i am having trouble figuring out the digital formats on my 990. i have gone through the manual several times and i am sure it is in there somewhere, i just cant find the information i am looking for. i currently have a universal player hooked up via 5.1 analog and coax digital to my 990. i want to listen to soundtracks in pure DD5.1 or DTS WITHOUT applying PLIIx or NEO and i cant figure out how. also, when playing dts disks with DTS 96/24 it wont register on the 990. i know the player is outputting this signal since its 96/24 icon is on. what am i doing wrong? thanks in advance.

on the remote, i think you can hit the "stereo" button a few times to get to the two chanel format.

If you want straight DD or DTS (depending on what you source is sending), just hit the "Dolby" or "DTS" button to scroll through the appropriate options. The first time you hit *any* of the "mode" buttons ("Dolby", "DTS" or "Stereo") it will display on the front panel the current processing mode.

Usually, if I send the 990 a DD signal, it is forced into DD processing, and no PLIIx, etc.

As Otto says, you can scroll through the Dolby or DTS modes with the Dolby and DTS buttons ("Dolby Digital" will be an option at some point for DD tracks and will apply no extra processing, same with "DTS"). Keep in mind that the 990 will remember separate settings for each input for each input format - including separate settings for Dolby 2.0 and Dolby 5.1 (so you could use PLII/IIx with Dolby 2.0 without doing so on Dolby 5.1). I haven't tried any DTS 96/24 stuff since I don't know of any such discs in my collection.

thanks for the replies guys.
when i hit the "Dolby Mode" or "DTS Mode" button on the remote for the respective format i do not get the standard format options. for examply, when i scroll through the dolby modes i only get PLIIx Movie, Music or Movie + Wide. same thing goes for DTS, neo:6 movie/music. and like i stated before, i know i am outputing a standard format from the player..i know i must be missing something somewhere..

I think it my be that you have to change it to upsampling or bypass mode first ,I sometimes get the same problem when I play with the dolby and stereo buttons and it comes up dolby + wide .It drives me crazy

It sounds like your DVD player is set to output PCM instead of bitstream - those options would be what I'd expect from a PCM stereo input, and if the 990 was getting Dolby Digital or DTS bitstreams it would have to decode them that way in order to get any audio.

evan: what i understand from what you are saying is that you scroll through the stereo options and choose upsampling/bypass and then hit the dolby mode button to get the native format?

gonk: i double checked the output and it is bistream. i really dont know whats happening, i didn't have this problem when i used my oppo but this new player has a lot of features and options i am unfamiliar with.

You shouldn't need to go through the stereo options first. The behavior that you are seeing with the 990 suggests that the 990 is getting PCM or even analog stereo - those are the two situations where you would expect to see PLIIx and NEO:6 as the only options. What player are you using? Also, is the "PCM" indicator on the 990's front panel lighting up? (It's near the top left corner.)

By any chance, do you have the universal player also hooked up via L/R analog connections? For that input (DVD, Video 1, whatever your universal is using as its input to the 990) how are you selecting your audio input in the setup menu of the 990 (in the on screen display).

If you're connected with both digital and analog connections from your universal player, but you have "analog" as your input type selected in the 990's OSD, all will seem to work, but you will get the result you are getting. This is the case that gonk suggested -- being connected to the 990 via analog.

i am using a marantz DV9600. the only analog inputs i am using to the 990 is the direct 7.1 inputs from the player. for digital i am using coax digital cable. gonk: i do not see the PCM icon on the 990. i know the analog inputs are working properly because SACD's work without a problem.
the input type i have selected on the 990 for the player is coax input 1. still confused

So with no analog connection to the DVD input, the DVD input set to use coaxial 1, and no "PCM" indicator lit up on the 990's front panel, we need to do a bit more troubleshooting. I'm downloading the DV9600 manual as I type this.

First step: try a DVD that you know has a DD 5.1 track and look at the indicators on the 990's front panel. "Dolby Digital" should be illuminated no matter what else is going on, and with a 5.1 source the speaker labels for left, center, right, left surround, right surround, sub, and LFE should all be illuminated (assuming you have at least a 5.1 system that includes all six of those speakers and the 990 is set up to use them). If this is not the case, it would be useful to know what indicators are on. Then do the same with a DTS 5.1 disc - everything should be the same except "Dolby Digital" will be off and "DTS" will be on.

I'm going to go poke through the DV9600 manual and see if anything suspicious catches my eye.

I was talking to Lizard King on the way home this evening and he mentioned something about his Denon 3930 that reminded me of this issue (DTS track selected on the disc and NEO:6 the only option for DTS modes).

Check your HDMI audio settings. Is it set to two-channel downmix? If so, try changing to something else (either multichannel LPCM, bitstream, or even no HDMI audio - preferably one of the latter two) and give it another try. I'm afraid that the player might be ignoring the "bitstream" setting because it is downmixing to stereo to satisfy the HDMI output and then using that for all digital audio outputs.

Page 54 of the manual lists the four choices for HDMI audio output: Auto, Multichannel PCM, two-channel PCM, and Off. Of those four, I'd suggest trying either Auto or Off to see if it resolves the problem with Dolby Digital and DTS signals via coaxial and optical output.

gonk,
thanks for all the replies. i was testing the system with one disk in particular. after testing a few other DD and DTS disks, they worked fine. this leads me to believe the problem is with the orignal test disk itself and not the player or 990. i still, however, can not figure out the 96/24 problem. guess that will be for another day. thanks to everyone for the tips

I have been reviewing the various digital format discussions to see how best to manage digital formats on the 990. I admit that I am still at a loss as to what to do. One problem is that there are so many formats and so many automatic (rather than progamed) defaults that I really do not know what to anticipate (or rather I cannot remember what to do) from one session to another. Another problem is that my 990 is out of site in a cabinet and thus it is inconvenient and impracticable to have to open the cabinet each time to know what mode the 990 is currently in; and there are no discrete modes to select on the remote--only scroll-through menues that need the benefit of the front panel display.

Therefore, I have to open the cabinet each time to make sure the correct mode is selected.

In any event, I noted with interest Gonk's observation that "the 990 will remember separate settings for each input for each input format - including separate settings for Dolby 2.0 and Dolby 5.1 (so you could use PLII/IIx with Dolby 2.0 without doing so on Dolby 5.1)." If this is indeed the case, I have the following questions:

1. Are there any good cheat sheets for applicable digital modes setting forth options, preferred settings, as well as mandatory defaults modes?

2. Are there any discrete remote codes for each digital mode that I can program an individual button on my Universal remote (I have the MX810--which seemed the most intuitive for me when I was a true neophyte)?

3. Is there any discs out there that contain all the various formats on different tracks so I can default all my settings simply at once by switching tracks and then changing the default settings for that format on the 990 as Gonks suggests is the way it works?

4. Assuming 990 programed default digital settings work for each type of format being played as Gonk suggests, will the 990 automatically switch back and forth between the defaulted digital formats when formats change but no other changes are being made to the 9900--which is what I understand happens when watching cable TV and different formats are broadcast between stations and between programing and commercials?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Ed.