Only getting two speaker playback

[pheasbo]

Alright, I just left the stone ages of stereo equipment abandoning my circa 1987 products. I jumped into the fray by purchasing a Yamaha HTR-5850 A\V receiver and a set of the Klipsch Quintet II speakers (5). I got it dialed (so I thought), hooked up correctly with 16 gage wire, positive and neg. hooked up correctly. I used a digital coax cable to connect the DVD\CD player to the receiver. I went through the basic setup mode described in the instructions, picked the 5 speaker system, and those indicator lights were on on the receiver display. The receiver went through a sound check, all five speakers had sound go through them, this looped through twice. I plugged in a CD and the speaker lights went out except for the front L and front R, thus only receiving sound through the two front speakers. I hooked the speaker wire to the receiver in this manner, front L front R, center channel, surround L surround R. I went through the trouble shooting guide, have it set to Pro Logic, 2-channel etc. The FM radio is the same way, front two speakers only play. I haven't tried a DVD video yet, but I am bumming here. What am I doing wrong? Do these systems not play all five speakers on CDs? I still have the sub-woofer to set up but want to get this settled. Any help? Cuz Best Buy has no techies that can solve this. Do audio CDs not play through all the speakers, just DVDs? Bumming big time here.

 

[j_garcia]

For all intents and purposes, all CDs are stereo (or in the extremely rare case mono). The lights indicate what is actually seen as the incoming signal by the receiver. Prologic is a mode which can understand Dolby Surround encoded material, which most CDs are not. Because of this, the degree to which DPL will create surround information will vary depending on the recording, though you should get something usually with the average CD. It doesn't sound like you did anything wrong. Was this DPLII or IIx? Both of which should have worked, because they work differently than DPL.

Before you freak out, hook up your DVD player and try that out with a digital connection. Set the player's digital audio settings to "normal" or "bitstream" rather than PCM and try out a movie. If you still get only stereo, then there is some other setting that needs to be found and turned on or off.

 

[pheasbo]

I'll try the video route and see what is up. But still, what do I do if the DVD plays through the whole system, and CDs don't? I'll try those other playback settings again. Thanks for your input. So, is it looking like this is how it will play CDs? If so, I am bumming.

 

[j_garcia]

No, it's probably just a setting. You should be able to get at least some kind of surround with most CDs. If not, maybe you could try an "all channel stereo" DSP which sends a copy of the front channels to the rear and "simulates" the front center. PLII should work too, it works pretty well when I have stereo only DVDs.

Is it just a particular CD or all CDs that are doing this? If there is a "direct" mode on the receiver, it should be off otherwise your choices of DSPs to simulate surround will not be available.

 

[MDS]

PL II should work just fine. I use PLII Music for CD and it plays over all 5 speakers. PLII can take an analog or digital signal so it won't matter whether you set the dvd player to bitstream or pcm (it should be set to bitstream if you are using the digital connection and have assigned the inputs correctly).

It has to be a setting. Sounds like you have the reciever in stereo mode.