The "Official" Pioneer Elite SC-55/SC-57 Owners Thread - Page 118

I agree, the lack of a functional app is somewhat disheartening, especially with the level of publicity that Pioneer made for their app--that's why they claimed more limited remote functionality and a few other things--, but it was an excellent app, when it worked. I've been a loyal Pioneer customer for years, and they've slowly eroded my consumer confidence and respect for their products, in reliability and build quality.

I wish I knew what you meant by this. My SC-57 will play Pandora and Internet radio, so I know it's connected to the internet. However, since it quit recognizing my home PC and mobile phine, I have veen reduced to having to use a cord to plug my cell phone int to my AVR to play my music... Ridiculous... Neigher Verizon FIOS or Pioneer could help me identify the issue.

You can do more to tweak a Pioneer than Denon or Integra and I have had all 3 of them.

If you are not connecting to you server or home computer at all, you need to adjust your sharing settings. That is a pretty common issue and you just need to learn aabout DLNA and how to share files in a windows network. You can youtube that even.

If you can see your albums, but it is not scrolling down in the menu - that is the issue I was speaking to.

Understood... My issue was the AVR seeing my PC and mobile phone one day then all of a sudden the next it no longer sees it... Allshare, Airplay and any other streaming is now a no go?!? Suuuuper frustrating.

AHHHHHHHHHHH FIOS

Checkout this thread

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3897274?start=0&tstart=0

And let me guess, everything that has a problem is connected wireless through the FIOS router

Can you view movies from the Ipad to the Pioneer receivers ? if so whats needed or is it just music ? this is of course after its recognized by the receiver.

^^^

no, not via airplay on the avr... you need an appletv to do that...

Thought so, Thanks!

I'm going to ask this here & the 68 thread just in case someone has figured this out with the 68

How do you setup IP control? My URC remote database only has IP codes up to the SC-37 & I have no idea if they are same as what the 57 & 68 series will use

I'm setting the remote up for IR control but also looking at RS-232 & IP control as options.

Any help is appreciated

^^^^^^

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Support/Home-Entertainment-Custom-Install/RS-232+&+IP+Codes/A+V+Receivers

yes, I've downloaded that, all the way to the VSX-49TXi days just to see what rs-232 was about.

now, what are you supposed to do with that for IP?

write ascii scripts? or insert into an xml file? what??

it's clear as mud and I do know a little bit about networking, programming & html

You can run a telnet session and type in the commands

You can write your own program that open up a tcp/ip port and sends the ASCII commands and decodes the ASCII that comes back

You can buy a program that lets you send the ASCII commands or already has them integrated

I.e. roomie or the free icontrolav

Or iRule or something like that

Not sure if this has been covered before, if it has, please forgive me. Long time owner of the 57, can the video processing be turned on/off for specific inputs?

Here's a question for those far more knowledgeable than me!

One annoying thing with this unit is that when I need to swap sound between the TV (when I'm just watching TV), and through the speakers attached to the amp when watching a movie on my projector. I have to go into the Audio Parameters menu, scroll to find the through/amp selection and then change it!

I set up a macro on my Harmony one, and that works when I first turn the unit on, but sometimes the menu starts at a different position in the menu tree and so the macro won't work!

Is there an easier way to do this? LIke a one button press option that I'm missing?

You'd think they would make it easy to do this, as it's designed to be used as an HDMI switch as well?!

Any help appreciated!

Just took ownership of an SC-57 (new). Found a great deal from Magnolia.

Brief history came from the legendary Onkyo 805....then to a pioneer 1121k.....but wanted more inputs like multichannel analog....& maybe a bit more slam. So bought the Onkyo 3009.
Definitely more sheer power & oomph. It moved the furniture & the LFE from dual SVS subs was stronger. But the onkyo sounded dry to me. I missed the more open & airy sound from the 1121. The pioneer had that top end sparkle if you will without sounding fatiguing.

So that brings me to the SC series. Wasn't sure about the D3 amps. Did some research & got good feedback from Steve (ss9001). Very helpful. Couldn't really afford the new 68 model as I also wanted the new Oppo 103/105 .

