Help with ONKYO 606 and PS3 settings

Some people are going to disagree with me but leave the PS3 audio output on bitstream unless you watch bluray with DTHD or DTS-MA. This way the receiver can decode and "color" the sound just the way you like it, exactly how the xbox audio works. When your PS3 is on PCM, you can't use any of your receivers post processing options. Hope that helps.

Quick, easy way to check:

Put in a blu-ray movie. During the movie (not in the menu screens) push the select button. A display will pop up that gives you a bunch of different information about what's playing and how it's being played. In the upper right-hand corner of the display it will tell you what audio format is being sent to your AVR. What does that say?

I would go back to your sound settings and auto-detect everything once again. Then do as some have suggested and go bitstream to see what audible difference you may find, if any.

EDIT: you can also switch between bitstream and pcm during playback. Hit triangle and go to the A/V options and select the audio output tab. you can toggle between the two to see which produces the best sound for you.

In that case, you do not want to go bitstream. You don't want plxii. Did you use the Audyssey mike to do your set up? If you still don't like the sound bump up the rears a decibal or two manually.

Hmmm.

So we know your speakers must be set up (at least close to) correctly since your 360 isn't having problems with DD. We also know that your PS3 is set up correctly since it's sending out the appropriate audio signal.

A few other things to keep in mind:

-The HD sound codecs come out softer and lower sounding than DD or DTS. You may just need to crank up the master volume.

-There are some simple audio tweaks in the settings menu during playback. Hit triangle to bring up the menu, then scroll to audio options/settings. There are a few volume adjustments you can make.

-a good surround sound mix won't use all the speakers all the time. Your fronts, center, and sub will still do most of the work most of the time.

-have you compared your PS3's blu-ray playback to a 7.1 game? Games take much greater advantage of surround speakers than do movies. Pop in Uncharted or GT5P or a similar game that has 7.1 LPCM.

Not true. Most of the processing options are still available when using PCM, unless its a 7.1 native track.

Why not use PLIIx? It works very well for turning 5.1 into 7.1, very well I might add, at least in my setup which is the same as the OP's.

I guess so but the way I look at it, if it wasn't encoded in 7.1 in the first place, why fake it?

I have the 606, I hope you ran the automatic speaker set-up. If you didn't go back and do that. It's in the manual.

I have the 606 as well, and if you ran the Audyssey setup already, I would suggest running it again.

Is it possible that the surround and surround back are flipped when you hooked them up?

If you're asking this question, then I don't think you are spoiled - there is a problem somewhere (unless you have some really crappy satellite surrounds). I would suggest running the setup again. The other option is to play with the levels of your surrounds (or maybe your fronts are too high).

Your settings are clearly wrong. There is no way you should get pro logic 2 from a dolby digital source. Change sound field on reciever or something. Remember the ps3 has seperate audio settings, I think the blu ray settings are in the display option I can't remember but they're in a odd place. Set ps3 to PCM, games sound better and clearly blu rays sound better. I think the ps3 changes to pcm on it's own anyway when it gets lossless audio. What does the reciever display say for audio when batman lossless audio is playing. It should say 5.1(or 7.1) pcm. There was just a thread here not days ago with someone else with this near exact problem.

That is how it is supposed to be if it is LPCM. If it is LPCM, the 606 won't touch the signal. Only time you will get 7.1 from a 5.1 source is if you let the 606 do the conversion.

Also, are you expecting sound out of the back speakers instead of the side speakers? Because the back speakers are speakers 6 and 7, so if you ever got sound from your "back" speakers in a 5.1 setup, you did it wrong.

And you're getting it out of 5.1 speakers, right? If so, there is nothing wrong. The 606 won't alter a PCM signal. If you want 7.1 from a 5.1 source you'll need to bitstream it.

Nor true. The 606 has no problem adding post processing to PCM or LPCM sources, ie 5.1 into 7.1

Hit the listening mode button "movie/TV" on your remote until you get to "PLIIx Movie". You'll now have lossless 5.1 matrixed into 7.1, good stuff

Try cycling through listening options on the 606, (movie, game, etc...) some sound different than others. When I had my Pioneer VSX 816, I used to keep my listening mode on "game" all the time because the sound was richer and I'm a bass whore

Man, I need to get mine out of storage.

I feel bad about giving the wrong info (in regards to the needing to bitstream in order to augment the sound). I didn't think getting 5.1 from "multi-channel" instead of 7.1 meant something was wrong though.

I'd strongly suggest configuring your speakers for a 5.1 setup. You'll actually construct a better sound space if you don't bother with those rears. Which means, for your space it will likely sound better to setup for 5.1 rather than 7.1. You need to have ample space behind your listening position to give the rears in a 7.1 setup some room to "breathe."

I agree with the above. I basically have the same situation at my house and use the 5.1 speakers for my setup. Considering that only a few movies and games take advantage of 7.1, I don't think you'll be missing out on much. My setup sounds amazing, and I'm sure once you reconfigure, you'll notice the same.

Sorry, that's not right either. The "all channel" setting just repeats the same info from another channel (making a 2-channel stereo signal come out of all your speakers, for example). It doesn't matrix surround. In order to matrix 5.1 into 7.1 you need to use something like DPLIIx. With "all channel," I'm pretty sure you're just getting stereo through all of your speakers instead of just two.

Someone else may be able to verify this, but I am pretty certain that if you want full 7.1 matrixed by your receiver from a 5.1 signal, you have to change your PS3's sound settings to 5.1. If you leave it with the 7.1 selections, I don't think you can still matrix a 5.1 signal. The PS3's kinda screwy that way. It's not the fault of your receiver, but of how the PS3 sends multichannel audio.

As I said earlier (and this only applies to multichannel PCM over HDMI), I'm pretty sure the PS3 always sends the maximum number of channels you send via multichannel PCM. If you have 7.1 selected in the PS3's sound settings, but you're playing a 5.1 encoded movie or game, the PS3 will send 2 blank channels. If you've playing a 2-channel game (like a PS1/2 game), it'll send 4 blank channels. And so on.

This isn't a problem with bitstreaming since the PS3 just passes the raw audio data to your receiver for processing. But since the PS3 can't/won't bitstream the HD codecs, this is how you have to do it.

EDIT: I vaguely remember some buzz about FW 2.4 fixing this problem. Anyone?

That's the way I understood it too, which is why I said what I did about the onkyo not touching the PCM. I knew I played mine as is.

Yeah - uncheck the 7.1 options in PS3. The PS3 will send 5.1 to the reciever and then you can add the PLIIx processing to add the back surronds in.