Official Pioneer SC-68/67 Thread - Page 35

^^
for both of you - just double checking -

do you have HDMI Control turned On in the receiver's HDMI setup menu & HDMI CEC turned On in the TV?
HDMI ARC turned on in the receiver's HDMI setup menu & TV's menu?
using HDMI 1 output on the receiver. HDMI Control isn't available for HDMI out 2 on the receiver so you have to use HDMI out 1. use the remote's HDMI Out button, make sure you select HDMI out 1 as the HDMI output, pg 80 in the manual. the default is HDMI All but you may need to try specifically selecting HDMI Out 1 since it's the output with HDMI Control.

in Audio Parameters, make sure HDMI Audio is not set to Through. If it is, there will be no sound from the receiver since Through shunts incoming HDMI audio to the TV, not from the TV. Make sure it's set to Amp, which is the default setting.

for signal select audio input signal, either try auto or manually select HDMI, this setting is on the remote, Signal Sel & described in the manual pg 60.

make sure your HDMI cable can support ARC. this is an HDMI 1.4 feature, so your cable should also be, as well as the TV.

finally, if still no sound from the receiver, I would recommend selecting another input that has HDMI assigned to it. if you check the manual, pg 47, TV is not an input with a pre-assigned HDMI associated with it. while you could change the HDMI input assignments to match an HDMI input to "TV", for now, try selecting another one, say SAT/CBL. out of the box, "TV" only as an optical dig input assigned to it so it's logical that it worked with opt.

my TV is pre-ARC, being a Pioneer kuro plasma, so I can't try this feature for myself. all I can go by is what makes sense to me from the manual.

let us know if you've done all these & it works or not.
Edited by ss9001 - 1/31/13 at 12:18pm

I can't use ARC so don't have ports or settings to share what I posted is all from the manual on how to enable it and other settings that may be needed.

1. connect the HDMI cable to the TV to receiver HDMI output 1 not 2. it will not work on output 2. input ports are irrelevant since ARC is sending the TV's audio from the TV TO the receiver, using the receiver's OUTPUT not an input into the receiver. the manual states the output to use in the HDMI section. you may also connect a cable from the TV to one of the receiver's inputs if you want to SEND audio TO the TV from a blu-ray/dvd player, etc. as you would do for normal use but do not use the TV input unless you re-assign one of the HDMI inputs from their default assignments to TV. the default assignments are pg. 47. I would assume you'd connect a BD player to the BD input, etc.

2. go into the HDMI setup menu, turn HDMI Control on. that makes ARC, PQLS available to select.
ARC will no longer be grayed out; turn it on.

3. I'm not sure what HDMI Synch mode will do using ARC. but you can set it to on, and if no sound, try it set to off. the way it's described, it allows you to control the receiver's volume & mute using the TV remote. so this & another statement about audio being played by the receiver implies that it can be on but it doesn't specifically say that it has to be on. it's possible that's if it's on, the receiver was muted if you hit the TV mute button. try both ways. what sync mode does exactly is on pg 71 and it ties the control of the TV & receiver together.

4. use the HDMI Output remote button to select HDMI output 1. it may work with HDMI All but I can't tell you for sure since I don't use ARC. for now, try just setting it to output 1. you can always try All later.

5. the other things I mentioned as possible things to check are all in your manual on the pages I listed.

you may not need to set the receiver to any specific input since you're getting the audio back from the TV not from an input per se. but if after all this, you get no audio, try changing the input to one that has an assigned HDMI, like BD, SAT/CBL. I don't think this will be needed, but just in case.
Edited by ss9001 - 1/31/13 at 2:06pm

any progress on ARC?

they are all unchanged. all MCACC settings are same as before all of the updates so far, incl the gapless one.
and I just checked again

this is not unique to Pioneer nor receivers. BD & HD-DVD (remember those? ) players are all irreversible. AFAIK, no receiver from any company had reversible FW. I could be wrong & if someone corrects me, that's OK.

