Hi guys - very excited to be a new outlaw. Just received my 990 and 7500 this past week and I have more or less configured the system to produce sounds. That's a pretty good start for me, considering it's my first foray into 'real' audio, and HT for that matter. BTW - I'm running Polk Audio LSi15 fronts and LSif/x surrounds, and a DSW400 SW. TV is the latest 52" plasma from Samsung.

So, I guess I didn't really understand going into this that the HDMI/DVI inputs didn't decode/process audio, but simply passed the audio and video signal through. Is this correct? I mean, I know I don't hear anything from my speakers when I was connected with only HDMI, but the sound and picture made it to my TV. Once I added a digital coax cable - viola! But is the HDMI in doing any kind of video processing, or is it simply a pass through? For now I'm just running video straight to the TV.

My next question has to do with the auto setup. I had set the fronts to large, crossovers at 40hz, and rears to small, crossover at 80hz. I ran the auto setup and it said that it can't complete because i have the fronts set to small and the rear set to large. Told me to swap the speakers, power down, and start over. I powered down, but there's really nothing for me to swap as far as I know. Still getting the same results with the auto setup. So I've started to dial things in manually.

Anyway, I'm impressed with what I've heard so far. I guess I'll keep reading the forums and playing around. If anybody here is running Polk LSis and would care to share some setup tips that would be great.

Thanks a bunch...

welcome...you'll have to get answers from those smarter than me (most everyone here ) and if this is your first foray...BOY did you aim high!...enjoy!
Bill

My HDMI FAQ may be useful - DVI is an older video format that was developed for computers, then was later borrowed as part of the basis for HDMI. HDMI added audio, but it took them about four generations to get HDMI to the point that it would do what everyone wanted from it (v1.0, v1.1, v1.2, and v1,3). When the 990 was being developed, v1.1 was new on the scene and there was already a huge amount of talk about the revisions that arrived with v1.2 and v1.3. There were also some receivers appearing that had HDMI ports that did not support any audio input (not even the DD/DTS bitstreams and stereo PCM that v1.0 allowed for), which created a ton of consumer confusion. Outlaw decided that rather than do the same thing (HDMI ports that only did video switching), they would use DVI. The 990's DVI switching is purely passive (no video processing, so no on-screen display from the 990 and no transcoding of other video inputs to the DVI output) and is video only (since DVI doesn't support audio). When you use the 990's DVI switching, you must also make an audio connection to the 990.
First, I would set the fronts to small since you have a sub. The -3dB point for the LSi15 is 30Hz, so running it small and using a crossover of either 40Hz or 60Hz will let the subwoofer handle the frequencies at which the speaker is rolling off. (One drawback to the old tradition of using "large" and "small" for setting up bass management: there are lots of physically large speakers that really deserve to be run as "small". When a speaker is set to "large" that means there is no bass management provided for that speaker - in which case the crossover setting is ignored.)

I'll also suggest setting the fronts to small and then moving the front crossover to 80Hz before running auto setup. The auto setup can sometimes get confused by a low crossover setting. See if setting it to 80Hz helps, and afterward you can set it back to 40Hz or 60Hz. Also make sure the microphone is at ear height, as it's possible for some weird reflections to throw things off if it is sitting on the seat of a couch or chair.

I've run into the same problem with my older Polks. I've come to the conclusion, correct or not, that the auto setup is able to get more bass extension from the surrounds suported by the subwoffer than it gets from the mains so it concludes that the surrounds are larger speakers and need to be switched with the mains.
I've found two work-arounds,
one (as Gonk suggests )setting the mains to small with a higher crossover ( 60hz seems to work fine with my RT2000s)
I've also tried turning the subs off and seting sub-woofer to "no" with the mains set to large.You then need to hand-tune the subs.
Of the 2, I've found I prefer the first option as the RT2000s can get a little boomy when set to large but behave pretty well set to small and crossed over at 60hz.

Wow - awesome response time, guys. I must say I feel honored to be getting responses from such noteworthy contributors. Thank you all very much. gonk - I actually did read through a bunch of the faqs you have posted. Full of really good information. I'm sure I speak for so many others when i say 'thank you'. It was a real help. Of course, most of the reading I did was after I started playing around with things are realized I didn't know what I was doing.

So I will go ahead and set the fronts to small, bump up the crossovers, and rerun the auto setup.

Soooo..... I'm thinking about grabbing a PS3 as by BD player..... seems that most people find that it's a pretty capable machine. Connects to the internet, has some internal storage, reads external memory devices, can stream media via wireless, etc. Any good reason why I should consider other devices? Finally, if I do go with the Sony PS3, what is the best way to connect it to the 990? Would I go HDMI straight to my TV, and run the audio to my 990? Which audio connection is best? I think I was reading something about 5 interconnects to the 990 (I have a 5 channel setup). Is the optical or digital coax not recommended? Did I read something about more sound formats being available for the separate ..... OK, I can see I have some homework to do. I'm off to Google up some answers before I waste too much more of your time asking questions I should probably be able to find the answers to.

Cheers!

Mainly just one reason: audio. The Blu-ray format includes several new audio options that provide better quality than Dolby Digital and DTS, but the only way to hear them with the PS3 is via HDMI - which isn't an option with the 990. If you go with a standalone player that includes onboard decoding of those formats and a multichannel analog output, you can use them with the 990. There's been a lot of anticipation for OPPO's BDP-83 , which is getting close to being released and will work well with the 990, or you can go with options such as the Panasonic BD55 (discontinued and possibly hard to find), Sony S550, or a couple different Pioneers that offer onboard decoding and multichannel analog output (although DTS-HD Master Audio decoding has not arrived for the Pioneers yet - it's due via a firmware update in the next month or two).

Thanks for the info, gonk -

I'm really more concerned about 2 ch audio, but I guess it can't hurt to get the best out of the player in terms of blu ray playback

I went ahead and picked up the Samsung player. Looking forward to getting it all hooked up and trying it out in a few days.

So, any recommendations on cables to connect this thing? I'm thinking of heading back to blue jeans cables and purchasing there. Maybe I can trade my unneeded HDMI/DvI cables in for some analog audio cables...

For two-channel using the PS3, I'd go with optical - I've not heard anything particularly special about the analog output, which is not surprising since it's built around the HDMI port. The 990's DAC's and analog output stage are going to be better in that regard. If you are using the Samsung Blu-ray player, I think the same would hold true: use optical or coaxial for everything you can (CD, DVD, and really everything except Blu-ray discs that offer a multichannel PCM, TrueHD, or DTS-HD Master Audio track). I'd be in support of the idea of picking up a set of analog cables from Blue Jeans for that purpose.

Thanks again, gonk -

So, can I run the optical out and analog out at the same time? If so, I assume I configure each one as a different input? For example, Input 1 = Blu Ray and audio source = 7.1 analog. Input 2 = CD Player (which is really my Blu Ray player), audio source = optical 2.

Thanks again for all the help. I think I'm so close to having this whole thing buttoned down (until I learn enough to start playing around some more).

Right. Connect optical from the Samsung and 7.1 analog from the Samsung. The 7.1 Direct input is separate from the other video inputs (selected using the "7.1D" button on the 990's remote) and will use the multichannel analog input, and then you can set up another input for optical 2 or whatever source you want. If you go back to using the 990's DVI switching, you can even assign the same DVI port to both of those inputs (assuming you don't use CD or AUX for the optical 2 connection, as those two are audio inputs and thus don't support video switching).