Just purchased a brand new set of Polk speakers today. 2 mains, 2 surrounds, a center and a subwoofer. I have never had a center speaker hooked up to my Yamaha HTR-5240 before so I was pretty excited about finally getting a 5.1 setup. Anyway, upon hooking everything up (and doublechecking everything afterwards) it became clear that my center speaker didn't sound right and upon inspection, it was low in volume and very muffled. I thought it was blown at first but I took it out and rehooked it via my main speaker out and the center speaker was fine. I then took one of my main speakers and ran it through my center out and sure enough, it's low and muffled.

Can my receiver have one fried channel? Even though I've never hooked it up before? I had never hooked up a sub to the receiver either and it was fine. This is weird to me because I have never had a single moment's problem with this receiver before this. Anybody?

Before you do anything else run the EQ setup again.

Before you do anything else run the EQ setup again.

I'm sorry...I'm kind of a noob about this. What do you mean "run the EQ setup again"?

Go through your receivers setup menu and make sure the center channel is enabled and the volume for that channel isn't lower than the rest...

Running the auto EQ does this process automatically... if that's what your receiver has...

I've just given the manual for your Yamaha a quick read and you do not have an auto setup.

You've already ruled out a speaker problem so you should re-read the manual and go through the setup again. Check to see that you do not have the Center Sp set to none or the volume trim to minimum. Make sure that you were in fact using a program source, such as a recent DVD, that has DD5.1 and that is connected via a digital audio or HDMI cable to the Yamaha HTR-5240. Also make sure that you did not select a a Yamaha DSP option that is in appropriate for full surround- just use Dolby Digital/Normal.

Be sure and run the level setting part of setup--you will be able to get fairly close by ear.