Official Sony STR-DH520 forum - Page 2

Thank you! Its working perfectly now. Love this thing.

BB had it for $179. Had to get it at that price.

Purchased the STR-DH520 and didn't have a problem with it until the other day. I have my STB, XBOX, PS3 all hooked up via hdmi into the receiver. At first, everything was running fine, then, out of the blue, the receiver would display, LPCM 48. Nothing i did would get it to go into dolby if i was watching something in Dolby surround, nor would it go into Tru Hd 7.1 while watching movies encoded with said sound. My only option is clearing out the memory, while losing all my settings. This is becoming a major hassle. I'm wondering if anyone else is having this problem, or is it with my connections. I have a samsung plasma with anynet turned off. Not sure if any other info would be required.

Hello All,
I have the STR-DH520. I like the unit so far. But I have a configuration question that may or may not be possible.

Does anyone know if I can configure the receiver to be able to see video images (without audio) on my TV while I am listening to the tuner? I don't need audio thru the TV speakers or anything like that. I just want to be able to see video on the TV while the source is changed to the tuner.

Video Input is HDMI thru the SAT/CATV to HDMI output...

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated

Hello all.
My Onkyo finally gave up the ghost and replaced it with this. It was 179 at BB.
My question is this? Can I feed the wii into a Green/red/blue and have it output via HDMI to the TV? I know it wont upscale...

Thanks in advance!!

No. The receiver cannot transcode from one type of input to another.

UPDATE:
Now I'm not so sure. Sony website says yes, but I haven't been able to do that with component output into this receiver to HDMI.

Sounds like a setting in the HDMI menu. Set [CTRL.HDMI] to CTRL OFF and [AUDIO.OUT] to AMP. This should work.

My quick review. I've had this receiver for a month now. For paying under $200 I got good sound, but not great compared to my previous Onkyo TX-SR501. The sound doesn't have the punch of the Onkyo, but again, for under $200 it's acceptable. HDMI passthrough works fine (though there are a few minor quirks associated with it), and now have less wires hooking up my home theater. Receiver decodes all new fomats. Still fiddling to get a little better sound, but am pleased with this purchase. Give it a good 3.5/5 rating.

I use mine in the bedroom, connected to a set of JVC "tallboy" speakers, and I find the sound to be adequate though a bit muted. My neighbors would probably disagree, though...I was watching "Pandorum" a couple of weekends ago (with the system volume set at 30), and they called the police. The responding officer knocked on the door to my 2nd floor apartment for several minutes but was only able to get my attention by shining his flashlight through my bedroom window. "Man, that must be some system you've got in there!", he exclaimed with a huge smile on his face when I opened the door...then he politely asked me to turn it down a bit.

Messing around with this receiver a little more over the weekend and I found a setting that gets me close to what my previous Onkyo sounded like. I've set the decoder to HD-D.C.S. and [SURR] [EFFECT] from [STUDIO] to [THEATER]. This gave me better bass extension and little bit more treble. The only downside seems to be that surrounds get bumped up a little hotter, but that is easily remedied by going into speaker levels and turning them down 1dB. Watched Battle: Los Angeles and it sounded so much more like when I played it on the Onkyo.

Bought this amp (DH520) on sale at B&H about 6 months ago, was on super special (119$ for a 7.1 amp?? Who could resist!) and my only gripe with it is the HDMI audio initialise speed (Takes roughly 2 seconds for sound to start). I also have a weird issue where sound becomes distorted off my Acer Revo R3610 after 20 minutes of continuous playback, but I had a similar distortion issue with my old Samsung R720 amp... So I'm thinking it's the nvidia ION chipset causing the issue. Stopping and starting the video/music fixes it. I'm gonna try modifying some settings found on this thread to fix the issue though.

Thanks!

Well, I think I finally found the perfect balance for movies and TV alike with these settings:

EQ
Base:5
Treble:10
Level:
Center+5 (Martin Logan Motion 6) Have to set this higher for ML6, dialogue was a little lower than expected. This the weakest part of the 520 I can tell as I heard the ML6 on a Pioneer Elite, more crisp sound from the ELite of course. But the Sony 520 at lvl +5/6 matches it.

