Harman Kardon AVR 1700 Owners Manual - Page 23

English AVR Advanced Functions, continued Advanced Functions Much of the adjusting and configuration your AVR requires is handled automatically, with little intervention required on your part. You can also customize your AVR to suit your system and your tastes. In this section, we will describe some of the more advanced adjustments available to you. Audio Processing and Surround Sound Audio signals can be encoded in a variety of formats that can affect not only the quality of the sound but also the number of speaker channels and the surround mode. You may also manually select a different surround mode, when available. Analog Audio Signals Analog audio signals usually consist of two channels - left and right. Your AVR offers several options for analog playback: • Stereo: When you want conventional 2-channel playback, press the STEREO button. Sound will be output from the front left and right speakers (and subwoofer, if your system has one). • 5-Ch Stereo: When you want to hear stereo sound through all of the system's speakers (such as during a party), select "5CH STEREO." This plays the left-channel signal through the front left and surround left speakers, the right-channel signal through the front right and surround right speakers, and a summed mono signal through the center speaker (in addition to the subwoofer, if your system has one). • Analog Surround Modes: Your AVR is able to process 2-channel audio signals to produce multichannel surround sound, even when no surround sound has been encoded in the recording. Among the available modes are the Dolby Pro Logic II, Virtual Surround, DTS NEO:6, and Logic 7 modes. To select one of these modes, see Selecting a Surround Mode, on page 22. Digital Audio Signals Digital audio signals offer greater flexibility and capacity than analog signals and allow the encoding of discrete channel information directly into the signal. The result is improved sound quality and startling directionality, since each channel's information is transmitted discretely. High-resolution recordings sound extraordinarily distortion-free, especially in the high frequencies. Surround Modes Surround-mode selection depends upon the format of the incoming audio signal as well as your personal taste. Although there is never a time when all of the AVR's surround modes are available, there is usually a wide variety of modes available for a given input. Table A8 in the Appendix, on page 32, offers a brief description of each mode and indicates the types of incoming signals or digital bitstreams the mode may be used with. Additional information about the Dolby and DTS modes is available on the companies' Web sites: www.dolby.com and www.dtsonline.com. When in doubt, check the jacket of your disc for more information on which surround modes are available. Usually, nonessential sections of the disc, such as trailers, extra materials or the disc menu, are available only in Dolby Digital 2.0 (2-channel) or PCM 2-channel mode. If the main title is playing and the display shows one of these surround modes, look for an audio or language setup section in the disc's menu. Also, make sure your disc player's audio output is set to the original bitstream rather than 2-channel PCM. Stop play and check the player's output setting. The channels included in a typical 5.1-channel recording are front left, front right, center, surround left, surround right and LFE (low-frequency effects). The LFE channel is denoted as ".1" to represent the fact that it is limited to the low frequencies. Digital formats include Dolby Digital 2.0 (two channels only), Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital Plus (7.1), Dolby TrueHD (7.1), DTS-HD High-Resolution Audio (7.1), DTS-HD Master Audio (7.1), DTS 5.1, DTS 96/24 (5.1), 2-channel PCM modes in 32kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz or 96kHz, and 5.1 or 7.1 multichannel PCM. (Your AVR will downmix the discrete surround back-channel information in 6.1-channel and 7.1-channel recordings into your system's surround left and surround right channels.) When the AVR receives a digital bitstream, it detects the encoding method and the number of channels, which is displayed briefly as three numbers, separated by slashes (e.g., "3/2/.1"). The first number indicates the number of front channels in the signal: "1" represents a monophonic recording (usually an older program that has been digitally remastered or, more rarely, a modern program for which the director has chosen mono as a special effect). "2" indicates the presence of the left and right channels but no center channel. "3" indicates that all three front channels (left, right and center) are present. The second number indicates whether any surround channels are present: "0" indicates that no surround information is present. "1" indicates that a matrixed surround signal is present. "2" indicates discrete surround left and right channels. (Bitstreams with discrete surround back left and right channel signals will be indicated by a "4," although the AVR downmixes the surround back-channel information into the surround left and right channels.) The third number is used for the LFE channel: "0" indicates no LFE channel. ".1" indicates that an LFE channel is present. Dolby Digital 2.0 signals may include a Dolby Surround flag indicating DS-ON or DS-OFF, depending on whether the 2-channel bitstream contains only stereo information or a downmix of a multichannel program that can be decoded by the AVR's Dolby Pro Logic decoder. By default, these signals are played in Dolby Pro Logic II Movie mode. When a PCM signal is received, the PCM message and the sampling rate (32kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz or 96kHz) will appear. When only two channels - left and right - are present, the analog surround modes may be used to decode the signal into multiple channels. If you would prefer a different surround format than the native signal's digital encoding, press the Surround Modes button to display the Surround Modes menu (see Selecting a Surround Mode, on page 22). The Auto Select option sets the surround mode to the native signal's digital encoding, e.g., Dolby Digital, DTS, Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio. For analog 2-channel materials, the AVR defaults to the Logic 7 Movie mode. For Dolby Digital 2.0 programs, the AVR defaults to the Dolby Pro Logic II Movie mode, which creates a 5.1-channel surround-sound presentation from the 2-channel program. If you prefer a different surround mode, select the surround-mode category: Virtual Surround, Stereo, Movie, Music or Video Game. Press the OK button to change the mode. Each surround-mode category is set to a default surround mode: • Virtual: Virtual Surround. • Stereo: 5-CH Stereo. • Movie: Logic 7 Movie. • Music: Logic 7 Music. • Video Game: Logic 7 Game. You may select a different mode for each category. Below is a complete list of available surround modes. (The actual surround modes available will depend on the number of speakers in your system.) • Virtual: Virtual Surround. • Stereo: 2-CH Stereo or 5-CH Stereo. • Movie: Logic 7 Movie, Dolby Pro Logic II Movie, DTS NEO:6 Cinema. • Music: Logic 7 Music, Dolby Pro Logic II Music, DTS NEO:6 Music. • Video Game: Logic 7 Game, Dolby Pro Logic II Game. Once you have programmed the surround mode for each type of audio, select the line from the Surround Modes menu to override the AVR's automatic surround-mode selection. The AVR will use the same surround mode the next time you select that source. Please refer to Table A8 in the Appendix for more information on which surround modes are available with different bitstreams. 23