digital sound

[joewho]

haertig,

First, I was wrong. Embarrassed to say it, but the stereo never did work with any dvd.
I had the rca's plugged in and was wrong. I already discovered this, but thanks for telling me. I honestly don't believe the stereo is hosed, but I have no choice because the dang thing just won't work.

The differenct between digital sound the best repro the stereo can produce it that in digital mode the surround speakers produce 60% sound compared to 30% sound now.
Everything you posted, has been tried. The kenwood support man went through all of it with me.

 

[haertig]

Everything you posted, has been tried.

Well, that really is a bummer! To have a nice receiver like that, that doesn't work right. Digital sound is really awesome on some movies. I think I enjoy that aspect of DVDs more than the enhanced picture (compared to broadcast, VHS, etc.) Although it won't help you on the 510, you might try the coax digital audio connector if you have a DVD player that supports coax. Maybe it's just the optical input on the receiver that's bad, but the coax one could still work. Coax is every bit as good as optical for digital audio - and cheaper. You don't need to buy the expensive $50 Monster "Digital Audio Coax Cable" either. A VIDEO cable will work just as well. A video cable is coax, well shielded, and has RCA plugs on either end (often times gold plated connectors). Probably less than 1/4 the price of the official "digital audio" cable too! Radio Shack has 'em, as would many other places. Not useful for your 510 though

 

[blabber]

Confused yet?

Just to add to the confusion, let me throw this out there. My Yamaha receiver sometimes doesn't automatically go into Dolby Digital mode when a Dolby-encoded program starts. I have to sometimes manually force it to that mode, usually in the dark when I can't see the stupid remote keys, accidentally switching to FM and getting a blast of undesired noise. ((shocked))) You might look into seeing if there is a menu option you haven't discovered.

 

[joewho]

The only co-ax on the receiver is for FM reception. heh.
Like I said, I still can't believe it's bad. There is no reason for it.
My last hope is that a friend, who has the exact same receiver, will try one of the dvd players on his receiver, to see if it works.
Otherwise, this issue is kaput. I'll have to get another receiver.
The coax for fm is just a slide on (no threads to screw it on), and after using it for a couple of years, a part broke making it useless.
So I opened it up and soldered a wire onto the board in the module. after that broke a couple times, I couldn't use it any more either. The module has been removed and sits here, because I can't find the module anywhere, much less a supplier.
Kenwood support says it doesn't affect the optical output, although I might take it apart one more time to have a look. msrp on this receiver was 400, but I got it for 300 a few years ago. Oh well. What's that saying? "You pays your money and takes your chances.

blabber, it's all been done. There is a lot to know about this receiver, and I know it. I also know things that are not in the manual, such as, you have to turn off auto/cinema eq. for some of the options to work ie; digital.

The intent of my original post was to find out if it was the stereo or the dvr.
At that point, I was just getting into it, had no dish support or kenwood support. Since finding kenwood support, I've tracked it down to the stereo.
Also, I have glimpsed some other threads, and am under the impression that dish, esp. showtime is/has expanded their digital programming. I use a saved Deadwood episode to test with.
Thanks to all. If anything else develops, I will post. Being a participant in other tech forums (sbc and MS at bbr), I believe in follow up so everyone can expand on their knowledge. Since dish is related to sbc, I would suggest to anyone to check out Broadbandreports.com. I'm joewho there.
Tim

 

[supereal]

This sounds familiar. I junked my Kenwood receiver/amp after trying everything to get it to detect digital. I replaced it with a Yamaha 5760, and it works beautifully on both PCM and Dolby. Just be sure that your 522 is set up for BOTH PCM and Dolby in the selection menu, not just one or the other. With a Bose center speaker and fronts, a Yamaha powered subwoofer, and cheapo rear speakers, the sound is as good as I've heard anywhere. The 5760 has a terrific auto setup using a microphone to determine room size and reverb. It simplified video and audio source switching That reduced the number of remotes needed to operate our system from 5 to 1, plus the 522 remote, of course. Even that operates the 5760 volume. $500 well spent! Now, if there was only more Dolby besides mostly HBO & Showtime.

