7.1 surround test, MX121


I have a new to me McIntosh MX121. I am getting sound out of my rears when I do test tones and with when I use the multi channel music mode. However, when I play 7.1 movie content, I get no sound out of the rears.

I’m not sure if this is because for the scenes I’m testing no sound is coded to the rears, or if something is off in the processor or my set-up.

I believe all the YouTube and Spotify Dolby test tracks are actually only in stereo.

Any suggestions on a way to feed a known 7.1 signal from my Apple TV into the processor as a test. Maybe a scene in a particular movie?

w123ale

Make sure you have configured your processor correctly and that you have the right speaker configuration applied to the source.

Some AVR’s let you set up a speaker configuration by source, so input1- stereo, input 3- 7.1, and if you don’t have that mapped correctly you won’t get anywhere.

Make sure you connect your AppleTV directly to your receiver for this testing.  If you route through your TV first you may have misset HDMI / ARC settings.

Most movies streamed are actually in Dolby Digital 5.1, and some are even in Dolby Digital 2.0 (basically stereo). The movie itself has to be encoded to have 8 discrete channels for 7.1 content. If you can’t find any movies on streaming, maybe buy or rent a bluray from this list:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=159814

I believe Netflix only has 5.1 content, but some stuff from Amazon Prime supports up to 7.1.