Enter the 57. Quick observations are I love it. Equals the slam & immediacy the onkyo 3009 had but with a more airy & open soundstage. My main LCRs are Klipsch Heresey III'S. I realize the Klipsch Heritage lineup kind of has a love/hate thing with people. I love them & probably won't ever be without horn loaded speakers.

The SC-57 sounds smooth, detailed, & full of muscle. These speakers are very efficient & probably overkill to use that much power. But it sounds fantastic.

The remote is a weak point. Dang small buttons that are hard to see. Especially in a darkened front projector theater room.

I'll have more time to really dial in & tweak but just for a quick setup weekend it was marvelous.

Quick question for any SC-55/57 owners:

If one is going from a 7.1 to a 9.1 speaker set up with this receiver and you had to choose between adding 2 Front/Height or 2 Front/Wide speakers, which one would take priority in terms of achieving improved sound quality?

To rephrase/simplify: to choose height over wide or wide over height. I currently have a 7.1 set up using LCR and SL/SR and SBL/SBR

Thanks
Edited by Edllguy - 10/8/12 at 12:31pm

Personally, I wouldn't do either. Those are derived channels that IMO takes away from channel separation. While it creates a wider (or taller) sound field, it's all accidental and based upon interpreting the phase of the signals. It's certainly not part of the director's or sound designer's intention - it's simply a "trick" in the receiver. IMO, it's no better than the "fake stereo" of the 1960s.

I like front height channels in my 9.2 setup. It extends the vertical dimension of sound and is a plus for multi-channel music listening. As far as BD, I let the avr choose the format, so the DDPLIIZ is used mostly for movies lower than 5.1 or using the THX mode in movie with helicopters and things happening off the ground. Never hurts to have more options, even if you don't use them all the time. DDPLIIz is great for jazz and music with dominant vocals.

If your mains are full range capible, then don't mess with adding more speakers to the front.Keep the 9.1 setup that you have and run all of them small.

Thanks zoetmb, derrickdj1, bsoko2 for your responses to my post, much appreciated.

Would be mostly for movies (98%). Your response, zoetmb, really got me thinking in terms of directors intentions, unrealistic/fake sound etc.

I now feel that a 7.1 system will suffice for me.

Thanks
Edited by Edllguy - 10/9/12 at 1:40pm

Forget the director intention or the thing about most accurate speakers that people use for arguments. The bottom line is setting up your system to your liking. If you like it, that is all that matters, lol. I use the THX modes for a lot of the BD I have because I like the way it sounds.

I have a 5.1 setup with 2 speakers in a second room connected to multi-zone.
For some reason, when I set to multi-zone, it only allows me to source to either Tuner or USB. It does not allow me to use the Cable TV source or Playstation source - they do not show up as options when scrolling through the sources of the Multi-Zone.
What am I doing wrong? how do I correct this?

Sorry if this has already been asked- there's 118 pages in this thread, and after reading about 50, as well as searching, I'm just going to jump in and hope I don't break any rules. I have an SC-57 I bought over a year ago and never upgraded the firmware- it's still at v1-202-086-703-063... I never upgraded to v1-202-086-703-069 for the Rhapsody Subscription fix, but in this thread I saw that v1-203-086-703-069 firmware fixes some HDMI issues, and so far the only significant gripe I have with the SC-57 (besides the crappy remote control) is that I use Win7 Media Center and have constant issues with the handshaking between the NVidia card in my Win7 Media Center and the SC-57. Unless I turn the SC-57 off first and then the Win7 computer after and turn the Win7 computer on first and the SC-57 after, the HDMI pass-thru stops working, and various other things can happen from there, like the screen changing resolution until I close the Media Center app and restart it, and a few other wonky things. I thought I'd upgrade the SC057 firmware to the latest version to see if the handshaking started working more reliably but I've been unable to upgrade the firmware.

I'm using a 16g SanDisk USB2 thumb drive formatted fat32 with no other files on it except the AVR_12_0215.mem file downloaded from Pioneer. The first crazy thing that happened was I went to the PioneerUSA website and downloaded the linked file from the SC-57 page, unzipped and copied it to the USB drive and tried to update the firmware... and got a message saying "the current version is the latest..." after some head-scratching I realized that the file I had just downloaded from the Pioneer link was for v1-202-086-703-063 [ AVR_12_0202 - the Original Version! ]. I went back to the link and downloaded it 2 more times and got the same file! The same version that originally came on my SC-57. I spent a few hours reading more of this thread and searching online for another source but to no avail. Finally late last night I tried downloading from the same Pioneer link one last time, and the new version v1-203-086-703-069 [AVR_12_0215] actually got downloaded! I didn't do anything different than the first time I downloaded so the only thing I can think of is that there was a problem with Pioneer's website...

