Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Cant get my 2 channel CDs to play in 5.1

Hi everyone I finally got ALL my speakers Axiom m22s up front VP100 for the center and the 2 QS8s and EP175 sub. Everything works fine so far my Sherwood R772 and new Oppo player are great BUT... I cant get any of my 2 channels Cds to play in 5.1 I tried every surround setting on my receiver with no luck. I have the Oppo setting on bitstream and its hooked up via HDMI. I do have the analog 5.1 cables if I hooked them up would that work to get 5.1 on my 2 channel CDs? My SACds work fine just not my 2 channel. I am hoping I just have it set wrong or something because I am VERY green to all of this.

That is strange. I don't know how the Sherwood works, but on my Denon all I have 2 do is make sure the source is selected (my DVD/CD player is hooked up to the DVD connect in back, so I set the receiver to 'DVD') and then I have the option to change the playback in the Denon to 'Stereo', 'Pure', 'Pure Direct', '5/7 Channel', 'DTS Neo 6.1', 'Dolby 5.1', 'THX', or 'Mono'.

There should be no reason your CD's wouldn't play in 5.1 stereo, its simply a function of your reciever.

The analog cables would make it less likely for you to get 5.1 output from a stereo source, as most receivers when using their 5.1 input only offer a "pure, direct" signal path.

As Micah said, pick the HDMI input, and look for a surround mode selection, or something similar which will enable Dolby ProLogic, DTS Neo, or something similar.

Which Oppo do you have? I have the 80h. It is possible that you have accidentally programmed the player to always output multichannel in which case your receiver thinks it is already 5.1 even if only two channels contain actual information.
Try to put the player in LPCM and choose "Stereo" as "Downmix". If that works, you can start trying to find a way to make it all work together.

If it is a BDP-83, make sure you have all the latest firmware upgrades. The beta reports from the field were mentionning quite a few issues with regular CDs. Since it is of lower priorities for a BD player, it is possible that glitches were found and fixed after the player was released.

I have the new oppo bluray player and I have the sacd priority set to 5.1

SACD priority is not linked to regular CDs. There must be an "Audio" menu (they changed user interface so I cannot tell you exactly where to look) to control the output. Make sure it is not set to "PLII" or something like that, but to "Stereo" and see what happens.

Is there anyone familiar with the new Oppo player and the sherwood R772 AV that could tell me the setting I should have on each unit. Right now the Oppo is set at bitstream with the sacd priority at 5.1. I have my sherwwod at autosurround when I try another surround setting it only gives my 2 choices I dont know why it wont go through all the surround choices. Im having someone come over soon to get it all worked out. Plus my Oppo is hooked to my network how would I upgrade the firmware?

Guy, if you're getting the 2-channel sound from the CDs, that means that the player is sending it out on the HDMI, so no change in the player setting is needed. Since the 772 is receiving 2-channel digital PCM(because you're hearing it), if you have the surround speakers shown on the setup menu , then it should only be necessary to select one of the surround modes which expand 2-channel material to surround. Although you said that you've tried the various modes, are you sure that you've set DPLII music, for example, and that the display hasn't shown that mode being in effect?

There's one case where the player could be to blame. If it is sending the stereo information on the L&R channels, but has told the receiver it's a 5.1 signal and is filling the remaining channels with silence.

The PS3 does this in some cases, and it prevents me from being able to select ProLogic, because the receiver thinks all the channels are already in use.

Thought he said it was set to bitstream. Would that mean that the player thinks it's outputting a surround mode? The whole bitstream/PCM thing always confuses me.

If i read all this right i would agree with JohnK and others.
Regular cds only have 2 channels of sound.
If you want to get 5.1 channels from them, you have to select some type of DSP in your receiver like Dolby Pro Logic II:Music or All Channels.
SACDs and DVD audio discs have a recording for all 5 distinct channels and clearly you have your system hooked up correctly for it to recognize that.
Regular cds only have 2 recorded channels. A DSP extracts or sends info to the surround and subwoofer speakers.

No, you're right. Bitstream for CD would be PCM--er...

Bitstream means the output is as the bits appear on the disc, they are just streamed off. It really doesn't apply to formats which are already in their most simple form. It is meant for encoded formats which are then transported to the receiver for decoding.

Hi,

I think if you have HDMI connected, then the Oppo will only send 2-channel PCM to the Sherwood, which may not let you switch that to DPLII.

One alternative for CD playback would be to use an optical or digital coaxial connection to a different input on the Sherwood and then set the Oppo to RAW or bitstream. Use that input for playing CDs, so the Oppo will just send the 2-channel digital signal to the Sherwood, then you could choose stereo or DPLII for CD playback. But you'd have to remember to re-set the Oppo to PCM for HDMI playback, otherwise, it will send a Dolby Digital 5.1 downmix via the optical/coaxial cable to your Sherwood.

This may drive me to drink!

Regards,
Alan

C'mon, Alan... I need one too and I'm buying...

In that case, I'll see you there!