When I left this
saga yesterday at this time, I had two main problems:
- How to connect the subwoofer? This turned out to be pretty
easy. The connection labeled “subwoofer” on the new receiver is
just an RCA cable, and should go to the connection labeled “from
mono out” on the subwoofer, which I hadn’t been using so I’d
forgotten about it. So the real problem was finding an RCA
cable long enough and realizing that I needed to flip the switch
to tell the subwoofer it was connected via the RCA cable and not
the speaker wires. - How to connect the TV set to the receiver so that surround
sound comes out of the TV and into the receiver? This turned
out to be very complicated.
I had what I thought were several of the right kind of cable,
but they all turned out to be TOS-Link to Mini-TOS-link, and I
needed a TOS-link to TOS-link cable. I bought one at
MicroCenter on my way to my recorder lesson last night, and
hooked it up this morning. This led to lots of playing with
options on all kinds of devices. The bottom line is:
- I get surround sound on Broadcast TV.
- I get stereo on Cable TV.
- I get stereo from the shiny new disk player.
I have checked with expert opinion, and the consensus is that
the TV set is behaving badly, and I shouldn’t depend on it to
pass through audio that it’s given from external devices.
So the upshot is that I’ve ordered several more HDMI cables
from monoprice, and when
they come, I will hook everything up through the receiver and
have it handle all the sound.
So unless broadcast TV plays something good, I still won’t be
able to tell you how I like surround sound until I get my new
cables.
Note that I haven’t addressed the issue of connecting the
computer, and I haven’t even started setting up the remote
control.
So if you’re thinking this is a small project, at least order
enough HDMI cables with your receiver. Maybe it would all “just
work” if I had done that.
LayMusic.org 