Well, after 2+ years of running the 1070 with an occasional no-audio bug I connected a few more components to the 1070 and lo and behold I'm now stricken by more frequent occurences of the no-audio bug as well as occasional lock-ups. The lock-ups aren't so bad that I have to power off the receiver, if I turn off the 1070 via the remote and back on again it usually solves the problem. Sometimes, I have to switch inputs. It only ever happens when the 1070 is initally switched on with a digital source selected.

The changes I made were connecting my PC to the 1070 via a digial coax cable and changed the connection from my hd Expressvu (Echostar) satellite box to connect directly to the 1070 via digital optical rather than going to the TV via hdmi then the 1070 via optical (which resulted in the loss of 5.1 audio). Both sources have the video directly connected to my tv. I'm running the latest firmware.

Does anyone have any tips for minimizing the occurence of these bugs? I thought I read somewhere that turning on auto-detecting of inputs was a good idea. Are there any other settings I should use? I was going to play around with the inputs that I have in use (optical 1, optical 2 and coax 1) thinking that maybe optical 1/coax 1 interact with each other --- it's a longshot but easy enough to try.

As an aside, my PC sound card is capable of encoding 2-channel sources as either Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect. I must say the sound is excellent via this path, to my ears much better than any of the 2-channel to multi-channel options on the 1070 (e.g. DPLII-Music, Neo6, 5 speaker stereo). I've never been that happy with music through the digital path on the 1070 (although I find the the analog path excellent for music and the digital path excellent for movies) but I'd highly recommend purchasing a sound card with this capability for anyone who enjoys multi-channel sound from 2-channel sources. It would also be nice to see this feature on a future receiver/processor however I've only ever seen it on PC sound cards and some motherboards.

-John

I thought that perhaps it was just mine that was getting worse as it ages. My 970 started out OK but has gotten progressively worse with the "no audio bug". Before all I had to do was cycle it to another source. Now when it occurs it has to be shut off and then turned on. Sometimes more than once. Once it is working it sounds great but it is getting to that point. Now I patiently await the next gen pre/pro from Outlaw. But I must admit that some of the new receivers are looking pretty tempting. How about another hint at what Outlaw might be bringing to the market.

My 1070 took a vacation in Massachusetts and has rarely had problems since it returned. But it was still under warranty and the problem that took i on the trip was loss of audio with analog sources, the FM tuner mainly.

A couple of suggestions about fixing your problem.

1. After you hooked everything up did you try unplugging the 1070 from the wall and letting it sit overnight? Sometimes that helps.

2. When I started having no audio problems I was told to turn auto polling off. I do not recall whether that was for all sources, but I think I have it set off on all.

3. I found that freezes occurred mainly when he 1070 received too much input from the remote too fast. When I put delays into macros my URC MX850 sends to the 1070 he lockups stopped happening.

4. I still have no audio issues occasionally, but switching between a digital source and an analog source, or even changing channels on my STB fixes the problem. Because this rarely happens I have not bothered to try and figure out why.

Hey, thanks Bob!

I turned the 1070 off for a while and then turned it back on. Funny, it's the #1 step I do if something's flaky with my PC but I just never though to power-cycle the 1070. D-oh! I've now had no problems for the past few days.

I noticed it also had this advice in the manual:
So everything works fine, switching between 5.1 and 2.0 satellite sources or switching the computer sound card feed from DD5.1 to DTS5.1 to PCM 96KHz is all seamless.

I'm currently using the 1070 remote, but I'll keep your advice #3 in mind if I start using a universal remote.

Thanks again!

-John