Sound Missing Using 5 Speakers and 7.1 Source

scubalab

We held our second outdoor movie night of the summer last weekend. We watched Disney's Zootopia. The BluRay audio format choices were (IIRC) Stereo, 7.1 English, 5.1 Spanish, or 5.1 French. I use my Oppo BDP-83 as the BR player and as the pre-amp/processor. I then use a 5-channel B&K amp and connect front L/R, center, and rear L/R. Had great success with this during our first movie night (Finding Nemo), but noticed that no sound was coming from the rear speakers watching Zootopia. Now, the previews on the Zootopia BR sounded GREAT - all 5 channels worked perfectly, however during the main feature, the rears stopped playing. When I switched to one of the 5.1 choices (unfortunately only in non-English languages), the sound came back to the rears.

I played around with the Oppo and originally had 5 channels active (same as I did 3 weeks ago with success). I set the Oppo as follows:

- FL - Large
- C - Large
- FR - Large
- SL - Off
- SR - Off
- RL - Small
- RR - Small

Again, this worked three weeks ago with a 5.1 source movie (Finding Nemo). However, last week with the 7.1 source only the previews (I assume in 5.1) played sound on all 5 speakers. When the movie came on, the rear speakers went silent. They came back on when I experimented with the 5.1 audio options.

The only way I was able to get sound from the rears (in English) was to activate all 7 channels on the Oppo and use the Surround L & R pre-outs. Even with all 7 channels "On" on the Oppo, the rears still were silent.

Any thoughts on why the rears weren't producing sound during 7.1 audio, but worked fine during 5.1 audio? I'm at a loss...

pkquat

I do not have this player so I am not fully aware of the setup screens. I am not sure of your nomenclature. If RL and RR meant SBL and SBR, then I think that may have been part of the issue. Generally SL & SR are your surround speakers and you always want these hooked up. In the manual on page 14 it mentions these are to be connected for 5.1. The SBL and SBR are for 7.1 and are not connected for 5.1. There is also a downmix mode on pages 61 and 62 to convert 7.1 to 5.1.

http://download.oppodigital.com/BDP83/BDP-83_English_Manual.pdf






I took a peek at the manual page

scubalab

Thanks for the info pkquat. I can't remember exactly which speakers I had started with and ended up with (Surrounds, or Surround Back). I thought I tried all configurations and even selected the 5.1 downmix. Can't remember exactly, but I'll be sure to make sure I exhaust all possible connections next time! I was kind of in a hurry so it's very possible I missed the correct combination. It was just odd that the previews (5.1 source) played fine but the feature (7.1 source) did not with the initial setup...

And, yeah, I mistakenly was calling the Surround Back Speakers the Rear speakers!

Thanks again for chiming in and your help!