but I don't recall any thread or post where said they could roll back a Denon or other receiver's FW. I don't frequent Onkyo threads hardly at all nor Yamaha so it's possible but not likely.

that's one reason why it takes Pioneer US a month or so longer to release FW updates than their counterparts in Europe, Canada, etc. in Pio BD threads over several years, various owners have supposedly been told the Pio US legal dept apparently requires Pio US to do more testing before signing off on it.

and until very recently, like either the SC-57 or SC-37 era, can't recall which, Pio AVR owners could NOT update FW on their own. you had to take the receiver to an authorized service shop to do all updates. and updates were by RS-232, flash drive & CDR, using a special utility program from Pioneer. Pioneer wouldn't give an owner an update even if you begged the answer was flatly no, with a capital N.

so it's very nice we can do them ourselves now.
Edited by ss9001 - 2/1/13 at 1:03pm

be interesting to read what you think afterwards

I hope you write down your readings or save them as another preset to compare to. you can always clear the preset after you compare. without knowing the existing settings or using a SPL meter I'm not sure how you can compare before & after objectively.

btw - along with unchanged settings, I have noticed no change in volume, I continue to set it to what I always set it for most of my viewing. just saying....

IMO, the FW update made no difference but let us know what you think

understood & I agree but AVR's are not products of the PC industry and AVR's are not PC's.

updating AVR FW is not same as updating a PC BIOS. for 1 thing, instead of updating one chip, modern AVR's have 2-3 SoC DSP's each coded to do its unique tasks and everything has to function in an integrated way with HDMI receiver/transmitter chips, video processor chips, DAC's, ADC's, preamp opamps, switching functions, decoding functions. in some respects, a HT AVR is a more complex integrated device than a PC which uses software on a blank slate CPU to perform tasks. you don't see Intel offering many updates to CPU's do you? sound cards, video cards, NIC's, any PCI Ex card are all updated by their respective companies and the companies do not have necessarily have to ensure that their subsystem update has to play nice with all the others. in some cases they don't & have to re-do their software. OTOH, AVR's don't use a CPU & software. they use DSP's with pre-embedded code that is supplied by other companies, like Dolby, DTS, THX, etc and are tightly integrated so that each one has to work with every other subsystem. A FW update for an AVR is not a one shot deal, it updates each subsystem independently. so rolling back may not be as EZ as it seems to you, otherwise, all of them would be doing it and so far, none of them do...that should tell you something

don't take this the wrong way, I'm not picking on you or your post. but it amazes me that I can go to a top model Denon, Marantz thread and typically see high level conversations about sound quality, how Audyssey works for them, sharing info on how to use it effectively, how to setup networked media sources, bass management while in Pioneer threads there's more carping about this or that, things which no company does any differently yet Pioneer owners seem more inclined to expect it to do things that NO receiver has done, or complained about things that you just don't see that much complaining about in these other brands.

why? what is it about Pioneer that somehow owners expect things to be something they aren't or have never been...just saying I can only attribute it to lack of knowledge, newcomers or thinking their Pioneer is not doing something other receivers can do when that's not true at all.

I can't recall any posts since the Denon 4520 came out about this kind of nitpicking...just a lot of enthusiasts & enthusiastic owners posting. are these models that bad that every day I read someone complaining about this or that? shoot, there's people who have to reboot their new Marantz 8801's just to restore sound and people are being very cool-headed about it, reporting glitches to Marantz and others so eventually any bugs get addressed. in a Pioneer thread, I've seen posts threatening to sue the company over not updating the iphone app!

not trying to scare you off or not have you speak your mind...but why do you expect this Pioneer model to or this company to do anything different than every other company's comparable model does? I don't see 4520 owners complaining about not being able to rollback FW. it's accepted - probably because there are now a whole lot more experienced owners with Denon & Marantz now.

peace & let us know how your reset goes.

