Problem w/ Yamaha 5.1 surround receiver

[duckydan]

Hey all I am hoping someone here can help me. I have a Yamaha 5.1 surround sound receiver (Model HTR-5730... and older receiver that has gotten pretty good reviews). I have my Xbox and my Dish receiver (HD Tivo) hooked up via optical audio and my hdmi dvd player hooked up via coaxil. When I am watching a HD program my receiver has nothing but bass during commercials unless I switch it to 5 channel stereo instead of DTS/DD. This also is annoying when watching any type of musical dvd (Rent and Nightmare Before Christmas had the most problems.) Nightmare Before Christmas you could not hear the line "This is Halloween" in the opening song as I am guessing they are supposed to come out of the rear channel and all that could be heard is the music but when i change to 5.1 it works great. Is it the encoding of the source audio, the surround receiver, or the speakers? I have tried seeking the problem online but with no luck. I've even reset the speaker settings on the receiver to default in case I had too much center or not not enough rear sound but still with no luck. If anyone has any ideas please let me know.

 

[Inno]

Does it have a "test" function that you can turn on that outputs pink noise to all the speakers one at a time all around the room. My Yamaha (RX-V795) has a test button on the remote. Make sure that all the levels are set correctly using this. Although it's strange that when things are in DD that you get full output from all speakers.
So just so I've got this straight, when you are using any of the digital inputs (coax or optical) without having any digital surround engaged (not including pro logic which is non digital) you don't get any output from most of the speakers, just bass from the LFE channel..........is that correct? What about any of the analog inputs like CD etc. when running them on 2ch.........then switching on ProLogic? What happens then? Strange problem, any more info you could give would help.

 

[duckydan]

I fixed the problem by calling yamaha (which I thought would be useless so I never did.) Turns out my receiver was never told to turn on the left and right front speakers (not receiving a manual with my ebay purchase hurt me more than I thought) and once they walked me through setting it up so it was on there was a huge difference. The odd thing is that the receiver never fully muted the left and right speakers in the front so sound was coming out (just really low in volume) so I never questioned the setup. Now my dvds and all other components sound nice.

 

[Inno]

Very strange, glad to hear that you got it going..........digital surround is wondeful!