Surround Amplifier: What do you use?

Keyplayer · February 11, 2013, 4:44am

Hugh:

Hello,
Great, hope things work out well.

If I can add a few other things to look for to be sure you’re betting the best audio through your receiver -

The desk output is probably a balanced signal and the receiver is probably an rca input. Make sure you’re not shorting one side of the balanced signal to ground, a common thing when going into an unbalanced input. If you do it will work, but quite often the shorted-leg side is putting too much signal onto the ground of the receiver, leading to low level crosstalk and distortion. Occasionally the non-shorted leg will be affected when the other leg is shorted. Therefore the wiring should be -

in-polarity leg to rca center pin

shield to rca shell

anti-polarity leg unconnected
For short cable runs this will not pick up hum.

Another item is signal level - your balanced desk output probably has a reference level of +4dBu, and the receiver’s nominal level is -10dBv. The absolute difference between these levels is approximately 12.6dB. If you’re using only one leg of the balanced signal and the output is not servo-balanced, the actual difference into the receiver will be around 6.6dB. This is fine. The only thing to watch is that you don’t drive the receiver’s inputs too hard.

Also note that most modern receivers have a ridiculous amount of processing in them. There are all kinds of dsp “scenes” that attempt to create, usually badly, a listening environment of some kind. Make sure you go through everything and turn all that stuff off.

Good luck,
Hugh

Thanks for that helpful and timely info. Once I got it working, the right surround monitor started distorting! It’s been driving me crazy trying to track down the source since the DVD’s play clear as a bell, mono signals sent directly to that speaker in Nuendo play clear as a bell and an isolated stereo send plays just fine. But when I run an entire 5.1 mix through all 5 speakers just the right rear speaker becomes unlistenably distorted no matter how low the volume. Now I’ve got a new place to look.

This is rapidly turning into a situation of just dumping the receiver altogether and pick up 3 more Mackie 824’s or maybe a smaller matched JBL system (assuming I can find one in the $2K or under range)! Thanks a lot!