I really am interested in what you find out.

my above "rant" is not directed to you personally; it's an observation from last several months where repeatedly people say they are unhappy about something with their Pioneer when reality is they haven't bothered to thoroughly read the manual, or don't know how HDMI works in a receiver or expected to be able to use it in way no receiver does. These kind of posts have been pretty common in Pioneer threads. it's amazing really. are there that many uninformed people buying Pioneer? it can't be that these are that glitchy..because I just don't see some of these kinds of issues with multiple Pioneer receivers I've owned. everything that I've tried to do with them just works exactly the way it's described in the manual

every Pioneer I've owned has been stable, glitch-free, no HDMI problems, hasn't failed or not done something it should have done. why am I so lucky when others seem determined that theirs doesn't work right

like ARC, I'd like to try it out just to prove to myself it does work...but my TV doesn't support it. you notice the guy who had problems just disappeared after my advice on what settings to check...did he get it to work or not? this would be nice to know. o well.
Edited by ss9001 - 2/1/13 at 4:03pm

in a nutshell, the sound quality is great! and I've owned 4 flagships from Pioneer, incl the discontinued $7000 SC-09. this holds its own vs all of them. there are members here like Filmmixer who hasn't been here recently, bbear & others who really know their stuff on computer audio, far more than I'll ever know, who have discussed audio quality.

and if you go back to the beginning of the thread, I did post initial impressions & subjective comparisons trying PQLS, USB-DAC, the new surround formats, and others.

but I wish this thread had more people who shared their listening observations and posted about them.

here's several reviews you can check out, several are from Europe (UK & German) on the SC-LX86, their equivalent to the SC-68, very informative, but you'll have to do some translation, plus the recent ones from Home Theater Mag & HomeTheaterHiFi. I'll post all the links:

http://www.hometheater.com/content/pioneer-elite-sc-68-av-receiver
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/receivers/receivers-reviews/pioneer-sc68-receiver.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Of7QJPDC-E

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.areadvd.de/hardware/2012/pioneer_sc_lx86.shtml&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsc-lx86%2Breview%26start%3D20%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DIH3%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26channel%3Dnp%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D629%26prmd%3Dimvns&sa=X&ei=EyJbUMu8LoKs8AT8joFQ&ved=0CDMQ7gEwAjgU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_tRCMDj1tM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEnkJhDvmxg

http://www.meetgadget.com/gadget/60831/Pioneer+SC-LX86/videos/video/4Of7QJPDC-E
http://www.whathifi.com/review/sc-lx86

the German YouTube reviews are interesting if you use the rough YouTube translation tool, very detailed analysis of sound. this reviewer also has one comparing the SC-68 (LX86) to the Denon 4520 & Onkyo 5010.

every one of these has been overwhelmingly positive about audio performance & sound quality.

does this help or is there something specific you want to know?
Edited by ss9001 - 2/1/13 at 7:03pm

^^
yes I know but I was trying to make a point In my PC building days, I do remember Intel having various CPU utilities & updates. but you are correct, sir. thanks for keeping me honest

congratulations!!
when you get it hooked up, let us know what you think. what speakers will you be using?

of course they are. you're very correct about how PC's/OS's/cards are done. I've built my share of PC's, installed OS's and taken cert classes, too

but I repeat, receivers are not PC's and the CE industry is not the PC industry. and DSP's with embedded code are not the same as CPU's.

why doesn't ANY company do rollbacks for any receiver or any player for that matter? why single out Pioneer for not doing something no CE does? not even Oppo, with its reputation for rapid FW updates, bug fixes and attentiveness to customers reporting issues, do FW rollbacks on their BD players.

maybe someday companies will make it possible for rollbacks in receivers.
Edited by ss9001 - 2/3/13 at 4:19am

thanks for the correction. I own the 93 & knew that it couldn't be rolled back, but it already has those streaming services built-in so makes sense now. sorry I made an assumption

sometimes I do make mistakes when I do, I have no problems saying so.
Edited by ss9001 - 2/3/13 at 5:11am

yes and it's $9000
thanks, Film for the correction.