Below is my correspondence with Marantz about the SR-7011 receiver only playing two of the four channels when playing 4.0 LPCM or 4.0 MLP on Bluray and DVD-Audio
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Customer By Web (Mark Anderson) (03/11/2019 06:44 PM)
If I play a 4.0 recording via HDMI from a blu-ray player to the SR-7011 the AVR shows a 4.0 recording on the display but audio only comes from the front left & right channels with nothing emitting from the rear left and right. I have read that most if not all new receivers have this issue as the decoding chip is made by one company. I heard that Onkyo provided a firmware update to address this issue. Will Marantz be issuing a firmware update that will address this issue?
Response By Email (NJ Customer Support) (03/12/2019 11:16 AM)
Hi Mark,
Are you referring to PCM 4.0? If so, the receiver doesn't decode PCM 4.0.
Also, make sure you're using the Surround Left / Right terminals and not the Surround Back Left / Right terminals.
Customer By Email (Mark Anderson) (03/12/2019 03:08 PM)
Yes, LPCM 4.0 blurays and MLP 4.0 DVD-Audio's have been the ones I have an issue with. Rear speakers are connected correctly
Response By Email (NJ Customer Support) (03/12/2019 03:46 PM)
Hi Mark,
In that case, the receiver will not support / decode LPCM 4.0. As an alternative, if your player has a full analog pre-out, you can then decode and process the 4.0 track in the player and send the discrete audio channels to the receiver's 7.1 Ch Input. At that point, the receiver will simply control the volume and power the signal.
Customer By Email (Mark Anderson) (03/13/2019 07:35 PM)
Yes, I have been using the multichannel analogue inputs but this eliminates being able to use the room correction and up mixing.
I assume this cannot be fixed by a firmware update? I have 100's of recordings that are 4.0 PCM/MLP and am not the only one having this issue.
Do you happen to know the manufacturer and model number of the chip that was used?
Response By Email (NJ Customer Support) (03/14/2019 08:46 AM)
Hi Mark,
No, 4.0 PCM/LPCM is not something we've ever decoded in our receivers or pre-amps, so I would think it's a hardware limitation and not just software.
Regarding chip sets used in the 7011, we use Asahi Kasei AK4458 DACs and the model for the DSP chips is ADSP21487KSWZ-4B, which is made by Analog Devices.
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So I will have to live with this receivers limitations until I can find a receiver that can handle 4K video that does not have this 4.0 processing issue.