HELP! I'e recently gotten into higher end audio. I have a set of B&W 603 S3s for front left and front right. A week ago I purchased the B&W LCR-600 center channel (positioned horizontally). I have no surround speakers yet. Powering this setup is a Sony STR-DG600. I don't have a dedicated CD player. To play CDs I used my DVD player, a Philips DVP5960.

I'm finding that playing music from a CD sounds horrible. It's very flat, has no life, sounds as if the vocalist have their hand in front of their face, etc. However, when I play a DVD movie or a DVD of a concert (Alice in Chains Unplugged) it sounds quite nice. It's very musical, there's a ton of detail, and it's rather enjoyable.

I have my DVD player connected to my receiver via Digital Coax. I know that both my DVD player and Receiver aren't the best, but the fact that movies and HD content through DirecTV sounds good (Dolby Digital broadbast), I'm thinking that my receiver isn't the weakest link in the chain. In my opinion the weak link is the CD playback ability of the DVP5960.

What would you guys do if you were in my shoes wanting great music playback but all great movie playback. I'm not changing my speakers, instead I'm wanting to get the most from them. Thanks

In what mode are you listening to CDs? Did you do a thorough setup/balance on the system?

I'm not sure which mode it's in for playing CDs. Do you mean on the DVD player or the receiver? I only have the digital coax going between the player and receiver and it's connected to the DVD input side.

As far as the balance/setup of the system, the Sony comes with a remote to setup the timing and the speaker levels. Seems to be setup well as far as I can tell. On the receiver I have it set to AFD (automatic format detection) where it basically plays what's being sent to it. I don't have any fancy EQ settings set.

While I'm not familiar with the new Sony receivers, the older ones use DSP processing at all times. You can (used to be able to) set it to "Music/Acoustic," which is best for 2 channel, or via the "direct pass" feature which disables DSP. You might check that out.

If you have Dolby Pro Logic, Pro Logic II, Pro Logic IIx, or a similar matrixing decoder turned on in the receiver, the music will suffer from it. If the receiver has a "straight through" or similar setting, use that.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll give them a try tonight. Is it possible though that the DVD player just isn't very "musical" and that's why it doesn't sound the best?

No, not really. A DVD player doesn't decode the information on a CD any differently than a CD player.

It's probably a setting at your receiver, most likely you are attempting to listen to your CDs in some sort of surround mode, like pro-logic as already mentioned. This is fine for your music DVDs which are encoded in 5.1, but the vast majority of your CDs are recorded in stereo so you want to make sure that your receiver is in stereo mode when you listen to them.

In my opinion the weak link is the CD playback ability of the DVP5960.

Is it possible though that the DVD player just isn't very "musical" and that's why it doesn't sound the best?
No, not really. A DVD player doesn't decode the information on a CD any differently than a CD player.
I have my DVD player connected to my receiver via Digital Coax.
The answer IS 'no' but it's 'no' because your receiver is doing the decoding, not the DVD player. The DVD player's 'musicality' is irrelevant.

The answer IS 'no' but it's 'no' because your receiver is doing the decoding, not the DVD player. The DVD player's 'musicality' is irrelevant.

My bad, I should have said they both read the disc the same.

But yeah, the DVD player is not the problem.