SW=+3

Front CRS=60
Center CRS=80
Surround-100

D.Range=Comp.Off
HDMI Control=Off
AutoStandby=Off
Surr:Effect=Dynamic

Ran Transformers: DOTM in 7.1 TrueHD and it was incredible. Sound was really well balanced. Same with Avatar 3D in 5.1 DTS. The Eglands(spelling, its the flying dragon things) at the end could be heard from every direction in the room, made my hair stand up on the back of my neck.

For an entry level receiver, alot can be acheived through some minor tweaks. Will it outpower or sound like a more expensive Pioneer Elite or Onkyo, no, but like I said, with some tweaking it can be close.

I am putting in new speakers and started with the most important, the center channel. The MLM6 is more than worth its weight. I had tried out the Motion 8, TL3 Blackstone, Energy CC-5/10, and the Def Tech 1000. The ML6 closes competitors was its own MLM8. All these were connected and reconnected for me by salesman in the Magnolia Center, hooked to an Elite SC-55.

Can't wait to get the ML Motion 2's for rears and Motion 4's for the front. (Sony Surrounds I have are perfect for the side surrounds, no need for replacement.) This receiver will do for a couple of years before moving up to something with built in 4K scaler and 9.2 or coming 11.2 systems. For $179 I paid last October, this was one of the hidden Gems in receivers this last year.

Turn HDMI CTRL:Off

Only thing I can think of. No delay here, paused Aliens & Cowboys last night it picked up immediantly.

I bought this a week ago and like it for the most part. However, I have U-Verse and for the B1G Network the sound only works on HD-DSC or the music settings, it also does this on some commercials on network TV. It says it's in Dolby Digital, but no sound is coming out of the center speaker.

Is it u-verse, the channel, or the receiver that's the problem? I have everything connected via HDMI and I have HDMI CTRL:Off

Yes, you can use the Wii component cables plugged into SA-CD/CD componet input and the left and right speaker into I believe it was the TV audio input (too hard to pull my receiver back out to check but it works). You have to assign the 2.0 audio channel to match it to the component input. I have mine setup this way and renamed the source to Wii to make it clean and neat. I'm not sure if I had another component source with basic 2.0 sound if I could have added it but I could have added component with digital sound like optical. It upconverts the component to 1080i or p and pushes through the hdmi cable.

I bought my STR-DH720HD at Costco and it did come with the auto configuration microphone which I thought worked great. I only had to tweak the center channel for my taste after the auto config process. I think the sound quality is great for my application. It may not be strong enough for a well isolated home theater experience with premium speakers but I couldn't say.

TV-Samsung UN55D8000
BlueRay-Samsung BD-D6500 3D
SAT/CABLE - AT&T Uverse
Speakers - Mismatch - Pioner, RCA and no-name

PROs
-most of the inputs are assignable and can be renamed
-does up convert component and composite inputs to hdmi output
-reasonable amount of surround sound options
-good sound quality straight off auto-config process which takes 20 sec (I have 3 different makes/models of speakers which it balanced well)
-TV GUI interface for settings is great - one negative on this below
-Auto-Config automatically recognized that I only have a 5.1 setup and disabled 7.1 extra channels


CONs
-the TV GUI shuts off source while in the menu making it impossible to compare different surround sound settings. Need to test these changes from the receiver button which is easy. In fact it would jump to my component SA-CD/CD video input when I was in the menu having been watching an hdmi source and then jump back to my hdmi source after exiting menu.
-hesitation on source switching is slow even with HDMI Auto turned off
-Audio Sync setting is not flexible enough. Only 0 or 60 ms delay options. Luckily my system is good with 0ms delay but it appears this is more and more of a problem these days with video and audio conversion complexities. My only complaint about my UN55D8000 TV is that it doesn't sync the sound to video well at all on a straight hdmi input to the TV and there was no setting to adjust this. You have to put the sound through a receiver to get it to sync through the receiver settings which I though I was getting with the DH720 but luckily I didn't need it.
-if you ask me the receiver is too automatic with resolution/frequency setting on the sources which is causing me a problem noted below. Just give me an option to force settings please!!


