Sony BDP-s550 newbie question

[Regalace]

Hello all,
I have been lurking forums for quite a while now, and need some help. I just got my new BDP-s550 yesterday, and have an Yamaha (2 year old) RX-V689 (I think) reciever. Well, I have an LG plasma on my wall and component cables were run through the walls when we built the house. I only have 4 in wall speakers (2 up front and 2 back). I have my receiver on a "virtual" center speaker, which has worked well in the past. Currently to my old Yamaha DVD player, I have it hooked up "digital" out audio, which sounds fine to me.

My question is regard to setting up "multichannel" analog out on my new player or should I just do "digital" out via coax or optical. If I do hook up via multichannel, will I be okay with only 4 speakers? How do I go hook it up to get the best audio quality?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[j_garcia]

If you don't have HDMI on your receiver then you won't be able to take full advantage of the new audio formats without the multichannel analog connections. You can still get sound via optical/coaxial digital, but it will be scaled back somewhat compared to the "full" capabilities of the new formats.

With just 4 speakers, the receiver is handling the processing, but via multichannel analog you would have to look in the player's configuration to see if it has the ability to turn off the center in a similar way (it should) since the player is managing the speakers not the receiver.

 

[Regalace]

Thanks for the prompt reply. So, if I hook this up Multichannel, I should be able to let the player do the conversions vs. my receiver? It sounds as if I should hook up dvd to receiver via multichannel to take advantage of the new sound formats. Is this correct? Anything else that I'm missing?

 

[j_garcia]

Yes, that player can decode the new formats and send them to your receiver via the analog connections. In the player's setup, you would need to see if there is a way to turn off the center so that the sound is passed to the two main channels just like the receiver has been doing. You will also need to configure the speakers in the player, since the analog signal is being processed in the player, the player needs to be setup for bass management (crossover, large/small) and speaker levels. The downside of this is, the player's bass management might not be as good as your receiver's, but that is to be expected.

 

[Regalace]

Awesome...I'll check it out. I love my Paradigm sub...so I'll play around with it a little. Again, thanks for the input!

 

[Regalace]

Okay, I have to admit...I'm addicted to Blu-Ray now! What an amazing picture! I popped in Horton Hears a Who (for my daughter ) and it was amazing (as expected). Next, the Dark Knight...and what a great transfer! I have my player hooked up through the multichannel analog, and the Dark Knight was awesome sounding as well! In the Sony's settings, I was able to chose "none" for center channel and setup the distances after that. Horton was a little "muted" running HD DTS, but still was great.

I noticed that Horton only had DTS HD as an English option...it had French Dolby, but no English. Is that normal for Blu-Rays to only have one choice for sound? I didn't play around with Batman's settings, but will tonight. Again, I appreciate the expertise on this board! Thanks again!

 

[j_garcia]

That has been discussed recently - DVD was required to have some form of Dolby as part of its spec, but BD does not and there are a number of discs out there that have dts-HD tracks only.