I'm trying to find the right setup for this combination for both movies/TV and music. Where I think I'm hung up is the audio format from the TV to the receiver, but my troubles may lie elsewhere.
I'm using the TV as the core of the system, with the receiver connected via HDMI with ARC, a Samsung 4K blu-ray player, and an RCN cable box connected via HDMI. I would *think* the receiver, with more HDMI connections and more flexibility, should be the core, but if I do that, the TV won't talk to the blu-ray player. But if I could figure out how to do that correctly, I might be able to solve my other problems. I also have a Synology NAS set up as (among other things) a media server.
I have the receiver set as 5.1, with B&W 603s2 mains, a B&W 6-series center, and older Morel surrounds, plus a new Hsu Research ULS-15mk2 sub. The sub is crossed over at 100 Hz. I'm not using Audyssey because it insists on deciding that the mains are large, full range speakers (which they are...but just because their ports are tuned to 30 Hz doesn't mean their pair of 6.5" woofers will actually produce much output down below maybe 50-60 Hz) and setting the crossover to 40 Hz. The sub has a much beefier amp than the receiver, not to mention that while 40 Hz is no problem for this sub it's pushing the mains pretty far if I'm trying to listen loud. I used the Audyssey setup as a starting point and modified it from there.
The receiver offers me two choices of digital output format: PCM and DTS Neo 2:5. It also offers two different Dolby Digital settings and DTS, all three of those are grayed out.
Anyway, the issue is that I'd like the following audio output:
- For material in native 5.1 or similar output (e. g. blu-ray discs), play in that native output.
- For stereo music, play that in native (stereo) without surround or center. Among other things, synthesizing surround channels from a stereo master isn't actually going to be what the mastering engineer heard, and it also means engaging the center and surrounds, further reducing amplifier power for the mains and also possibly running into distortion in the center channel.
- For TV and DVDs, synthesized surround is fine.
If I set the receiver output to DTS Neo 2:5, then blurays probably play correctly, and there's certainly surround, but then music doesn't play correctly (setting the receiver to Pure mode doesn't solve this; I think I can solve it by using Music or Game mode with processing set to stereo and turning off all of the other processing I can find, but then I've gone 2 -> 5 -> 2 channel, introducing more processing). If I set the receiver output to PCM, then no problem with music, but presumably that will clobber the surround channels from a bluray (since PCM is two channel), only for the receiver to then synthesize them, probably incorrectly.
What I
really want is for the TV to do no processing on the audio signal at all, and send the channels from the original source to the receiver, and for the receiver to then decide what to do based on the original information (and my choosing Pure or Music mode on the receiver vs. Movie). But that option doesn't appear to exist when routing the sources through the TV.
Testing out with some music (Dull Knives from Queen of the Murder Scene by The Warning, as a lossless FLAC transcoded from the 96K .wav original -- this band takes its sound seriously -- served by my media server), the sound quality seems to be better at high volume with the processing mode set to stereo, and best yet with the TV set to PCM output and the receiver set to Pure mode. Even there, at high volume it sounds like there's some clipping taking place in the midrange (guitar). The drums and bass are fine; the real power there is going through the sub. But if I don't ensure that the receiver is playing stereo, it's awful as I turn the volume up. And if I'm listening to classical music mastered for stereo, I really don't want a fake center channel intruding on the sound stage, whether it's chamber or orchestral.
Thoughts, anybody?