Marantz Receiver Help Needed

[anamorphic96]

I purchased a Marantz SR5400 receiver yesterday and seem to have a decoding issue. Im thinking the receiver might be defective because a friend of mine has the SR4400 and has no issues in the same scenario.

Im currently only using this receiver with two speakers now. But plan on adding center and surround later.

When running this receiver with the center channel off. Shouldnt the dialog be routed to the left and right channel and the receiver should then create a phantom center if im not mistaken. My friends SR4400 with the exact same settings does this. However when I cued up two dvds and tried playing them in Dolby Digital 5.1 on the 5400 there was no dialog coming from the left or right channel. Just some faint dialog that would have been panned to those channels because of the scene in a normal set up.

Now the other scenario that has me wondering is when I played a DVD from the Family Guy series which auto cued to Pro Logic II on the 4400 and played the phantom center just fine. However when I did this on the 5400 it seemed to cue to the same mode, however the display is diifferent. But the kicker is the dialog volume kept kinda going up and down or in and out. This made me think the DVD was bad and then this is when I cued up the regular 5.1 dvd's I mentioned above. Then noticed no dialog. Another thing to note is when I cued from Pro Logic II - (Movie) to Pro Logic II - (Music) the dialog came back and sounded fine. Also when I cued to stereo everything sounded fine.

The thing im curious about is why when I duplicated the EXACT same settings into the 5400 that I used on the 4400 that things went wrong. I truly feel there is something wrong with the decoder in the 5400 and both receivers should work the same.The folks at Cambridge Soundworks think diffrent and think im wrong and cant give me an answer as to why the 4400 worked fine in this mode but the 5400 does not. I also used a NAD T751 a couple of years ago and I could turn the center off and it then created a phantom center or the dialog was sent to the left and right. Im supposed to go into the store on Saturday and show them how I hooked both units up and test out there floor model 5400 to see if there is something wrong with mine before I bring mine in. Im going to bring the same dvd's I used at home as well.

Im hoping I have been clear here. Please let me know if clarification is needed on anything. One other side note is I called another Marantz dealer in town they stated it sounded like the unit was defective and that the unit should have created the phantom center or reverted the dialog to left and right.

Any help would be greatly appreciated before I go in on Saturday morning. I truly love this receiver and dont want to get rid of it.

Thanks,
Glenn

 

[anamorphic96]

Now you guys are gonna think im smoking crack but the receiver is working like it should now. I powered it up and was going to run a test by hooking my left channel up to the center speaker output and engage the center channel in speaker set up and see if it would output dialog as it should. It worked fine. I then switched back the speaker settings and plugged the left channel back in and all of a sudden I had none of the issues I reported. Ack this bothers me. Because I know my settings where correct. The only thing im thinking is when I turned the receiver off last night and came home and fired it up tonight something reset itself. Is that possible. Maybe the firmware was acting weird or something. Is that even possible. The only other thing im thinking is its an intermittent problem. Who knows but the receiver seems fine now. Which is good because I like this unit alot.

Thanks Anyway.
If anyone wants to chime in anyway feel free.

Glenn

 

[Mr.T]

I'm glad we could help.

 

[anamorphic96]

Well this receiver ended up being defective and I had to return it. I came home Friday and the problem started up again. I tried a Google search and found some info on people who had identical issues as mine. As well as units overheating. Cirrus Logic apparently had a bad batch of DSP chips. Apparently Marantz is aware of the issues and will repair them under warranty. Im lucky because im within the 45 day exchange period that Cambridge Soundworks offers and they exchanged the unit. So far so good this unit is seems to be working correctly. I hope it stays that way.

Glenn