Hi. I have started connecting my 990. So far so good except that I am unsure which Rear Surround Pre-Amp out - left or right, do I use to feed a 6.1 system. I have seen it mentioned in the forums that I can set this to a single center during setup, but there is nothing that says which output to use.

I believe that you want to use the left back surround, but I haven't tried it.

I think the 990 will sense any speaker connected to it and output to that speaker as directed by the surround processing you select. You may have to go into auto setup to tell it the speaker is connected. Gonk is the expert, so try the left channel and see if it works. Make sure you select a processing mode which outputs 6.1 when you do your testing and let us know for sure how it works.

When I had the 990, I pretty much left it in Dolby Digital II mode with the 6.1 speaker mode turned on (occasionally for DVD's, I would manually switch to DTS). The 1050 would automatically adapt when a 6.1 signal was present and send power to the speaker if it was, otherwise the speaker was dead quiet.

For cable TV input (from the SA-8300HD) over digital-coax, it seems, I would simply configure the input to Dolby Digital Ex. This should result in the same signal going to both rear surrounds so wiring just the left output, would provide the output if preset. This assumes of course that that mode handles a regular 5.1 signal. Any ideas if this is correct? Is there any reason to consider using PL-IIx movie?

I am much more confused about how to perform the configuration for DVD's. I am sending the signal via optical to the 990 via optical and letting the 990 decode. I have not had a chance to experiment yet.

I would use PLIIx rather than Dolby Digital EX. It is a more sophisticated algorithm than EX. Also, it can be used with PCM stereo and Dolby 2.0 sources. The Model 990 has surround mode memory that allows it to recall what mode you want to use for each input format type on each separate input. So the first time you play a Dolby 5.1 source with your cable box, manually select DD+PLIIx-Movie and it will remember that. When you first play a Dolby 2.0 source, select PLIIx-Movie. When you first play a PCM stereo source (which you may also encounter with the cable box), select PLIIx-Movie. The same holds true for DVD's, although if you also play CD's you may want to use something else for PCM stereo (either stereo or upsample if you want to stay in stereo mode, or any one of several multichannel modes like PLIIx-Music or 7 Stereo).

Gonk and Xenonman:

Thanks for the help, I used the left speaker and it seems to be working albeit I have no idea whether it is receiving a blend of the rear feeds or just the left rear. I should probably call Outlaw in the morning to confirm. I don't think a 7th speaker will ever pass the WAF test.

The following represents my understanding of how the Outlaw 990 supports a 6.1 speaker configuration after talking with Scott last week. If I am incorrect in any way please let me know.

The most important fact was that the 990 cannot be configured to recognize 6.1. While the auto set-up can detect a single speaker, it does nothing with the data. This has several ramifications.

1) The 990 only supports 6.1 to the extent that a processing mode is itself 6.1. These include DD Surround EX or one of the DTS flavors ES-Matrix, ES-Discrete or DTS:Neo-6.

2) The DD IIx modes as implemented on the 990 do not support upconversion of a 5.1 signal to 6.1 (despite this being part of the DD IIx specifications on the Dolby site). My understanding per Scott this was that this was a limitation they ran into when developing the software for the 990. However, Scott then indicated that he thought that there typically was not a lot of difference in the content between the two rear channel bands, so using one of these two channels feed a single rear center might well prove acceptable.

3) If the 990 is fed a 7.1 analog signal, it cannot combine the two into a 6.1 output. Consequently, to support 6.1, you need to be able to configure the input device to output 6.1. If your analog source device cannot be configured to output 6.1, you may be able to use other workaround if that vendor supports them.

In terms of a work-around, I asked if I could use a Y connector to join the output signals of the 990 into a single output. He said no that this could harm the 990. I am not sure I understand why fully (so I invite Scott or others to post a more detailed explanation).

In general Scott seemed like Gonk seemed to favor DD IIx Movie over DD Surround EX for use when watching 5.1 content

Additional Notes:

Scott confirmed that the second entry on the surround format page (page 13) PL IIx MOVIE + DOLBY VS 5-SP WIDE is a not available. He said that on the 990 two types of post processing cannot be combined and that IIx is a post processing of DD-II.

It's generally a bad idea to direct connect two outputs in parallel. The reason is that the outputs tend to be low impedance and connecting them together can give one output a low impedance path to ground through the other output.

The proper way to combine the two signals is to run them through a mixer or combiner that electronically buffers the signal so that one output won't get fed into the other output.

EEman:

Thanks for the feedback. I have seen a number of converters that are semi-reasonably priced that possibly could do the job but they end up creating a 1/4" or xlr output that would then seem to require a second adaptor to return the mono signal to RCA.

The OWI S2Mono device would seem to do this correctly in a single unit, but it looks to be pricy almost to the point where acquiring a second rear speaker would be easier.

Is there no way to connect a 7th speaker?