Home Theatre Help

mouttou

Hello,

Hope someone can help.

I have recently purchased a sony home theatre BDV-E190 and have a Sony Bravia KDL32U 2000 TV. I have connected the Blu Ray with the TV through HDMI cable.

My issues are:
When i play a blu ray, it works well, and the effect seems to be good.
But when i play a audio cd, the effect is so bad, and it plays only on 2 speakers in any music mode apart from Auto...but the music effect is so bad and my 7 year old goodmans home theatre was far better, which i am trying to replace. I have tried checking all the settings and nothing seems to work. I have tried calling Sony, who say that unless it specifies its an 5.1 on the Audio CD, it will work only on 2 speakers.

Also, the sound does not come through the Home Theatre, when I select TV in the function mode, so as to listen from the home system when i watch normal TV.. Can anyone help?

Or can anyone suggest a suitable system, I am more into listening to audio, but woulld want a Blu Ray, something that I can adjust the BASS and TREBLE ( not mandatory ) within a budget of £300. I am bascially looking to listen to quality music with a 5.1.

Thanks!

googler

Not sure what you want to achieve here - you bought a Home Theatre system, but primarily you want to play Audio CDs, which are Stereo items, and aren't encoded in 5.1 .......

Standard Audio CDs have NO multi-channel capability, so if you want to play one through a 5.1 system, then you either use the front stereo pair of speakers alone, to play it as it was intended to be heard, or you allow the processing within the HT system to generate an artificially-constructed 5.1 'image' for you.

If you want multi-channel music, you need to get SACDs, DVD-As, or specific Blu-Ray discs.

Lil306

Googlers post is correct. I've got a logitech z5500, it's a 5.1 surround sound system which works fine for movies and ps3 gaming, but the audio I play is only encoded for stereo. So unless you can have something which has the capability to upstream the audio to the 5.1 channels you won't hear much

googler

Sell the previous system, go to Richer Sounds, get a basic CD-based Stereo System, and run that side-by-side with the HT setup.

Lil306

googler wrote: »

Sell the previous system, go to Richer Sounds, get a basic CD-based Stereo System, and run that side-by-side with the HT setup.

Alternatively if you're prepared to sell existing system. I'd recommend selling it and buying a Logitech. You're still affected by Surround Sound but it's got upscaling capability and it allows you to listen to 5.1 on stereo and it does it quite well.

Although I currently use mine in a different configuration as a media centre because it's hooked up to a PC, if you can get yourself a cheap cd player with optical spdif out and one of these systems, it should work fine for upscaling

I love my logitech, it's got plenty of volume

mouttou

googler wrote: »

Sell the previous system, go to Richer Sounds, get a basic CD-based Stereo System, and run that side-by-side with the HT setup.

Thanks for the replies.

I now understand that the surround sound would not function unless its a 5.1. But would not the audio come out of all the speakers. Also, why would the sound quality be so bad, even if its from only the front two speakers?
Also, how why is it not recogonising my TV? I also tried to connect my old audio system to this blu ray and the sound quality becomes as bad.
When you say, buy a simplle Hifi and run along this Home theatre, do u mean, use the hifi seperately for music and use this sony to watch movies....sorry for the queries and thanks for your replies.

almillar

Why are you not hearing the TV through it? You haven't connected it, simple. You need to find an audio OUTPUT on the back of the TV - hopefully it's optical out, or it might be stereo phono (red and white). You need to connect that to an INPUT in this 'home theatre system'. Hopefully there's an input available. Then you select the TV as the source for the sound on your home theatre system.
CDs - as you've been advised, there are 2 channels of info coming from your stereo CDs, and the system is sending those to your front 2 speakers. Maybe they're not that great.
Sounds like you might want 'proper' home theatre system, as in one that doesn't all come in one box and that you can pick and choose.
If you want to listen to CDs, £300 will get you a great sounding amp, CD player and 2 speakers, no doubt. But you can manage a full on 5.1 system too, and it'll make the CDs sound better than that all in one system too.
Have a look at this for a quick choice, and remember that you can save money on speakers if you already have some - if they're good, use them as the front stereo ones, but you can use any old rubbish at the back, for starters at least...

Onkyo TSXR 309 £140
http://www.richersounds.com/product/av-receivers/onkyo/txsr309/onky-txsr309-blk
and
Pioneer SHS100 £100
http://www.richersounds.com/products/hi-fi-separates/speakers/speaker-packages
You've even got £60 change out of £300!
Would make a massive improvement to your current kit, and you've loads of scope for upgrades. Go second hand for better bang for buck. AV amps and big floor standing speakers are hard to shift (physically) so will be on Gumtree and eBay local for low prices.

fiesta04

Hope you don't mind me asking

Went to Richer Sounds but they did not have products above, but they suggested Pioneer HTP-071

Is this a good alternative?

F4

Cash-Cow_3

You might be better posting this on "avforums". Some of the people on here have amazing knowledge of connections and equipment. Helped me out loads over the years.

almillar

fiesta04 - I don't know as you haven't said how much it is against any competition, and I don't know what you want to connect it to, but it's a proper separate amp with plenty of connections, and great upgradability.
Your plan generally is to plug whatever you can in with HDMI (you have 4 inputs here) then plug the amp into the TV from the OUT of the amp to an IN on the TV. The picture passes through the amp to the TV, and the amp outputs the sound. Note that if you want Dolby Digital 5.1 out of a Sky box, it only does 2.1 over HDMI, so you would have to use up your only digital optical input on the amp for that.

InsideInsurance

It will sound so bad because the speakers are tiny.

There are very basic laws of physics involved, to make sound the speaker has to move air. The smaller the speaker the harder it is for the speaker to do this. You then have added complications of having to try and eliminate the inverse wave caused behind the cone etc.

Sub/sat systems like this are never going to sound great. They can be passable for TV/ Movie if you really dont have the room for proper speakers but even the most expensive sub/sat systems sound poor for music.

To get the music into the 5.1 from a stereo source you need to use either Dolby Prologic or DTS Neo. If the amplifier unit is quarter decent it should have a "movies" and "music" version of either of these (or both). If it doesnt then it will certainly be movies and it will sound even worse as it will try to put all voices (ie singing) via the centre channel which is correct for movies but not music.