Possible Major CON
-Something is going on with my 3D BlueRay where the receiver messes up the display image on the menus. It is like the BlueRay drops to 1080i for the menus and the receiver still thinks it is 1080p 3D mode or visa versa or something. You can barely see the image because of static. I could only fix it by forcing my BlueRay into 1080i instead of Auto 1080p 3D mode and then I could see the image clearly. I had to do this to watch Netflix over the BlueRay player as well. Not sure where the problem lies yet on this one and I would love any advice or help.

I picked up this receiver on a great open box deal, and I've been pleased with its performance so far (considering the price), but I do have one issue:

It seems to "forget" some settings occasionally. For example, last night the receiver was reverting back to an AMP + TV audio output. I had set it to output HDMI audio via AMP only.

Has anyone experienced similar problems with settings reverting back to defaults or switching on their own?

I just got this receiver last weekend for the 3d and its started to shut off periodically. I would have a ps3 blu ray paused for around 30 mins and it shuts off. If it was on my pc hdmi and after a few hours shuts off or losses video.The only way to fix is turn to my cable hdmi and shut it off then turn on and switch back. I checked the hdmi's in and the one out and all look good. Anybody else have this issue? It may just be a defective unit since it is shutting off even on the ps3. So far love the sound, coming from a previous sony model strdg-720.

Hello,I just picked up one of these and hooked it up,it will only recognize dolby digital 5.1....everything else,DTS 5.1,DTS es ex dolby true hd and dts hd all just show as lpcm 2 channel....ive read thru this forum and didnt see a solution...is there a simple setting im missing?
thank you


EDIT...found the ssolution for me somewhere..here it is for someone else

Originally Posted by Mark.Yudkin
In your STR-DH520's HDMI Settings, set the Passthrough option to OFF or Auto and the Audio Out option to AMP.

If Audio Out is set to Amp+TV, only audio formats that the TV can process are acceptable and may therefore be transmitted from the BD player. Since your TV can't handle HD audio, but by configuration must receive an audio signal it can handle, the BD player is banned from transmitting HD audio, and you get the effect you observe.

This happens to me ALL the time. It drives me crazy because effectively 5.1 of any flavor is turned off randomly on startup of component. Sometimes if I start up my hardware in a certain order this setting will not default, but I can't nail it down.

Let me know if you find anything.

Also, I have noticed my "AV Sync=on" delay will shut off too which can be annoying since my TV has a slow processor.

Does anyone know if the str dh520 should play 6 or 8 channels at 96/24...it craps out on me on those files and trying to determin if its the receiver or the source.
thx

hello

Another interesting dilemma...

I would like to stream the audio from my sources (Blu-ray and DISH) to my Sonos ZP120.

Why, you may ask? Well, I have an outdoor HD projector that we use in the summer to watch movies on a big outdoor screen. The projector is connected to the STR-DH520 using HDMI, but the projector doesn't have speakers. However, I have outdoor speakers that are connected to my Sonos for music by the pool. By getting the audio from my source to the Sonos, I have instant outdoor sound!!!

Sonos allows a Line-In that can play:


The STR-DH520 has an audio out for the Subwoofer (which I am using), but there is an Audio Out under the Video panel, that appears to be for recording audio on a DVR device.


I connected them using RCA cables with no luck. Is there any way I can force audio through this output? Perhaps a setting in the menu hidden away?

If I split the Audio Out that is used for the subwoofer, would that work? That would not be preferred because it would be a mono output.

Once again, figured this one out.

The Sony tech support guy was a moron. However, he did give me a workaround. Although it is unclear whether the receiver CAN output audio, instead I connected the RCA cables to the Audio Out on the back of my existing HDTV!!!

The TV gets the Audio through the HDMI cable. Change the receiver settings:

HDMI > AUDIO.OUT > TV + AMP

That allows the audio to pass through the HDMI cable to the TV. Works like a charm!!!! No additional cables to purchase, and I now have audio from DISH and my Blu-ray player outside!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

People.. help me!

Using a Sony STR-DH520 7.1, HTPC setup with a Geforce GT 430 with HDMI out going straight to the amplifier.

Windows 7 does NOT detect a device that is capable of more than 2 channels (i.e., the HTPC/Nvidia card handshakes directly with the Sony TV, no matter what settings I try, which means only 2 channel!).

Under "sounds" in Windows 7, I have not ONCE seen the Receiver show up as a device. It handshakes directly with the SONY-TV.

What did you guys do to get by this, so that you could use HDMI 5.1 successfully with this receiver via HTPC?

