What about firmware updates? Are any available for your Marantz?
turning on the CC and LFE is a good idea
How do you check your channel assignment?
- Thread starter BeoProf
- Start date
Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:
turning on the CC and LFE is a good idea
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.
I let auto set-up check my channel assignments for me. Soooo glad I don't have to deal with these issues. Yeesh.
GL, to those who do.
GL, to those who do.
It should be clear from the discussion that this issue is not something that can be dealt with by any kind of automated setup check, cabling etc. It goes deeper than that.
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.
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Sorry to hear that is the conclusion.
Once again, check for a firmware update. Marantz may have already addressed the problem and the solution is in an update that was never loaded to your machine.
Once again, check for a firmware update. Marantz may have already addressed the problem and the solution is in an update that was never loaded to your machine.
Thanks, although the more I think about the more I think it seems to be not such a bad thing. Think about it: essentially with a flip of a switch I can swap the rear channels on quad discs authored as 5.0. In cases like Birds of Fire this is very convenient.
I think I'll just get some cheap 7" LCD monitor to hook up to the player permanently solely for the purpose of accessing the menu and doing this on the fly.
I haven't checked this yet, but I suspect turning the center on and off on 5.1 authored discs will have no effect, if that would be the case this would be a way to distinguish one type from the other.
The worst thing was not knowing what is giving the inconsistencies with the mixes people were reporting - now that I know I can actually use it to my advantage.
I have a Marantz DV9600 but it is no longer hooked up. I can tell you that it drove me bonkers when I first set it up. I was trying to use a phantom center and it wouldn’t recognize a DVD Audio stream and defaulted to Dolby Digital. I had to set it up with a center channel in order to play the DVD-A layer. So the weird operation of your machine doesn’t surprise me.
Well, it's not! And I've never had trouble with this issue. And I run auto set-up, which confirms all channels, phasing, etc. Sooo...
As I said... GL!
Kal Rubinson
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
I use a little screen app that comes with the exaSound DAC. It shows the 8 channels with bar-graphs indicating volume levels for each, even if no amp/speaker is connected to any channels. It is easy to see what is there.
Also, I use the test signal suite from OmniMic to identify channels audibly.
Good to know! I don't have any DVD-A discs, but I don't really have a way to add a center speaker in case the same issue was inherited by the 7001. Seems like their software is buggy.
Mike, BeoProf's system is legacy quad, like from the 70's, not digital. His amplification system only accepts analog signals. So there is no recourse for him with regard to auto setup.
I assume you mean this for 5.1 authored disks that are truly only 4.0, and in that case I think you are correct.
For 5.1 authored disks that truly do have center channel info, I think you will may well hear a difference. If there is CC info on the disk and the center is turned on at the disk player, the CC info will simply not be reproduced at all. If the CC is turned off at the player, the player should take the CC info and distribute it to the FL and FR at -3dB so the info is reproduced via a phantom center image. That's the standard anyway.
So Kal,
If you play a 5.0 disk, does the screen app only show 5 bar graphs instead of 6 (for 5.1) or does it always show 8 channels regardless of format but with levels that are either active or not? I ask because BeoProf's issue is knowing how the disc was authored, not how many active sound channels it includes. For example 5.0 can be authored as 5.1 with the LFE silent
Ah, damn. Well, the sympathy is still heart-felt. That would/could be very frustrating.
...but also very cool. You certainly can't beat '70s gear for looks, and some old quad amps have really neat features that you'd never see today (separate volume dials/sliders for each channel, analog VU meters, oscilloscopes, etc).
Kal Rubinson
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
The latter. All 8 bars are present but there is activity only in the one's where there is a signal.
Yes, I agree. Several of these discs feature a 70's quad mix "manipulated to 5.1" with derived information in the center/sub channels. In the case of the Jeff Beck discs from Sony Japan, the center channel contains a low-level mono sum of all four channels. Turning off the center would result in that extraneous information being doubled in the front channels.
Yes, of course - I realized that shortly after posting. I always think of quad as 4.0 and never paid much attention to the center channel since it was being mixed into the fronts. I guess that will have to change
For 5.0 discs with an active center channel swapping connections is the only option.And I thought somehow SACDs will be less fiddly than vinyl...
OK, so that is how I was playing them, with the center off - but shouldn't this mono sum be doubled in the center anyway? Either through a center speaker or the phantom center? Am I missing something here?
BTW, I'll return to the Bitches Brew and Birds of Fire polls and add a link to this discussion - I don't want to confuse people with my posts. I still can't believe Marantz had such buggy software installed on their TOTL SACD players!
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