Noob goin' Insane with Home Theatre set-up

[Bob_in_austin]

Hi All!

I am a tech noob in many ways, so I ask for your patience and would love your wisdom. Items involved include XBox 360, Samsung LCD HDTV and a Yamaha HTR-6030.

I wont bore you with the the returns and shopping experiences from %^#@! that I have gone through to get to this point, but I did FINALLY find a great Best Buy HD specialist that wrote a great diagram and got me hooked up with all I need. She answered most of my questions. But I am having two challenges; one a huge one.

I got my Yamaha (is that a Yammie??LOL) receiver all hooked up with all the speakers mounted. Included was a tone of speaker connector wire, requiring connecting speakers by splicing, which I do fine with. One line is pure white, while the other is white on one side- and clear with white lines on the other side. The manual states that the non-solid line (thats all it says) goes in the red portals on the back of the reciever, and the other in the black.

Ok, so I splice away- hook it all up, walk through the remote basic set up, and no sound. I am using the minicord connection to my IPod, which the tech at Best Buys showed me how to do, and nothing. So I threw on the tunner hoping for at least static. Nothing. Dead silence. So then I switching the wiring on a few speakers, to test if I had the pos and neg assignments wrong, and still silence. Oh, and the input selections were always in correct- meaning tunner for radio, CD for the IPod; although I have scanned all inputs to try to get any sound. None.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what I am doing wrong??? If there wiring is backwards (pos/neg assignements) wouldnt the few speakers I switched over have sound come through if that was the issue? I am lost.

The easier issue (hopefully) is which port do I plug my fiberoptic sound line off my 360 into my receiver on; it has two fiber optic ports: CD or DTV/Cable.

As an aside, I dont watch TV so there will be no cable to address. Just using the set up to watch DVD's from my 360 and play games from 360; plus use my IPod. The tech has me plugging the 360 video component lines directly into the Samsung, with the fiber optic slot on the 360 going into the a fiber optic slot on the Yamaha. There is an MP3 player connection on the front for the Ipod by way of a mini jack.

ANY insights would really help. I am at wits end.

Thanks!
Bob

 

[MDS]

I got my Yamaha (is that a Yammie??LOL) receiver all hooked up with all the speakers mounted. Included was a tone of speaker connector wire, requiring connecting speakers by splicing, which I do fine with. One line is pure white, while the other is white on one side- and clear with white lines on the other side. The manual states that the non-solid line (thats all it says) goes in the red portals on the back of the reciever, and the other in the black.

It doesn't matter which one goes to the positive and which one goes to the negative as long as you are consisent on both ends; ie if you choose to use the one with all white to go to the red (+) terminals on the speaker just make sure the other end of the wire goes to the + terminal on the receiver.

The convention is to use the wire with the stripe or dots or silver (when the other is gold) to go to the positive and the other to the negative but again it doesn't matter if you are consistent. It also won't matter if you do one speaker one way and another speaker the opposite as long as you are consistent at the speaker and receiver ends.

Ok, so I splice away- hook it all up, walk through the remote basic set up, and no sound. I am using the minicord connection to my IPod, which the tech at Best Buys showed me how to do, and nothing.

By mini cord do you mean a cable with a single 1/8" (3.5mm) plug on one end and 2 RCA plugs on the other? That's typically what you need for the iPod.

It is an analog connection and most likely your issue is that whichever input selector you connected to (CD, Tape, etc - doesn't matter) is assigned to one of the digital inputs on the back. Receivers come with certain inputs defaulted to certain digital inputs (eg. mine defaults DVD to Optical 1). You need to change the assignment to Analog (usually indicated by ---). Someone here can probably tell you how to do it but I'd have to read the manual because I don't own a Yamaha (yes Yammie. )

So I threw on the tunner hoping for at least static. Nothing. Dead silence.

Don't know for sure about the Yamaha but my Onkyo will not receive ANY radio stations without an antenna hooked up. The easy way to test if that is your problem is to insert a short length of speaker wire into the FM antenna jack on the back. Most receivers come with just that as their supplied 'antenna'.

The easier issue (hopefully) is which port do I plug my fiberoptic sound line off my 360 into my receiver on; it has two fiber optic ports: CD or DTV/Cable.

Either. See my the info above about assigning digital inputs to input selectors. If you want to press CD to hear the XBox360 and connect it to Optical 1, you need to assign CD to Optical 1. As I said above, I think that is why you have the problem with the analog iPod connection - it is currently set to a digital input.

You may also have to go into the XBox setup menus and set it to output 'Bitstream' instead of 'PCM' as you would with a regular DVD player.

 

[jcPanny]

Receiver setup.

Good advice above.
On my Yamaha, it will not output "static" when it is not tuned into a satation. Use the seak function until it locks on to an FM station and connect an antenna if necessary. Even if a speaker was connected out of phase, it would still make noise.

Once you get sound out of the front channels, you will need to go into the receiver setup and set all speakers to ON, size to SMALL, distance, and SPL level. A crossover of 80 Hz or 100 Hz for the sub is a good initial setting.