Just can't get 7.1 off the ground

[Justinuff]

First a greeting to everyone. This is my first post, and I'm so glad I found a place to share my passion for HT, and to throw questions out there for people who have been into this a lot longer than myself to knock out of the park.

I really thought that I had a pretty good set up until I starting reading some of these posts, and man you guys don't play around. In my circle of friends I'm king in the HT dept., but compared to a lot of you it's looking pretty average.

Anyway, backgound on my system. This is my very first by the way.

Monster Power HTS3600 PowerCenter
Pioneer Elite 53 inch HD projection TV
Sony Progressive Scan 301 disc DVD changer
DTV HD Sat. Receiver
DTV Tivo Sat Receiver
Yamaha RX-V2500 receiver
Velodyne DPS 12 Sub
Infinity Beta 50 Towers for FL and FR
Infinity Beta 360 Center
Infinity Beta ES250 Surrounds

The Beta ES250s have a Bipole, Dipole, and Monopole settings. For those of you who are not familliar with this speakers, they are wall mount speakers. They are in the shape of a V, with the point of the V facing at you and the wide part of the V mounted to the wall. Each side of the V have a 5 1/2 inch speaker and a 1 inch tweet. If you select the Bipole setting and wire it seperatly (4 binding posts on the back of speaker) it can run 2 discrete channels from one enclosure.

From the beginning what I wanted to do was was mount 2 of the 250s one on my BL and BR position in my listening room. Let the speakers facing TOWARD the middle of the room play the SBL and SBR channels and the speakers facing AWAY from the middle of the room play the SL and SR channels for a 7.1 system. Theorticly I don't see why this wouldn't work.

But it's not. I have my SBL and SBR channels working fine. The SL and SR however I cannot get a signal to or from however you should look at it, (They don't work). I understand there are not many things at all formatted in 7.1 yet, but I can't even get test signals.

I have spent hours wiring and rewiring to make sure my connections are good. Also going thru my Yamaha's owners manual trying troubleshoot different settings to no avail. Suggestions, advice, a checklist of things to try, anything would be greatly appreciated.

Even though I'm probably getting the meat of my surround expeirence with the two channels that are working for me, I would still like to fully utilize what my receiver and speakers are capable of.

Thanks in advance,

Justin

[Nick M]

I run a 5.1 setup, but I'll see if I can help.

You should get pink noise using your receiver's test tones when selecting the appropriate channels. Make sure all of the appropriate surrounds are turned on. Not sure about your receiver, but my pre/pro allows/requires you to turn channels on or off during setup to differentiate between 2ch, 5.1, 6.1, and 7.1 setups. Try swapping speakers to see if its the speakers themselves. If youve done all the above, my logic would point to faulty wiring.

Welcome by the way.

[David Meek]

Hi Justin, welcome to The Guide. :welcome:

We have similar systems BTW - I have a 53" Pioneer Pro Elite PRTV, a Yamaha RX-V1 and a Velodyne FSR-15 sub.

Nick's already put my first thought out there. Go into the setup menu and make sure the SL and SR channels are activated in the 2500, then check your surround output format on the remote/front-of-receiver and make sure you have the 7.1 choice(s) selected. If that doesn't do it, check the volume settings for the SL and SR channels as they may be set to -80 or the minimum or some such. If that doesn't work, connect one of the front main speaker wires to the SL and SR connectors on the surround speakers and verify you can get sound out of them. If all these things don't do it - and you've checked the wiring per Nick's suggestion - then run it back to the dealer and have them check the amps for those two channels.

[ajpoe]

I have Bipoled speakers as well but mine do not have speakers facing toward the listener b/c they are bipoled only. You said your speakers will do bipole, dipole and monopole... Bipole means it will use the speakers in the front and back of the V and send a reverse phased signal to create a diffused surround effect. Dipoled means it sends the same signal to both the front and back of the V but it is not reverse phased... I have never listened to a speaker like this but apparently in some setups it works better. The monopole setting uses the ONE driver centered between the other 2 that faces the room. This setting is to get a direct sound setting that a lot of people prefer for multichannel music. There are probably 4 binding posts on the back because they can be biwired. But, if you are trying to run both the surround and back channel into that one speaker, that is not going to work. I think you would be best off just running the surround channels to the speaker and using the bipoled setting in a 5.1 setup and turn off the back 2 channels that would give 7.1. You cannot have the speaker play both the front and back of the V AND the speaker that faces the listener at the same time. They are just all present so you can opt for whatever type of surround mode you want to use.

AJ

[ajpoe]

I have Bipoled speakers as well but mine do not have speakers facing toward the listener b/c they are bipoled only. You said your speakers will do bipole, dipole and monopole... Bipole means it will use the speakers in the front and back of the V and send a reverse phased signal to create a diffused surround effect. Dipoled means it sends the same signal to both the front and back of the V but it is not reverse phased... I have never listened to a speaker like this but apparently in some setups it works better. The monopole setting uses the ONE driver centered between the other 2 that faces the room. This setting is to get a direct sound setting that a lot of people prefer for multichannel music. There are probably 4 binding posts on the back because they can be biwired. But, if you are trying to run both the surround and back channel into that one speaker, that is not going to work. I think you would be best off just running the surround channels to the speaker and using the bipoled setting in a 5.1 setup and turn off the back 2 channels that would give 7.1. You cannot have the speaker play both the front and back of the V AND the speaker that faces the listener at the same time. They are just all present so you can opt for whatever type of surround mode you want to use.

AJ

Ok, I did some more research... I looked at the owners manual for your speaker. What I said above is correct when using 2 of these speakers. However, I was incorrect in that they can have 2 channels combined into 1 speaker. The only time you would do this though is for the Center back(s) in a 7.1 system. This means you would have to have 3 of these speakers total. 1 on each side for the surrounds, and ONLY the surround channel going to them and then the one in the center back can combine the Left and Right rear for 7.1 channels. From your post, it looks as though you're only using 2 of these speakers so you should turn off the rear 2 channels and run a 5.1 setup as I described above. If you purchased another speaker to put it in the back, then you can combine those rear channels as it shows in the manual.