So, I got up this morning and copied the extracted v1-203-086-703-069 firmware to the USB drive and deleting the v1-202-086-703-063 firmware. When I tried to update the firmware this time the SC-57 recognized it as being new firmware, but when I tried to initiate the upgrade the SC-57 and my HDTV immediately displayed an "Update Error 5" message and halted. I had to power-down/power-up the SC-57 to respond after that. I tried a couple more times making sure that I was following the update instructions exactly, but still the same. I downloaded the firmware a second and then a third time and tried updating the SC-57 but still the same error message.

I searched and searched for what this error message meant and found nothing on the internet, found nothing, and only a non-specific mention of it occurs on page 82 of the operating manual. So now the only thing I have left is to call Pioneer tech support, and they have been less than helpful regarding this receiver in past calls. The only other thing I can think of is that I might need to update the firmware from v1-202-086-702-063 to v1-202-086-703-069 before it will allow me to update to v1-203-086-703-069, and that would be really dumb, and the v1-202-086-703-069 firmware is no longer on Pioneer's website.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? What is Update Error 5? Why won't the receiver update the firmware? Where can I find firmware v1-202-086-703-069???

In other words, Help!!!!!

As far as I know you can't put any HDMI conection through to zone 2 or 3, which means it's only good for Radio, internet radio, USB, or air play connected products (ie if you connect your ipod via airplay directly to the amp it will work in zone 2 & 3, but if you connect it to an apple TV that is connected via HDMI, it won't go to the other zones at all.) Others will correct if I'm wrong I'm sure...

With my 92THX I remember being able to play the TV to the second zone as well, this enabled me to be able to continue to hear the TV when I go to the kitchen or to set it on a music channel etc. I dont understand why the SC-57 would not be capable of sending HDMI audio to a second zone.

I'm not sure what happened to my SC-55. It was working just fine last night sending HDMI to my projector. This morning, my wife tells me before I leave for work that she can't get any video. Audio works fine (switched it to Tuner) and my projector works fine (tested it directly from a source with the same cable), but the SC-55 won't send any video over HDMI. I haven't had a chance to test any other video outputs yet. I can try that tonight when I get home.

I suspect that my grandsons (22 months and 9 months) touched something and changed a setting, but in the 20 minutes I spent this morning nothing stood out.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
David

PS The guy at Magnolia who sold it to me was really pushing the extended warranty. It's times like this that make me think I should have bought it.

^^
Before you panic check & reset your HDMI output to the correct one (1, 2 or All) that goes to your projector. If your grandson was mashing buttons on the remote, he could have changed the output from All (or the correct one) to another. The button just toggles from one to another.

Thanks for that ss9001. I hadn't thought of that. That's something I'm going to take a look at a little closer to make sure I'm familiar with it.

I did a little research online and came across an HDMI reset procedure that worked. It is in a comment on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Elite-Sc-55-9-1-channel-Receiver/product-reviews/B005JJBFJW:

1. Power off the receiver.
2. Unplug it from the wall and unplug all HDMI cables.
3. Wait - I waited about a minute, but maybe it only needs 30 seconds or even 5 or 10 seconds.
4. Plug everything back in.

This fixed it for me. Woo hoo! Now my whole family knows this procedure so they don't have to call me if it happens again .

unfortunately, no HDMI or external digital source can go to zone 2 or 3. HDMI or fiber/coax bitstream.

You can use analog, so if your TV has analog out (our your source), you can feed it back into the receiver and that can be the source for zone2/3 and you can listen to it in the kitchen

You can listen to any home media gallery source while on zone 2 or 3. So you can watch tv on zone 1 and have airplay music coming out zone 2, or airplay, pandora etc. out all zones.

But note, you can't have two home media gallery sources. So no aiplay in zone 2 and pandora in zone 1.

The manual is not very clear on this and I agree it is somewhat odd but that is the way it is.