I tried a search but couldn't find the answer to my question.

I received my 950 on Wednesday. I purchased it to replace a Denon AVR5600 in a second system. I decided to try it out in my main system first and will say that overall I'm impressed. The associated equipment is an Earthquake Cinenova for rear channels and three Classe CAM 350s powering an all Aerial speaker system.

There is an audible hiss from about four feet away, not terribly distracting and since this won't be used for serious listening I can live with it. My concern is that when watching TV it takes as long as five seconds to acquire the audio after switching channels, is this normal? On Sundays I follow at least two football games at one time and as many as four, this delay would drive me nuts!

Other than that I can see why the unit is liked so much. The bang for the buck is almost too good to be true. I'm hoping my small issue is a problem with my unit as this would be a deal breaker for me.

Thanks in advance for any help you my be able to give.

Ken

Sounds like a nice setup, Ken. Are you using satellite, by any chance? Perhaps with a digital audio output? Many satellite set-top boxes will kill the digital audio output when changing channels, so there's a delay of (from what I understand) around one or two seconds before the satellite receiver begins providing audio. The 950 then takes another second or two to acquire and lock onto the format of the incoming signal.

There is something that may help with this, if you consistently use the same processing format all the time -- you can lock the 950 so that it only uses one specific processing mode on that input. Page 31, second column, of the manual has a section on this procedure ("Surround Data Format Lock"). If you are using satellite TV with a digital audio signal, this should help shorten the delay you're experiencing. If my guess is wrong, let us know -- maybe there are some other things that you can try.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Thanks for the response. I am using DSS with Digital audio so I'll try your fix and report back. I can say however that even the old Denon didn't exhibit any delay.

Ken

I wanted to put a comment somewhere under a signal lock thread, and this one was closest to the top!

I've had mine for 2 weeks now. I sometimes have a problem with the initial lock lagging, but for less than one second (actually better than the Sony TA-E9000ES the 950 is replacing). That's no problem.

But another thing I see/hear, is that if there's too much silence in between 1 track on a CD to the next, the 950 has to "re-acquire" the signal before the next track becomes audible. It's really wierd, because if I reverse my DVD player and play the end of the track, the silence, and the beg of the next track again, doesn't happen. A minor annoyance. The Sony never did this. Happens on maybe 1 out of 10 CDs.

[This message has been edited by Kevin C Brown (edited October 08, 2002).]

Kevin:

That _is_ weird, and something I've not experienced. I wonder if it would have to do with the difference between discs that were written as "disk at once" or not, where the laser is tuned off between tracks. Hmmmm.

I use a DirecTivo receiver and have similar problems. It takes so long to reaquire the signal after jumping forward or back that I only use my 950 to process signals when I watch movies or listen to sattelite radio.

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Stott

SH: Not a CD-R or RW. Just a normal Al layer CD.

Part of the delay is the 950 but I'm sure that part of it is also the satellite converter box; it has to finish locking on before the 950 can even begin to.

Gonk's suggestion to lock the 950's decode format is a good one, but I'd like to point out that I've had problems doing that with my CD player (locking it onto PCM). Occasionally it would fail to detect the signal and I'd get an infinite silence. Only returning the input detection to auto would fix it.

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

Since Matthew mentioned "infinite silence", I'll mention one more oddity:

I play a CD, regular normal run o' the mill 44.1/16 CD. I try to switch surround modes while the CD is playing. I get "infinite silence" as the 950 loses the signal. I have to pause or stop the DVD player, then resume, before the 950 re-acquires the signal.

I can't remember if I tried this, or if it happened with DVDs or not.

Okay, so what??? If I don't hear hiss... should I simply try to do so, ad infinitimi???