Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears

Posted by: Daddicus

Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/07/18 12:27 AM

I've got a vanilla blue-ray player connected to my 975. The BR is set to 5.1 sound. I THINK the 975 is as well, but it won't play out the rears.

Now, with an Xbox One it works fine (using the speaker test, where the grunt points at the current speaker as he talks through it), so I know it's connected correctly.

The manual is absolutely impossible to figure out. What scrolls by on the 975's display bears little resemblance to what's printed in the manual. The abbreviations are too hard to figure out.

So, what setting(s) do I have to use to watch a movie with 5.1 sound?
Posted by: XenonMan

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/07/18 02:23 PM

Are you using the On screen display? I think the manual is written to assume you are. Without it it could be much more difficult to set the system up. If you have a computer screen which inputs HDMI or DVI you can use that if you don't intend to do video. Once the OSD is on, go to the speaker setup menu and make sure the surround mode is selected as 5.1. Then go to the speaker calibration screen and see if the system sees all of your speakers. Use the test tone to calibrate the system.
Posted by: Helson

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/07/18 03:06 PM

Originally Posted By Daddicus
I've got a vanilla blue-ray player connected to my 975. The BR is set to 5.1 sound. I THINK the 975 is as well, but it won't play out the rears.

Now, with an Xbox One it works fine (using the speaker test, where the grunt points at the current speaker as he talks through it), so I know it's connected correctly.

The manual is absolutely impossible to figure out. What scrolls by on the 975's display bears little resemblance to what's printed in the manual. The abbreviations are too hard to figure out.

So, what setting(s) do I have to use to watch a movie with 5.1 sound?
The display screen scrolling for 5.1 audio, for example, would show (3/2).1. The 3 is for the front sound stage, left, center, right. The 2 is for surround left,right. The .1 for the sub, naturally.
What can be confusing are the parenthesizes before and after the 3/2. The first one looks like the letter'C'.
The Edit boxes, and Letters, to the right of the display show the discreet signal format (all the letters), and your active speakers (all the boxes).
Posted by: EEman

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/09/18 02:10 PM

Check the icons on the right side of the 975 display. Page 15 in the manual shows the options for how these should look for 5.1 (and 7.1) inputs.

If it doesn't look like one of those revisit your setup.
Posted by: Outlaw Ben

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/11/18 02:37 PM

Originally Posted By EEman
Check the icons on the right side of the 975 display. Page 15 in the manual shows the options for how these should look for 5.1 (and 7.1) inputs.

If it doesn't look like one of those revisit your setup.



Correct. The letters are the incoming signal, from your source device, and the boxes are the outgoing signal from the 975. If you see:

[L] [C] [R]

[SL] [SR]

[LFE]

Then you are receiving and sending out 5.1. If you don't see boxes around anything but L and R, then you have the unit in stereo mode and will need to use the SURR button on the remote to remedy this.
Posted by: Daddicus

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/11/18 05:28 PM

I tried both the OSD and the mini-menu.

And, remember: it works for other devices.
Posted by: Daddicus

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/11/18 05:30 PM

I'll check those. I remember seeing them, but I'll exhaust the choices until I see them all.
Posted by: Daddicus

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/11/18 06:02 PM

All 6 have boxes around them. The three front speakers all have sound coming out. I can't tell if the sub is working. The two rears have a very light static if you put your ear really close, so they're getting power.

When I try surround mode, I get (3/2).1. If I hit it again, I get "mode unavailable" over and over. Which makes no sense, because earlier I got 5 or 6 choices (with the same movie in the same blue-ray).

Remember: from another device (an Xbox with the Halo speaker test), all six speakers work correctly.
Posted by: XenonMan

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/11/18 06:27 PM

What Bluray player are you using? If one source functions and the other doesn't I would suspect the source being the issue. Have you tried swapping HDMI ports to see if the port is bad?
Posted by: arbitrageur

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/12/18 09:50 AM

Some blu-ray players will send limited channels out to HDMI when the analog outputs are also used - any chance you have both HDMI and analog outputs from the player set up? Check the audio configuration of the player - it might not be configured to send the 5.1/7.1 bitstream.
Posted by: EEman

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/12/18 12:19 PM

Originally Posted By arbitrageur
Some blu-ray players will send limited channels out to HDMI when the analog outputs are also used - any chance you have both HDMI and analog outputs from the player set up? Check the audio configuration of the player - it might not be configured to send the 5.1/7.1 bitstream.


And you might also check that your Blu-ray player has the latest SW updates. Maybe it's having trouble decoding the audio formats??
Posted by: Outlaw Ben

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/12/18 05:35 PM

If one source device doesn't work, then you've got your answer. If you had an issue with the pre-pro, it would be across all source devices. I would note, if you are receiving a 5 channel mix, you cannot apply post processing, upmixing modes (that would essentially be telling the processor to take a 5 channel mix and upmix it to 5 channels - no can do).
Posted by: Daddicus

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/12/18 10:37 PM

This BR only has HDMI. The player says it's 5.1 (which it has to be, or the 975 would report only two channels, like it does for the menus of most discs.)

I'm going to test the Halo test again and see what the lights look like.

Thanks, so far!
Posted by: XenonMan

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/13/18 08:51 AM

It has got to be in the BDP menu somewhere.
Posted by: Owl's_Warder

Re: Can't figure out how to get sound out of my rears - 04/13/18 04:26 PM

You might also try swapping the HDMI cables between the X-BOX and the BDP. You may have a bad cable in the mix. Assuming the cables both test good, one other test to rule out the Outlaw would be to swap inputs between the X-BOX and the BDP. That will rule out a bad input on the pre/pro.

All that said, I'm also inclined to believe it's something in your BDP setup somewhere. Are you able to tell us the model and/or how you have the output set?