Posted by: skitlboy
Toshiba A3 hooked up properly? - 01/08/08 09:01 AM
I have recently purchased a Toshiba A3 HD DVD player and would like someone to let me know if I hooked it up as well as possible. I’ve read so many posts that my head is in a bit of a fog and I’m not sure that I read about anyone hooking up their HD player the same way I did.
I have connected my A3 HDMI output to the HDMI input on my Sony KD-34XS955 set. I then ran the A3 fiber optic audio output to my 990 fiber optic audio input. I selected AUX as the input.
Can someone please let me know if this hookup is best? I think I read a post where gonk recommended setting the surround speakers to large and wonder if I should do the same. Are there other changes I should make?
I didn’t hook up the video to the 990 because I wanted to avoid purchasing more cables. If anyone thinks I should then I will. Everything seems be working well but I’m just not confident about my hook-up.
Thanks for your help.
skitlboy
Posted by: gonk
Re: Toshiba A3 hooked up properly? - 01/08/08 12:57 PM
That approach will work very well for the HD-A3. I have my HD-A2 hooked up in almost exactly the same way (video goes through the 990, but that's because I have several HDMI video sources and one DVI input on my TV).
Posted by: skitlboy
Re: Toshiba A3 hooked up properly? - 01/08/08 02:36 PM
Thanks very much gonk. Would you recommend setting my surround speakers to large?
Posted by: gonk
Re: Toshiba A3 hooked up properly? - 01/08/08 04:58 PM
Are you talking about the settings in the player? As far as I know, the only time that the player would actually use those speaker settings would be when decoding and then outputting as multichannel PCM via HDMI. When the player decodes DD+ and TrueHD content, it re-encodes as high bitrate Dolby Digital (the HD-A2 uses DTS, but the A3 changed to DD) and I don't believe that it does any signal processing between the decode and the re-encode. If I'm right about that, the settings are disregarded entirely.
Posted by: skitlboy
Re: Toshiba A3 hooked up properly? - 01/08/08 05:51 PM
Maybe I misunderstood the post I read. I was refering to the 990 settings.
Posted by: gonk
Re: Toshiba A3 hooked up properly? - 01/08/08 06:07 PM
For the 990 setup, it would be a most unusual setup to justify setting surrounds to large. I can't think of a system I've encountered that warranted that. For 99.7829% (plus or minus) of surround setups that have a subwoofer, you are going to be better off running the surrounds and center as small.
What speakers do you have?
Posted by: skitlboy
Re: Toshiba A3 hooked up properly? - 01/09/08 09:47 AM
Okay. I must have gotten my responses mixed up.
I have McIntosh XR7 fronts and Cambridge Soundworks S300 Multipole surround speakers. I have always set them to small for the 990. The small specs are perfect for my surround speakers. I think I just got the post responses mixed up. I'll keep them set to small.
Thanks very much for your time.
Posted by: gonk
Re: Toshiba A3 hooked up properly? - 01/09/08 01:02 PM
I couldn't find any specs on the XR7, but the S300's should definitely be run small and would probably benefit from a crossover of 100Hz.
Posted by: skitlboy
Re: Toshiba A3 hooked up properly? - 01/09/08 02:09 PM
gonk - will do.
The McIntosh speakers are a tad old. Still sound great though.
Thanks again for your help.