Ash, just getting the EP500 started doesn't have some tricky step, so I wonder if the noise that you hear indicates a loose internal connection. I did note that you said that you put the coax into the "places", plural. Are you sure that you put it into the one line level input(the second one down)? The fact that your Sunfire works fine indicates that your receiver and player settings are okay. As a check, you might disconnect one main and run the speaker wire to one of the high level input pairs to see if that connection works.
