Please help me figure out how to setup my equipment!

[Cane Rivero]

This may take several responses and replies so your patience would be appreciated.

I'm a beginner in the sense that I'm old, a/v technology has passed me by, and I no longer know how things work.

In a nutshell, I owned an old flat screen, old Sony receiver, a couple of ancient Acoustimas 5 double cubes/sub woofer, and a couple of Bose shelf speakers. All worked well, and well together.

THEN I bought a Smart TV (LG 55LB6300) and found there are no RCA outs to hook up my old Sony receiver.

THEN I bought a new Sony receiver Sony (STRDH740) because it has the requisite HDMI and/or optical inputs.

BUT, the Sony setup uses an on screen menu system the requires me (I think) to use not only an HDMI but the ARC HDMI.

AND SO, I have the receiver in HDMI 1, Roku in HDMI 2, TiVo in HDMI 3 and my Blue Ray in one of the receiver's HDMI pass-throughs.

PROBLEM #1 - THE SOUND:

For many reasons this setup is a little inconvenient (and I would like to get into that later), but here's problem #1 - the sound. I've got the Acoustimas speakers hooked up to the Front A (for now the bookshelf speakers are not hooked up) and the only time they sound good is when the receiver flashes Dolby Digital. And that only (so far) happens when I watch shows on the Smart TV's Amazon app. The rest of the time the receiver gets a PCM signal and I don't know why. The TiVo is set to Dolby Digital and the Smart TV is "supposed" to be Dolby Digital.

I should mention that at this point I'm not going for Surround Sound, I'd just like good fidelity out of the front speakers positioned by the TV.

I've posted on Sony, TiVo, LG and Bose forums and got pieces of information that were helpful but don't get me all the way to where I need to be. I'm hoping some of you can give me a better overall view of what I've got and how I can BEST make it all work together.

Thanks very, very much for reading this.

Cane

 

[beakergeek]

This may take several responses and replies so your patience would be appreciated.

I'm a beginner in the sense that I'm old, a/v technology has passed me by, and I no longer know how things work.

In a nutshell, I owned an old flat screen, old Sony receiver, a couple of ancient Acoustimas 5 double cubes/sub woofer, and a couple of Bose shelf speakers. All worked well, and well together.

THEN I bought a Smart TV (LG 55LB6300) and found there are no RCA outs to hook up my old Sony receiver.

THEN I bought a new Sony receiver Sony (STRDH740) because it has the requisite HDMI and/or optical inputs.

BUT, the Sony setup uses an on screen menu system the requires me (I think) to use not only an HDMI but the ARC HDMI.

AND SO, I have the receiver in HDMI 1, Roku in HDMI 2, TiVo in HDMI 3 and my Blue Ray in one of the receiver's HDMI pass-throughs.

PROBLEM #1 - THE SOUND:

For many reasons this setup is a little inconvenient (and I would like to get into that later), but here's problem #1 - the sound. I've got the Acoustimas speakers hooked up to the Front A (for now the bookshelf speakers are not hooked up) and the only time they sound good is when the receiver flashes Dolby Digital. And that only (so far) happens when I watch shows on the Smart TV's Amazon app. The rest of the time the receiver gets a PCM signal and I don't know why. The TiVo is set to Dolby Digital and the Smart TV is "supposed" to be Dolby Digital.

I should mention that at this point I'm not going for Surround Sound, I'd just like good fidelity out of the front speakers positioned by the TV.

I've posted on Sony, TiVo, LG and Bose forums and got pieces of information that were helpful but don't get me all the way to where I need to be. I'm hoping some of you can give me a better overall view of what I've got and how I can BEST make it all work together.

Thanks very, very much for reading this.

Cane

Just to be sure your connections are right. You should have all your sources (Roku, Tivo, Blu-ray) plugged into the receiver via HDMI. Then you should run a single HDMI from the output on the receiver to the input on the LG TV. If you have Bose accoustimass speakers they should be hooked up to the speaker output terminals on the receiver. First the wires go to the subwoofer, then wires go from the sub to the cubes. Making sure everything is hooked up properly is really your first step. Hope it helps!

 

[Cane Rivero]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I "had" everything going into the receiver but that negated the "smart" from the Smart TV. It's a power struggle - all the devices want to be in charge. The Smart TV has the most elegant interface.

I believe the speakers are connected correctly because they do sound good when connected to Dolby Digital signal.

Cane

 

[markw]

Unfortunately, the only way this thing will work is like the Geek said: You feed all your sources into the receiver and then go from the receiver to the TV. That's the only way you'll get central control over everything.

Yes, that negates the "smart" of the "Smart" TV but that's the only way this thing will work.. Ain't no way you're gonna be able to use the "smart" features of the TV with anything but the TV itself. That might work for those with no receivers or who use sound bars but really screws up those with real receivers. That's something most people don't think about until too late.

Plus, I doubt your TV could handle all those inputs.

But, just to be sure, you run the receiver's front left and right speakers to the Bose "subwoofers" speaker inputs and your main speakers from that same "subwoofers" speaker outputs and tell your receiver that you are NOT using a subwoofer.

Also, you might want to set your receiver to "stereo". That way, all information from all channels will be sent to the only speakers you have.

 

[Cane Rivero]

Unfortunately, the only way this thing will work is like the Geek said: You go from the receiver to the TV. That's the only way you'll get central control over everything.

Yes, that negates the "smart" of the "Smart" TV but that's the only way this thing will work.. Ain't no way you're gonna be able to use the "smart" features of the TV with anything but the TV itself.

Plus, I doubt your TV could handle all those inputs.

Thank you! Okay...that's not the news I wanted but it's what I half-expected.

If we could forget about the other devices for a moment then, and talk about the sound.

I presently DO have the receiver going to my HDMI/ARC. Amazon is a TV app and it causes the receiver to display "Dolby Digital" and it sounds good. Using no TV app, just watching regular TV (TiVo source - set to Dolby sound), the receiver displays PCM and the sound is not good.

In both cases the sound is coming from the TV. Any idea why the difference?

Thanks again...
Cane

 

[markw]

ARC is a fairly new development whereby a TV can actually feed it's video/audio output (including multi-channel) into your receiver via that one HDMI line that feeds the TV itself. Don't ask me how. You apparently got lucky in that your TV can send these out, your receiver can accept it, and that you got the setup correctly. That's three for three. You done good!

When this happens, you might want to mute the TV's speakers or, if need be, go into it's menu to must them.

But, since your only using two speakers, you're only getting the two front right and left channels from your speakers. If you set the receiver to stereo, you'll get all the information from those two speakers.

In fact. you may well be feeding all your sources in their native format, which may or may not be multi-channel but that "PCM" indicator tells me they may only be stereo, so you're fine.

 

[Cane Rivero]

Yes, it was luck.

I do have the receiver set to stereo, I've got the sub-woofer off, but the sound of the PCM signal is still terrible compared to the Dolby.

Thanks!
Cane

 

[markw]

That, I have no idea how to cure. Maybe (hopefully) someone else can shed some light on that.

 

[Cane Rivero]

You've been very kind...thank you again!
Cane

 

[KEW]

I don't have any ideas, but PCM should sound better than Dolby Digital, so it is perplexing that you are experiencing the opposite.

 

[KEW]

I understand you would prefer the slick LG interface, but have you tried running everything through the receiver to see if that changed the sound? Then you would know it was the TV somehow messing up the signal.
Apologies if this is what you are already doing. I am not clear on it.