yamaha 5960 ?

[cheapskete OCer]

my friends parents went out and bought a 5960 and asked me to hook it up for them...i own a pioneer 1015tx....so i am somewhat familiar with the newer model recievers..anyway..i got it hooked up and was trying to tweak it..is it just me or are the yamahas difficult to manuver through menus and settings..
my problem is i hooked up all there speakers including a sub ..for a total of 6.1 and for some reason i cant get the reciveir to show the dolbydigital light or to show all the speakers in the bottom right corner of the front panel ..it just shows a left and a right?...even though there is sound coming from all the speakers .all we had hooked up to it was a dvd player with a optical cable ..any advise is appriceated..i have the feeling his parents are in for alot of headaches as far as using the diff functions on that reciever...one more thing i also dont understand when switching through diff surround sounds it just offers me prologic 2 or pl2 movie ..where is the dolbydigital movie or dolbydigital game

 

[wafflebird]

Probably Simple (we hope)

First thing would be to go over the menu settings in the manual. Make sure you also try out the remote to switch from each type of surround mode. Make sure the receiver is on "Auto" to automaticly detect digital sources. You should be able to cycle through the surround modes by turning the "Program" dial. The "Input mode" button should cycle through analog or digital inputs as well. The remote has a lot of different surrond modes as buttons to try as well. Did you do all of this already? Not doubting you these are just initial questions to ask to help determine if it is a more serious problem other than a setting.

 

[MDS]

The lights on the panel should show how many channels it is receiving. If it only ever shows L and R, then it is receiving a stereo signal. If you are playing a dvd that is sure to contain a DD 5.1 track, then the player is not configured correctly. Make sure the player is set to output 'bitstream' and not PCM.

There is no such thing as Dolby Digital Movie or Dolby Digital Game. It is actually ProLogic II(x) Movie/Music/Game and they are available when the source is 2 channel. Since you have 6.1, PLIIx should be available and it will convert DD 5.1 to 6.1 or 7.1 in addition to 2 channel analog and digital.

 

[cheapskete OCer]

i did mess with the dvd player...it was set to pcm not bitstream..ill change that...and i had the reciever set to auto at one point in time but cycled through to something else....i just need to get it set up decently for them ..they will never figure it out..they just want it to sound good.
so if i set the dvd player to bitstream it should then show all the speaker channels on the front panel?..whats the diff between pcm and bitstream?....thanks guys

 

[MDS]

Bitstream simply means read the bits off the disc and send them as a stream without attempting to decode them. The receiver will then attempt to identify the type of stream and choose the appropriate decoder to make sense of them. You must use a digital connection (optical or coax, doesn't matter) and have the receiver's digital input configured correctly for it to work.

PCM stands for Pulse Code Modulation - it is the lowest common denominator in digital audio as it is essentially a 'raw' format. It's basically a sequence of numbers (samples) that represent the amplitude of the original analog signal from which it was sampled at various points in time (44,100 16 bit samples for each second of audio for the CD format, for example).

If you set the dvd player to PCM then:
- If using a digital connection, the player decodes the 5.1 mix and downmixes the 5.1 channels into 2 channel PCM (which is still digital). You would then have to use a matrix decoder like ProLogic II to turn it into 5.1, but it's not exactly the same as the discrete 5.1 mix.
- If using an analog connection, it decodes and downmixes to 2 channel PCM but then also does digital to analog conversion so you are sending an analog signal to the receiver.

 

[cheapskete OCer]

wow...aswome reply thank you