Some players have an "info" or "display" button on the remote that shows data such as sample rate, bit depth, track #, codec, # of channels, etc on the screen.
Be sure to let us know if engaging the center/sub channels has any effect.
OK, I checked and it turns our that switching the center channel on or off in the SACD player menu swaps the rear channels on 5.0 disks:
- center channel off --> rear channels swapped on 5.0 disks in relation to your playback, (Birds of Fire drum roll goes in a circle),
- center channel on --> rear channels agree with yours on all disks (BoF drum roll going in X).
I do agree that this means my player seems to have a glitch that affects playing 5.0 disks. To me this is really surprising and probably might be the first reported case of such an issue. Thanks for the help in getting to the bottom of this
@sjcorne .
My Marantz is the direct successor of the fairly popular DV-9600, I would be curious to know if the same happens on that model, or other Marantz SACD players from that period.
I am certainly not ready to change my SACD player, I don't think I can easily find one with analog outs for all channels with comparable audio quality.
This means that it will be a bit of a PITA to straighten this out.
One option is to always change the center channel setting when playing 5.0 disks - unless of course the disk itself has swapped rear channels. However, I don't use a TV and don't have one hooked up to my system, if I need to make any setup adjustment to the player I pull out a small 15" TV and hook it up to the player for a few minutes. So this might be suboptimal.
The other option is to add keep the center channel in one position and switch the cables depending on the disk (e.g. add a second interconnect between the player and the receiver, pull out the connectors in the middle forward to make it easily accessible and swap them depending on which disk it is). Since I don't have a center speaker and I need the center channel mixed into the fronts this might be something actually a better option.
The biggest issue however is that I don't have any means of identifying which disks are actually 5.0 and which are 5.1. I tried all the buttons on my remote, the player menu and all places I could possibly think of and none of them shows any info about the disk.
The one thing that I will stand by is that the Birds of Fire surround mix with the front reversed in relation to stereo and the drum roll going in a circle in the counterclockwise direction is the most logical way to mix this material. Once a decision is taken to move Cobham to the rear channels and that the drum roll should go in a circle, everything else is determined by these two factors. At least that is what makes the most sense to me and that is how I intend to listen to it.