Hi,

Recently bought STH-720 with Yamaha speakers. Ignoring few hiccups, the receiver is mind boggling. This thread was very useful in solving few of the issues i'm facing with STH-720.

Here is my setup.
STH-720 with Yamaha Speakers,
Optoma HD66 3D projector
Dell XPS 17z 3D laptop
A SD TV
Sony NMP-100

I have few issues with the receiver.

1. I'm trying to use my SD TV for the video which is not so exciting on big screen to avoid burning out projector bulb's life. As per the guide, I connected SD cable to Monitor output pin. Nothing worked. But the projector receives the output signal. Tried with removing the HDMI out cable as well. Any settings to be changed?

2. NVIDIA does not recognize receiver as 3D source while it perfectly works with the projector if it is connected directly. I can't take advantage of the awesome sound experience if I connect directly to projector. Any help would be appreciated.

3. Signal loss (already explained in previous posts. Will try that).

4. Sometime it restarts automatically though there is no voltage dip


Thanks for the help

I bought this to make an easy HT setup for my parents with Braviasync and their Sony XBR55HX929. Well everything is great except I can't get the component input to work correctly. I have a bluray player and comcast motorola box hooked up to HDMI and then I have a region-free dvd player on component 1. Well I realize this thing doesn't upconvert analog to HDMI, which is fine.

So I bought an extra component cable going from component "monitor out" to the tv so the receiver has a way to output video to the tv. So logically I should be able to switch to the correct input on the receiver, then swtich to the component input on the tv also and it should work. Well I guess logical thinking doesn't work.

If I switch the tv to component, the RECEIVER switches to "TV" input where there is no input. When I switch the RECEIVER to the input where I assigned component the RECEIVER switches to HDMI 1 where the bluray player is assigned. What? I assigned component 1 to the "Video" input and I made sure NO OTHER INPUT was assigned to component to avoid conflict. Component 1 and 2 are assigned by default to the inputs where my bluray and comcast are but the manual says these inputs are completely re-assignable which is what I did.

Sony is retarded (doesn't understand) and Bestbuy won't return it because I neglected to assume this wouldn't work in the return period. I would have upgraded to the 720 no problem had I known this so I am irritated to say the least... Any ideas? Thanks.
Someone please help!

Did you ever figure this out? I want to do the same thing with video games and my turntable but can't figure out how to do it.

Anyone connect it to a PC and have issues with the PC not finding the receiver after turning off the receiver then turning it back on? I have the 720.

If I turn off the receiver the Nvidia card can no longer see an HDMI audio device and the whole computer needs to be restarted.

I think I fixed that by turning on passthough (either "auto" or "on" works, but on feeds sound to the TV even when HDMI audio is set to just AMP). But now when I turn everything back on the receiver says "muting" and I have to adjust the volume to get sound which is going to get annoying after awhile. Why is it "muting" when I turn it on with passthrough enabled? (edit: pass through had no real effect, it still broke, and the "muting" was because I had Viera Connect turned on on my TV)

Id much rather turn off passthrough altogether since I dont use it, is there a way to make it so the computer doesnt lose a connection with the receiver after turning it off?

I was able to fix my issues with the audio being broken after waking from sleep by putting a piece of tape over pin 19 on the HDMI cable ('hot plug detect' pin). I dont know if thats a problem with the receiver or my video card but everytime the receiver would turn off Windows would think theres nothing connected and it disconnects any devices using the HDMI port, when the receiver comes back it doesnt properly reestablish the connection 80% of the time and it says "no audio device connected". After a lot of testing with pin 19 blocked I cant do anything to sever the connection and it always comes back like normal, even WMC seems to keep playing protected content when I turn off the receiver and turn it back on when before it would just crash the program.

I wish I would have googled that earlier because I remember thinking "I wish there was a tape fix" like I did on the 360 a long time ago to get it to stop resetting everytime you change inputs when using the stock component dongle for optical and HDMI for video. I didnt think it was related since you had to tape the custom 360 dongle instead of HDMI but its probably exactly the same thing, stupid hot plug detect.

Is there any workaround so that I can get audio passthrough to the tv and 5.1(dd,dts, etc) to the receiver. When I have tv+amp only get lpcm 2 channel?

Thanks