Last night I watched the BD version of Planet Earth disk 1. The video and background sounds/music was great, but Richard Attenborough sounded like he was in the next room with the door closed. I know several EAP participants had trouble with these disks and that the firmware released in mid-April was supposed to have fixed all problems. But I'm wondering what gives with the center channel volume.

Has anyone else had similar problems? This is the first BD disk to act this way for me.

I'll have to give that disc a try some time today. Are you listening through multichannel analog or coaxial/optical? As I recall, Planet Earth used a Dolby Digital track, not one of the new formats. If you are using the multichannel analog, you might check to see what your Dynamic Range Control is set to (under Audio Processing).

Gonk

I am using the analog audio outs. I have tried changing Dynamic Range Control. Initially it was on auto and I have tried on and off. Nothing brings Attenborough into the room with me.

Try the coaxial output - it may just be the mix.

Bob

On vacation this week and as it is raining thought I would give this a try. Normally use analog connections to a 990 but also have an optical hookup. No problems either in multichannel or optical output.

Have you tried the disc on any other BD player? May have a bad disc.

Well, so far I have been loving the Oppo w/ my 970...

Today though, I tried hooking up the Oppo w/ the 7.1 analog output, instead of the digital Coax like I was running.

First thing that goes wrong. After setting up everything as far as speaker set-up in the Oppo and letting the 970 know what type of signal was coming in, VERY little low-end came out of my LFM1-EX. Other than the analog signals, I made no changes to the SMS-1 or anything else. (I tried all three settings on the bypass to no avail)

2nd, when I try switching back to the coax to see the difference, I have to turn the volume up by about 20-25 db from where it was before, and again, very little action out of the sub.

Any ideas?

You might want to try how I set up the BDP-83 with my 990. The oppo's speaker settings are zero for trim and distance and the speakers are set to large. Finally the sub is set to "on". This should allow the 970 to handle all those chores including bass management. My experience is the volume between the digital optical for DVDs is slightly more than the 7.1 analog output for Blu-ray.

A couple of weeks ago I noted a problem playing the BBC Planet Earth BD. At Gonk's suggestion I tried the coax output to my 1070. When I set the BDP-83 to output bitstream over coax and the 1070 to use the coax, rather than analog, the sound was wonderful. BTW, I got all channels of analog, allbeit with Richard Attenborough in the next room with the door closed, only with Ext 7.1. If I switched to straight analog the center channel with Attenborough on it, was gone entirely. Using coax I also got a lot more bass.

I have contacted Oppo Tech Support to ask what's going on.

praedet -

I had the same problem using the analog outs from the Oppo. Coax did not give me the same problem though....

Either the June 11 Beta firmware fixed it, or I did something to the settings when inputting after the firmware update???

Also - I do have +10 db on the LFE channel through the Oppo. I believe I have that correct? Just fixed it last night, so I haven't had a chance to use my db meter to verify where it is at relative to the mains. May still need tweaking.

Have you tried the new firmware?

Also - Oppo did mention that they are experiencing problems with the trim not sticking after power cycling the player. The player still reads the correct settings, but does not output them. This is not affecting me though, or maybe it isn't now that I have the new firmware?

I'll have to load the 6/11 firmware before the next Planet Earth disk arrives from Netflix. For now, Oppo has added my problem to the database of issues.

Thanks