Apex AD-703 Read if you have one.

[poo619]

ok here is the deal. For some reason my center channel speaker does not come on when I am watching an svcd on this player. I have all the settings correct. My reciever is not set on Phantom and the center channel speaker is turned on in my settings on the player. If anyone else has this modle dvd player and are experiencing the same problems or if their center chan works please inform me. I've been through everything trying to get it to work. I dont know if my player is bad or it just doesnt support center chan for SVCDs. It does however work for DVDs. Weird huh?

[Kedirekin]

This is a confusing post.

You mention that you don't have phantom turned on, so it sounds like you know about Dolby Surround. And the fact that you mention it strongly indicates your reciever is Dolby Surround cabable.

You also mention that you have the center channel turned on in the Apex player settings, but I think this must be a 5.1 setting. Dolby Surround encodes the center and surround information into the 2 channel stereo stream. It would be highly unusual for a DVD player to allow you to selectively remove any single channel from a DS stream.

Further, because of the way the center channel is encoded into the stereo stream (it's really just any sound that is shared equally in the left and right channels), you'd really notice it if it were missing. For most movies, you'd barely be able to hear any dialog, regardless of whether surround sound was working or not.

My next comment might sound like I'm insulting your intelligence, but I don't mean it that way. I think it's most likely that you don't have Dolby Surround turned on on your reciever - at least not for the DVD input. It must be set for 5.1 digital surround, and since the input from an SVCD isn't 5.1 (it's 2.0 :D ), the reciever defaults back to analog stereo.

[Edit

Oh, BTW, I don't have a 703, but I do have a 660. I believe they're comparable - the 703 being basically a 3 disc version of the 660. It doesn't really matter anyway, as I'm virtually certain this is not a player related problem.
]

[poo619]

well the reply was quick and I thank you for that. My reciever is simulated dolby so technically its not. The dvd player actually has a digital decoder in it. In the menu it will let you turn on and off certain speakers IE: center, sub... like I said the center chanel works with regular dvds but not for svcds. I have it set up on the 5.1 chan on my reciever. Dont know what else I may have missed

[Kedirekin]

Forgive me, but I'm still confused.

When you say your center speaker works with DVDs, do you mean it works with the 5.1 soundtrack? Or do you mean it works with a Dolby Surround soundtrack? Or are you talking about the player's 5.1-to-DS emulation?

Honestly, if Dolby Surround decoding is turned on in your reciever and you don't have phantom center speaker mode turned on, you really should hear a lot of sound from the center speaker. Even with non-DS-encoded music CDs, you'll hear a lot from the center speaker if you have DS decoding turned on. That's because the DS decoder will take everything it sees in common between the left and right channels and route it to the center speaker; there really isn't any special encoding involved for the center speaker like there is for the surround speakers.

And just so we're clear, I'm not talking about DTS or Dolby Digital. Dolby Surround is an older encoding scheme (based on 2-channel stereo) that has been around since the early 80's. Not all Dolby Digital and/or DTS receivers are Dolby Surround capable.

Oh, and digital decoders in DVD players are very common. They're necessary if your player has regular stereo RCA jacks. And again, I have to think the ability to disable specific channels on the DVD player only applies to 5.1 sound (over the digital connection to your reciever). I suppose it might be possible to disable a specific channel for 5.1-to-DS emulation as well, but for a native DS soundtrack, I still consider it highly unlikely. It would require both a DS decoder and encoder to be built into the player. Of course, the point is moot, because you say you don't have the center channel turned off in any case.