I have a Toshiba A3 HD DVD player and have the player HDMI going to my display for video and the optical audio output going to my 990. I have a 7.1 setup with seperate stereo amplifiers for the middle surround and rear surround speakers.

I ran the 990 auto setup and everything went fine.

The amps have an indicator light to indicate when they receive a signal and are operating properly. The middle rear amp indicator light never lights up.

I'm not getting any sound from the middle rears and before I remove anything I was wondering if there was any way to get 7.1 sound from the 5.1 audio output of the Toshiba. Something like the left middle and rear surrond speakers sharing the same information and the right middle and rear surround speakers sharing the same information.

I have a feeling I can't but before I remove anything I wanted the opinion of people who know much more than me.

Thanks for your help.

skitlboy

The HD-A3 is outputting a Dolby Digital 5.1 signal - to get rear surrounds, you will need to use either Pro Logic IIx or Dolby EX processing at the 990.

Thanks gonk. I am using Pro Logic IIx and have 5.1 sound. I was wondering how to get 7.1 if possible. I thought of using Y-connector cables and sending the same signal from the 990 to both the middle surround amp and the rear surround amp but heard that Y-connector cables alter the signal.

Sorry I didn't make my question clear.

Dolby EX should be giving you7.1 sound if there's a discrete track to decode. PLIIX should be forcing a signal to the rear speakers by splitting it off of the surround tracks. DTS Neo6 will also give you a digitally contrived rear channel sgnal.
None of these can be applied to the 5.1 analog signal from the Toshiba. I don't believe the 990 applies any processing to the 7.1 analog input except bass management.
I believe that Dolby EX will only work with the digital inputs. PLIIX and DTS Neo6 should work with either Digital or 2 channel analog.
When you say is there "any" way to get rear channel sound from thr 5.1 inputs, yes there is.
Back before any 7 or 8 channel equipment was available, some of us fiddeled around with using an old prologic processor fed by the surround channels from the 5.1 processor to split the surround signal to both surround speakers connected like main speakers and rear speakers connected to the center channel output of the prologic processor.
Essentially, it took those signals that were left channel only or right channel only and fed them to the appropriate surround speaker, then fed the sigals that were common to the left and right channels as a mono signal to the rear speakers.
I certainly wouldn't recommend this as a permanant set-up, but it's fun to play with.

Okay it looks like 7.1 is out.

How about 5.1 surround through a 7.1 system if the DVD output is only 5.1? Does it make sense to feed the right surround signal from the 990 through the right middle and rear surround speakers and the left surround signal through the middle and rear speakers? Would a Y-connector make sense for this? I bought the extra speakers and amp because I had the money at the time and I would hate to have them just sit there.

Thanks to all for your help.

The HD-A3 doesn't have a multichannel analog output. Skitlboy is using an optical digital connection because that is the only choice available to him, and when the HD-A3 decodes a DD+ or TrueHD track it re-encodes it as Dolby Digital 5.1 at the highest bitrate supported by Dolby Digital. He can use Dobly EX or Pro Logic IIx to expand that Dolby 5.1 track.
If you are using Pro Logic IIx, I'm unclear on why you aren't getting 7.1 sound already. There's absolutely no reason to use y-splitters or other workarounds. Connect the seven pre-amp outputs to seven amp channels, and then in turn to seven speakers. Enable the 990's surround back speakers. Once that's done, when you apply Pro Logic IIx to a Dolby 5.1 source, you will get 7.1 output.

I stand corrected.

That's how I had it hooked up. I'll try it again. I must have not enabled the surround speakers. I thought the 990 did it automatically when I ran the auto setup. I'm not sure why else it didn't work. Must be one of those operator errors.

Thanks again for your help.

The auto setup should have found and enabled them. I'd agree that double-checking those settings would be a good first step. After that, make sure that you are engaging surround processing that will provide rear surround output - just use the "Dolby" button on the remote to cycle through the options while playing a disc on the HD-A3. It'll work.

Will do.

Thanks again.