5.1 surround sound help needed

Dale

In addition to DTC's advice, there are some really great primers at www.HomeTheater.com, www.soundandvision.com and www.hometheaterhifi.com

If you can also go to a local library and pull some back issues of Home Theater Magazine that will be helpful too.

Mark Fleischmann who is a contributing author to Home Theater Magazine also published a book called Practical Home Theater. You can get it on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1932732136/ref=mp_s_a_1?qid=1350563484&sr=1-1&pi=SL75

Hope that helps and good luck
Theo

This is really helpful, and I'm going to try a few things and get back to you. I'm currently using a Pioneer receiver and a Marantz DVD player that will play anything (except BlueRay of course). My main concern/issue, is getting surround sound from 5.1 audio discs. I think I've tried a few different configurations, and can never seem to get sound from the back. So 2 questions:
1: Do 5.1 audio discs necessarily have surround/back information, or could they be just front audio;
2: Would there ever be output options that I need to check and/or assign in the DVD player?

Thank very much for your help!

Dale.

Dale

Two things:

1) your receiver should be telling you visually the channels being used and
2) you need to calibrate/balance the audio among all channels. Newer receivers will do this automatically and older ones will need you to do it.

Not all channels are active all the time in movies so its a good idea to have a calibration disk or use the pink noise feature of your receiver to confirm audio and correct setup of each speaker.