 

[joewho]

Followup:

Well, it works now. As a last ditch effort, I took the optical cable over to a friends house, and it didn't work. All that, because of a bad cable.
Yes, I was told to check the cable, but I brought it from the store, directly out of the package to the stereo/dvr. The red light was always working. So, the only way to know (at the time) was to go buy another one. I had no reason to suspect it. But sure enough, brand new, light works, it was faulty.
I exchanged it and everything works fine.
Please spare me the flames. In the support world, people like to know what happened and deserve to know, in exchange for the free advise.
Thanks to everyone for your patience and input. It is appreciated. At least I know a lot more than when I started.
Tim

 

[haertig]

Please spare me the flames.

No flames. Glad it works now. If you can find a good movie in DD5.1, prepare to be amazed at the sound. It can be quite an eye opener!

Oh, and if you can now hear all this great sound but your TV screen is blank - check to make sure you turned on the TV! [ just kidding of course! ]

 

[joewho]

I unplugged the rca's and only use the optical cable now. It sounds great.
I've been recording Deadwood since the first episode this season, and it IS in digital sound.
Along the way on this issue, I found out from Kenwood support that the difference between digital and non-digital sound is that non-digital uses the surround speakers about 30% and digital uses the surround speakers 60%.

Yeah, more than once now, I thought someone was outside, or something fell over or someone was knocking, when it was the surround speakers. Cool.

 

[haertig]

Along the way on this issue, I found out from Kenwood support that the difference between digital and non-digital sound is that non-digital uses the surround speakers about 30% and digital uses the surround speakers 60%.

I wouldn't know, but this sounds reasonable. Depends on how they mixed the soundtrack. Some movies in digital rarely use the rears. These are usually a dissappointment to me. I don't necessarily go for the super load explosions. Many people seem to equate loud nondescript explosions with Dolby Digital. Directional sounds are much more entertaining for me.

The big difference I think is that analog (ProLogic) only has "rear" whereas the digital formats (DD, DTS) have "left rear" and "right rear". I believe there is a "center rear" format now as well, although I don't have it. Also, with analog ProLogic, you can tell "it's kindof coming from the left", etc. With digital, the sound placement can be very precise and very clear. With analog ProLogic you could easily get by putting money into your center and left/right front speakers, and go cheap on the rears, since rears were more or less just ambience. With digital, you want to up the quality if the rears as well, if you can afford it. Also, it's more important to match the sound characteristics of the rears with the fronts. Different "colors" of sound are more evident with digital. But I'm talking somewhat hypocritically here. My fronts and center are very good quality and matched well. My rears are fairly well matched in "color" with the fronts, but they're not of the same quality. They don't have the bass response of the fronts. Many boxed systems these days come with five identical (?) small speakers and a subwoofer. Well matched, but pretty much zilch bass response outside the subwoofer. This works very well for a great majority of movies, where it's not important where that big explosion of bass comes from (precise location). You miss out a bit on something like Saving Private Ryan where the explosions come from different directions, at least in the DTS version they do. But most movies don't have much directional bass AFAIK, so the point is more an academic one than a practical one.

I think the digital sound effect I like most is well done rain, or a good clap of thunder that echoes and trails off in some direction. Fools me every dang time!

 

[Ally68]

There is an easy answer dish does not broadcast anything in 5.1 only like some movie channels so your reciever will never detect 5.1 or dolby digital you can still use your optical out to transfer the audio to your reciver but it will not switch to true multichanel 5.1 because dish only bradcast some ppv and like 2 movie channels in true 5.1. all other is pcm.

 

[Uncle Flappy]

I have found that most of the audio broadcast on Dish is PCM. I have not experienced any DD 5.1 or DTS on any regular "America's Top-120" channels; it seems to be limited to some Pay-Per-View channels and a few subscription channels.

- Flappy