3.0 Audio setup

[BassBomb]

Hello,

I have a Pioneer VSX-521-K Receiver and I am wondering whats the best to use 3.0 setup?

Should I run stereo over all three speakers, or Dolby digital? Does the receiver know that I am missing rears and therefore compensates?

Sources are Bell HD Satellite box, PS3 via HDMI

I will continue reading the manual to try to understand... if there's no "best" way to run 3.0 I could just remove the center and run 2.0

My hope is that the receiver will just mix the front and rear channels into the fronts and run in that fashion then it should work perfectly fine.

 

[alcoholbob]

If you turn off the rears manually in the setup menu, the receiver might kick in some DSP to get the discrete rear material in (not sure, but would hope so if there's dialogue in the back!)

You should run the speakers in direct mode, you definitely don't want to run Stereo x 3 or you will get some frequency nulls.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

I don't know about your receiver but I have 3.1 setup and it just down-mixes to 3.1. Just tell the receiver which speakers you have/don't have in the setup menus. There is absolutely no point in running 3.0 in stereo because you will lose the benefit of having a center channel.

 

[BassBomb]

I think it does downmix, using a test in wipeoutHD the speaker test, i could hear every channel being replicated on R/L except the C

Now I don't notice Call of Duty MW3 showing a DD signal at all... im getting pure stereo from that game for some reason

 

[BassBomb]

Oh I guess PS3 converts everything to PCM unless its a movie.

Is there any benefit to disabling PCM and letting the reciever decode a DD signal from a game?

 

[alcoholbob]

Might raise the temperature on your receiver a little more 😀