Help! my surround sound doesn't surround me

[Laura Conrad]

I splurged and got a surround receiver and 3 more speakers, and was
expecting to be able to watch movies and cable tv in surround sound
instead of stereo.

I know all the speakers are hooked up right, because the FM radio and
the broadcast TV are using all of them.

But neither my DVD player nor the cable TV is coming out of any of the
new speakers.  

The DVD player is connected via HDMI to the TV set.  All the TV audio
outputs are going through an SPDIF cable to the new receiver, and I
assume that's set correctly, since the broadcast TV gets surround
sound.

So my guess is that it's the settings on the DVD player, which are
cryptic.  For HDMI audio, I have a choice of:

          PCM stereo
          PCM Multi-Ch
          DTS RE-Encode
          Primary Pass-Thru

I think I've tried them all, and I still get stereo, although the disk
menu gives me a choice between two other cryptic things, and maybe I
didn't try every combination of the two cryptic things on the disk
menu and the 4 cryptic things on the player menu.  But it's a disk I'd
definitely expect to have surround sound (Whale Rider), and the menu
implies that it has two kinds, and I can't get anything to come out of
any of the new speakers.  

The cable box, which I've finally seen the back of, is connected to
the TV via the Composite cables the way the installer did it.   Is
this why I can't get surround, or is Comcast just not sending it?  If
I get an HDMI cable and connect the cable box to the TV via HDMI, will
that help?

I know there's no Linux content to this post.  This is one of the
places I know people who like to play with technology, so I'm trying
here.  I haven't fired up the computer and changed cables around to
see if it's sending surround sound.  I do have an order in for a
firewire cable to connect it to the cable box, and then maybe I'll
have lots of mythtv questions.

--
Laura   (mailto:lconrad@...)
[phone] 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139  
http://www.laymusic.org/ http://www.serpentpublications.org

We had a young pitcher on that club named Jimmy St. Vrain.  He was a
left-handed pitcher and a right-handed batter.  But an absolutely
terrible hitter -- never even got a loud foul off anybody.

...he came back after striking out the second time, Frank Sele, our
manager, said, "Jimmy, you're a left-handed pitcher, why don't you
turn around and bat from the left side, too?"

Actually, Frank was half kidding, but Jimmy took him seriously.  So
the next time he went up he batted left-handed.  Turned around and
stood on the opposite side of  the plate from where he was used to,
you know.  And darned if he didn't actually hit the ball.  He tapped a
slow roller down to Honus Wagner at shortstop and took  off as fast as
he could go...but instead of running to first base, he headed for
*third*!

Oh, my God! What bedlam! Everybody yelling and screaming at poor Jimmy
as he raced to third base, head down, spikes flying, determined to get
there ahead of the throw.  Later on, Honus told us that as a matter of
fact he almost *did* throw the ball to third.

"I'm standing there with the ball in my hand," Honus said, "looking at
this guy running from home to third, and for an instant there I swear
I didn't know *where* to throw the damn ball.  And when I finally did
throw to first, I wasn't at all sure it was the right thing to do!"

Davy Jones, quoted in "The Glory of their Times" by Lawrence S. Ritter

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[Dan Ritter-2]

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 12:06:05PM -0400, Laura Conrad wrote:

>
> I splurged and got a surround receiver and 3 more speakers, and was
> expecting to be able to watch movies and cable tv in surround sound
> instead of stereo.
>
> I know all the speakers are hooked up right, because the FM radio and
> the broadcast TV are using all of them.
>
> But neither my DVD player nor the cable TV is coming out of any of the
> new speakers.  
>
> The DVD player is connected via HDMI to the TV set.  All the TV audio
> outputs are going through an SPDIF cable to the new receiver, and I
> assume that's set correctly, since the broadcast TV gets surround
> sound.

It's likely that your TV is not passing the audio signal from
the DVD player correctly. Try connecting a digital sound output
from the DVD player to your receiver.

> The cable box, which I've finally seen the back of, is connected to
> the TV via the Composite cables the way the installer did it.   Is
> this why I can't get surround, or is Comcast just not sending it?  If
> I get an HDMI cable and connect the cable box to the TV via HDMI, will
> that help?

Yes, probably not them, probably yes.

> here.  I haven't fired up the computer and changed cables around to
> see if it's sending surround sound.  I do have an order in for a
> firewire cable to connect it to the cable box, and then maybe I'll
> have lots of mythtv questions.

I thought from your Subject that this was going to be a "I
hooked up all the cables properly from my computer to my
receiver, and it still sounds like stereo!" which is usually
caused by an obscure badly labelled switch in alsamixer going by
a name like DXS1.

-dsr-


--
http://tao.merseine.nu/~dsr/eula.html is hereby incorporated by reference.
You can't defend freedom by getting rid of it.
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[Laura Conrad]

>>>>> "Dan" == Dan Ritter <dsr@...> writes:

    Dan> It's likely that your TV is not passing the audio signal from
    Dan> the DVD player correctly. Try connecting a digital sound output
    Dan> from the DVD player to your receiver.

That turns out to work for the cable box, but still no luck with the
DVD player.   Luckily it's new, so if it really turns out to not do
surround sound, I can send it back.  

    Dan> I thought from your Subject that this was going to be a "I
    Dan> hooked up all the cables properly from my computer to my
    Dan> receiver, and it still sounds like stereo!" which is usually
    Dan> caused by an obscure badly labelled switch in alsamixer going by
    Dan> a name like DXS1.

Is there a well labeled switch in alsamixer?  I know about firing up
gnome-alsamixer and pushing all the buttons until the sound works.

Unfortunately the interface on the DVD player is even worse than that
one, since you have to stop playing sound and got through several
screens to get between where you can push the buttons and where you
can tell what the sound is like.

--
Laura   (mailto:lconrad@...)
[phone] 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139  
http://www.laymusic.org/ http://www.serpentpublications.org

If you find you are serving the same thing too often to the same
people, then invite someone else instead. It is much easier to change
your friends than your recipes.

Peg Bracken

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