I now have hooked up my DVD to the Yam using an Optical cable. I played a Suberbit DTS/Dolby DVD however I have no rear centre sound? I did the test tone & it comes through load & clear in ALL speakers.
I made sure the rear centre is enabled in ALL settings. I tried a CD throught the DVD player - no centre rear. I definitely WAS getting rear centre sound in analog, before I went to optical out.
I tried all the other modes & DSP settings - no rear centre. I researced the net & found: "After some use 1 or more channels will drop out and as I have read here this has been the case of some dis-satisfaction. The reason for this is faulty pre-out switches in the unit and they need to be replaced (under warranty). Yamaha knew of the problem, continued to ship the units, did not do a voluntary recall and neglected to inform most of their dealers and customers causing a lot of heartache. If anyone has a unit that suddenly drops a channel take a single RCA lead and insert it a couple of times into all of the pre-outs on the back of the unit and normal function will resume. This is where the handy onboard speaker test mode comes in to play.
Any one that is going to buy one of these units you MUST ask if the pre-out switches have been modified." I myself thought I might have this bug & tried reading the manual to solve - as I had suddenly lost my centre rear - but I happened to find a button on the remote (that for some strange reason the manual neglects to point out)that toggles on or off the 6.1 Dolby & DTS.
Somehow going from analog to digital defaulted it to OFF.
Dougofthenorth (proceeding on the learning curve)


This message was edited by Dougofthenorth on 12/15/01 21:44.24.

Doug,

My heart bleeds for you, man! Keep perservering, I'm sure it will all be worth it in the end. I'm fighting a similar curve with my new receiver, too. :)

-Bruce

I think most receivers have some type of button on them to toggle surround modes right?

Probably just a default setting when you pointed that input to the optical instead of analog inputs for that channel. It will probably do it for all other optical inputs also, beware in the future.

Matt; Yes there are many buttons to select the various modes, but this one is off to the side & indicates 6.1/es (in orange)which relates to the DSP slider switch above. also (in blue) below it indicates chp/index which relates to the 10KEY/DSP slider.
I will research all this via Yamaha to get better details - or at least SOME details where the powers that be have deemed the manual does NOT need details.
I'm still left wondering why the DSP functions don't use the centre rear as well? ALL other speakers are used in all the settings except for the centre rear? what the heck if they use the proprietary (+2) front effect speakers in ALL modes,I wonder why not the centre rear as well??
Dougofthenorth (:~}

DoftheYAM: did you master your problem?

MofhteOnk: here's what Yamaha answered: Hi, this is Mathew Hubbard @ Yamaha.
The rear centre channel should not be affected relative to digital or analog
inputs.
Please check the set-menu item 12, 6.1/ES AUTO on page 51 in your owners
manual. If it is set to AUTO ON, the rear centre channel will only operate
if the disc has a flag bit identifying 6.1 channels. Manny discs do not have
this flag bit. I suggest you set it to AUTO OFF and enable the 6.1 decoder
via the remote." - This appears to work !

Doug,

Remember I said I had a similar problem? My Kenwood does the same thing. Its THX button has four settings: Off, On, ES On, ES Auto. It turns out that On is 5.1, ES On is 6.1, and Auto is "6.1 only when I get a sixth channel signal." Silly me, I thought Auto was a smart setting... Now I leave it at "ES On," and it provides a matrixed channel when there's none provided by the source.

One step further up the learning curve... :)

This message was edited by Bruce Burson on 12/19/01 09:58.54.

Bruce ol' bean; essentially I agree & maybe I'm not reading all of your response correctly. This is what I am lead to believe: the logic is that the centre rear sound is available when 1) there is 6.1 info present & 2) the centre channel will be used ONLY if there is a minimum of a 5.1 signal - then it "fakes" info for the centre rear. I.E. cd's will not be able to enable the creation of info for the centre rear.
Dougofthenorth (starting to understand a bit?)

Doug,

Your logic above sound correct, when your 6.1/ES is set to "Auto."

Although Yamaha and Kenwood use different terminology, here's what I think is happening to you (I know it is to me). When the 6.1/ES is set to "Auto" then it only sends a rear center signal when the media actually HAS a discrete sixth channel encoded. In other words, it sends 5.1 when it gets 5.1, but 6.1 only when it gets 6.1

On the other hand, when you turn the "Auto" Off and enable the decoder with your remote, the Yam will send a matrixed signal to the rear center when a discrete signal is not available. So in this case you always get a rear center channel signal, even from 5.1 source media.

(My Kenwood does the same by toggling from "ES Auto" to "ES (always) On" with my THX switch.)

BTW, it is often not "faking" the rear center: on many media produced prior to the "discrete" sixth channel standards, the information for a sixth rear channel was already being encoded into a 5.1 standard using the same matrix technology that your receiver can then use to extract it again. The matrixing is simply older technology.

Your receiver might still generate sound to all six (in your case eight) speakers from a stereo source such as a CD. It all depends on what listening mode you set on the receiver.

I don't know whether you can create a "ES matrix decoder" signal from that though, you'd have to check your manual. Theoretically, the ES matrix decoder is taking the left and right surround signals (DTS or Dolby Digital) to generate the center. But if your receiver will turn stereo into multi-channel (so that the surrounds are getting some kind of signals), then I suppose the ES could then make another channel out of that... You got me on that one.

Regards,

-Bruce

Bruce;
The Yam (Mike asked me if that was the same as a sweet potatoe) won't allow the centre rear to utter a sound unless there is a source with a minimum of 5.1 on it so strangely the centre rear snoozes in stereo or DSP etc. The latest Yams have what they call 6 or 8 channel stereo that use the centre rear.
Dougofthenorth

Hey, you guys, understand that, without a discrete rear-center channel, a rear-center speaker can only put out a sound when the rear left and right (side) channels have stereo, or 'difference', signals. With the rear sides are playing the identical sound, there is no way to decode a 'center' signal.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com

Larry, Again so well put, with so few words. Glad to have you around! HMMM - the difference between right & left channel info creates a third channel - where did I first hear that - in the 60's in Dynaco's Haffler circuit, that's where. It must be puuure coincidence that Dolby shifted it's direction from noise suppression to sound expansion in the 70's right around the time the patents expired for Dynaco's rights. HMMMM
Dougofthenorth (glad to see Haffler did alright -seen his latest stuff!)

Thank you. I would like to add that, in a case where one uses a front decoder to pluck a rear-center in 3-channel mode, like I am, then a mono rear signal WILL produce a center-rear signal.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com