AVIA calibration DVD and the Radio Shack volume meter. After that, I played from that same AVIA dvd a track that has only pink noise low frequencies in all six channels (e.g. also the .1 or LFE channel). The sub sounded very well, and balanced with respect to the other speakers output level, e.g. at around 80 dBs measured using the volume meter. So far so good.
Now, since my front, center and rear speakers are not really large, I set the speaker sizes of fronts, center, and rears, to SMALL. With the AVIA/volume meter combo I could hear and measure that the bass signals of those 5 channels were now being sent to the subwoofer which was shouting them very clearly and at the right volume. However, and here’s one of the problems I found: I couldn’t hear the LFE channel (the sixth, or “.1” channel) which was previously coming out through the sub at powerful 80dbs. Using the volume meter I realized it was still coming out from the sub, but at around 60dbs, which means it was practically gone. So the receiver doesn’t seem to preserve the LFE channel level in the “sub out” when it has the SMALL size setting for fronts, center, and rear speakers. This is problem #2 above.
In an attempt to recover that lost LFE channel level, I tried several combinations of speaker size settings in the receiver. And I found that when having the front and center speakers as SMALL, but the rears as LARGE (I know this is an unusual setting, but it shouldn't make the receiver do the following nonetheless), suddenly the receiver offers no surround, it only sends sound to the front left and right speakers, even though the DVD player was playing tracks only for the rear or center channels. This is problem #1 above. Absolutely no sound comes out of the center and rear speakers using those settings. I set the size of the rears back to SMALL and the rear and center speakers come back alive; I set it back to LARGE (again while the fronts are still set to SMALL) and center and rear speakers basically go mute, the front speakers play their sounds instead. Needless to say I double checked all the connections and settings several times.
In case it helps here’s the list of components in my system: front=Paradigm Titans; center=Paradigm CC-170; rear=Paradigm Atoms; sub= Paradigm PDR-12; receiver= Marantz SR-4000; DVD Player=Sony NS500V connected to the Marantz using a digital coax cable. By the way, the receiver shows these problems both having either the digital coax input or the optical input selected.
Any comment, suggestion, from anyone is appreciated.
Cheers,
Raul</font>
