No sound to my rear speaker

[hjmac]

I've just purchased a Pioneer VSX-41 Amp and have it hooked up to my DVD player through an optical cable. I've tried every possible config and can seem to get sound to my rear speakers. I've run all the configurations through the remote and the tone test gives no sound to the rears. I have check the rears to ensure the are set up by hooking them to the front channels and they work so it's not the cables nor the speaker that are the problem...

If anyone owns this same amp and can help me figure out the problem it would be much appreciated,

Regards,

HJMAC

[cam]

I've just purchased a Pioneer VSX-41 Amp and have it hooked up to my DVD player through an optical cable. I've tried every possible config and can seem to get sound to my rear speakers. I've run all the configurations through the remote and the tone test gives no sound to the rears. I have check the rears to ensure the are set up by hooking them to the front channels and they work so it's not the cables nor the speaker that are the problem...

If anyone owns this same amp and can help me figure out the problem it would be much appreciated,

Regards,

HJMAC
I don't own this receiver but it sounds like your receiver doesn't know it has surrounds hooked up to it. In your set up menu it should ask if you have a center, surrounds, and sub. Just make sure you put in yes for every piece that you have hooked up to it. Example, if you do not own a center channel, you can put in no in which case no sound will go to the center channel, not even your receivers internal test tones.

[Quagmire]

hjmac,

Have you gone into the menu settings for the inputs on your receiver? You may need to set up some sort of Auto Detect mode so that the receiver knows what to do with the signal it is getting from the DVD player. Related to that, you must also go into the DVD players' menu and make sure that the audio out is set to "Bitstream". Another receiver setting to double check is to make sure that you actually have rear speakers selected to be on. Usually you have options to set the speakers to "large" or "small", but they can also be set to "none" or "off" which would prevent the receiver from directing any sound to them at all. You also need to make sure that the calibration level is not turned down all the way on the rear channels.

If you haven't checked any of these setting, I would start there first. It is unlikely that you have two bad amp channels (but not impossible) and even more unlikely that they should both be rear channels. It is far more likely that you simply have some menu option improperly set. In addition to the optical cable, do you have any analog RCA cables routed from the DVD player to the receiver? This can also create some problems if you don't have everything setup just right. Be sure to post a followup if none of this stuff winds up being the source of the problem so that we can continue troubleshooting... for that matter post a followup even if you do find the problem is related to this stuff: It's always nice to find out what the problem was and how it got resolved, and the information you provide might be helpful to someone going through similar problems. Best of luck, hope this helps.

Q

[Geoffcin]

I've just purchased a Pioneer VSX-41 Amp and have it hooked up to my DVD player through an optical cable. I've tried every possible config and can seem to get sound to my rear speakers. I've run all the configurations through the remote and the tone test gives no sound to the rears. I have check the rears to ensure the are set up by hooking them to the front channels and they work so it's not the cables nor the speaker that are the problem...

If anyone owns this same amp and can help me figure out the problem it would be much appreciated,

Regards,

HJMAC

But first you have to tell the receiver what type of system you are running from 2.0 to 7.1. I assume you've read the manual (also available online from Pioneer). It has to be set to your particular configuration. If you've done this and you cant get a test tone out of the speakers then you have a problem, and should contact cutomer service.

[Grandpaw]

select A speakers B speakers or both. I am first to admit I'm not real knowledgable about this but the same thing happened to me and the problem was that the A speakers (or front set) were on and the B speakers (or rear) were turned off. It gave me the same result that you are getting. You can also have just the opposite with the back on and the front off.

You need to have both A & B speakers selected. This is how it works on my Onkyo.
This is on the front of the reciever on my unit and not in the controls in the menu.

[hershon]

No don't get a crack whore, assuming you live in a metropolitan area, look up stereo, home theater and electronics stores in your yellow pages and a few of them probably have the word will do installation or some variation there of. For around $60 give or take they will make a house call & set your system up so it plays right. The alternative is to play trial and error and possibly screw things up more and lose your mind in the process.



I've just purchased a Pioneer VSX-41 Amp and have it hooked up to my DVD player through an optical cable. I've tried every possible config and can seem to get sound to my rear speakers. I've run all the configurations through the remote and the tone test gives no sound to the rears. I have check the rears to ensure the are set up by hooking them to the front channels and they work so it's not the cables nor the speaker that are the problem...

If anyone owns this same amp and can help me figure out the problem it would be much appreciated,

Regards,

HJMAC

[Woochifer]

You got two defaults that you probably need to change. First, go to the setup menu on your receiver and activate the surround speakers. The receiver does not know you have them hooked up until you tell it.

A lot of receivers' system defaults only activate the front two speakers, and leave it up to the consumer to turn the other channels on. This is because if someone only has two speakers and the receiver is outputing in 5.1 mode, then it will sound very strange with movie sources because the audio for the center and surround channels are missing altogether. Constrastly, a 5.1 speaker setup will not sound nearly as odd with the receiver defaulted to only two speakers, because the 5.1 soundtrack gets mixed down to two channels before it gets sent to the speakers, and as a result you don't lose any of the sound elements.

Second, go to the DVD player setup menu and tell it to send the audio signal through the digital output (or sometimes it's indicated as "bitstream" output). The default output for almost all DVD players is through the analog outputs, which are two-channel mixdowns. This is because most DVD players are hooked up to TVs through the analog audio, and having the digital output activated by default means that those consumers would only get silence. I suspect that this also minimizes the number of DVD players that get returned because the consumers can't hear anything!

If you're a total newbie, I'd suggest that you go to Borders or Tower or Amazon and get a copy of the Sound & Vision Home Theater Setup DVD. It has easy-to-follow tutorials that go over all the system setup basics, including the setup menus. Plus, it has the audio tests that you can use to ID the speakers and test tones for properly setting the levels. And it also includes a basic set of video tests, and IMO the video tests alone on this DVD are well worth the $15 price.