Yamaha V1500 surround setup/questions

[davie]

Hi,

I've had the Yamaha 1500 for a few months connected with the front speakers. Over the weekend, I've connected a pair of cheaper speakers as surrounds, but I'm having some issues with them.

With both auto and manual setup, I was able to make all 4 speakers equi-level in volume, but in normal playback, the surround speakers are either silent or very low volume.

Normal analog cable -> TV -> DTV input (analog); no sound from surrounds for all programs except "7-channel stereo".

DVD playing normal CD -> DVD input (digital); very low volume from surrounds for Jazz, THX, NEO:6, etc. programs; I need to put the surrounds a few inches from my ear to notice it.

DVD playing video DVD (DD 2 chnl); very low volume from surrounds.

Is there anything I need to configure or is this normal? Do I really need to get a multichannel source material to make use of the surrounds?

Thanks!

 

[MDS]

I answered this question just the other day but can't find it, so I'll repeat.

When you have a two channel analog or digital (PCM) signal the matrix decoders like PLII, NEO:6, etc take the out of phase information from the left and right channels and steer it to the surrounds. In a normal 2 channel signal, that has not been encoded with Dolby Surround, there will be very little out of phase information and thus very little to steer to the surrounds (the 2 channels in a stereo mix are usually very highly correlated). With 7ch stereo, the processor duplicates the left front to the left rear, the right front to the right rear, and sums the left and right to mono to send to the center - so you will hear significant sound from the surrounds.

With DD 2.0 though there is usually significant info for the surrounds because most DD 2.0 has been Dolby Surround encoded and thus the decoder knows specifically what to send to the surrounds. If the DD 2.0 signal has not been surround encoded then it will behave much like the regular 2 channel analog or pcm sources.

So assuming your calibration did get all of the channels roughly equal, you should get decent sound from the surrounds for DD 2.0, but don't expect much if any from normal 2 channel analog or 2 channel PCM (like from a CD).