ConnectPro Home Theatre Installation

[tester1ca]

Bought this receiver and 2 tower speakers on Boxing Day but never hooked it up until yesterday as I was adding additional speakers to the mix and moving the TV to a wall mount position. Wired all speakers and ran the HDMI from Sony blueray to BD input and Sat box[DVI-HDMI] to HDMI 1. Sound from blueray is very low and there is no video signal from the sat box. Does this receiver use the HDMI for both video and audio or do I need to run a optical cord for the blueray. I know the sat DVI/HDMI is only video. 

[hb]

One of the reasons your sound output is "low" is that you are running a system designed to output surround sound over 5 channels and a subwoofer, yet you only have the two front speakers. A lot of sound (and much of the voice dialog) is supposed to come from the front centre channel speaker - but you don't have a front center channel speaker. I highly recommend you spend the money to buy a center channel speaker designed to match the speaker pair you have already purchased. If for some reason you don't want an additional speaker (or cannot afford one right now) then you can make do by enabling this receiver's ability to create a "phantom center channel"  - ie the receiver will mix the signal that is intended to go to the center channel speaker to each of your front right and left speakers instead. Check your receiver's manual for instuctions on enabling a phantom center channel. That being said...

This is how your equipment should be hooked up:

1. The Blu-ray player's HDMI output should be connected to the Pioneer reciever's BD HDMI input - both video and audio will be sent over this connection. The Pioneer receiver's HDMI output should be connected to one of the HDMI video inputs on your TV to complete the video connection to the TV. Make sure you run the Pioneer's MCACC room equalization procedure to optimize the sound volume and balance between the two front speakers. When you run MCACC, the receiver will detect that you don't have any surround speakers or a subwoofer, and will compensate for that.

2. If the sat receiver's DVI/HDMI output is only video, then you should connect this output directly to your TV. Your sat receiver probably has either an optical digital audio output or a coaxial audio output - connect either of those two outputs to a corresponding input on your Pioneer receiver.

I highly recommend that you eventually upgrade your surround sound system with the addition of a center channel speaker, two surround speakers, and a subwoofer. You will be amazed at the sound "experience" you will get when watching Blu-ray and DVD disks as well as TV channels that provide 5.1 surround sound as compared to using only two front speakers like you are doing now.

[tester1ca]

Thanks for the quick reply. I do have full surround speakers, centre and sub. I have the 2 front on bi-amp and did make that change before running the mcaac. When i play a dvd I have to turn the vloume to -59 just to hear a faint sound. Something isn't right.

[hb]

Sorry for reviewing what might already be obvious to you... but volume increases as the negative numbers get smaller and closer to 0 on your receiver's volume display. Therefore -59dB is an extremely low volume setting - I'd be hard pressed to hear anything on my receiver at that low a volume setting. On most AV receivers, normal listening volumes will be around -25 to -15 dB. Turning the volume up further to around 0dB will usually be uncomfortably loud.

If you already know this - next question would be whether these low volumes are just a problem when listening to Blu-ray disks, or does this also happen when you have your sat receiver's audio output connected to the receiver?

Next question - have you tried running just a single speaker cable from the receiver to each of your left and right fronts and setting up the receiver to NOT biamp the fronts, just to see what happens. There have been isolated reports from other users of this receiver noting that in a bi-amp setup this receiver doesn't always power up the two rear channels that are being used as the second pair of amps for the front speakers.

[jhamilto]

Just to clarify a little.

If you're sending 5.1 signal to a receiver that only has 2 speakers connected it will typically recognize that and adjust appropriately. You won't lose overall volume. You might lose some sound information such as speaking however most receivers output the center channel signal to both speakers in this case.

If then receiver doesn't have discreet amplification then you may even notice an increase in volume with less speakers attached.

Jesse