Harman Kardon AVR 1700 Owner's Manual

Also see for AVR 170: Quick setup guide Service manual

Harman Kardon AVR 1700 Owner's Manual Manual pdf 23 page image

AVR23EnglishAdvanced Functions, continuedAdvanced Functionsmuch of the adjusting and configuration your AVr requires is handled automatically, withlittle intervention required on your part. You can also customize your AVR to suit yoursystem and your tastes. In this section, we will describe some of the more advancedadjustments available to you.Audio Processing and Surround SoundAudio signals can be encoded in a variety of formats that can affect not only the qualityof the sound but also the number of speaker channels and the surround mode. you mayalso manually select a different surround mode, when available.Analog Audio SignalsAnalog audio signals usually consist of two channels – left and right. your AVr offersseveral options for analog playback:• Stereo: when you want conventional 2-channel playback, press the Stereo button.Sound will be output from the front left and right speakers (and subwoofer, if yoursystem has one).• 5-Ch Stereo: when you want to hear stereo sound through all of the system’s speakers(such as during a party), select “5ch Stereo.” this plays the left-channel signalthrough the front left and surround left speakers, the right-channel signal through thefront right and surround right speakers, and a summed mono signal through the centerspeaker (in addition to the subwoofer, if your system has one).• Analog Surround Modes: your AVr is able to process 2-channel audio signals toproduce multichannel surround sound, even when no surround sound has beenencoded in the recording. Among the available modes are the dolby pro logic II, VirtualSurround, dtS neo:6, and logic 7 modes. to select one of these modes, see Selectinga Surround Mode, on page 22.Digital Audio Signalsdigital audio signals offer greater flexibility and capacity than analog signals and allowthe encoding of discrete channel information directly into the signal. the result isimproved sound quality and startling directionality, since each channel’s information istransmitted discretely. high-resolution recordings sound extraordinarily distortion-free,especially in the high frequencies.Surround ModesSurround-mode selection depends upon the format of the incoming audio signal as wellas your personal taste. Although there is never a time when all of the AVr’s surroundmodes are available, there is usually a wide variety of modes available for a giveninput. table A8 in the Appendix, on page 32, offers a brief description of each mode andindicates the types of incoming signals or digital bitstreams the mode may be used with.Additional information about the dolby and dtS modes is available on the companies’web sites: www.dolby.com and www.dtsonline.com.when in doubt, check the jacket of your disc for more information on which surroundmodes are available. usually, nonessential sections of the disc, such as trailers, extramaterials or the disc menu, are available only in dolby digital 2.0 (2-channel) or pcm2-channel mode. If the main title is playing and the display shows one of these surroundmodes, look for an audio or language setup section in the disc’s menu. Also, make sureyour disc player’s audio output is set to the original bitstream rather than 2-channel pcm.Stop play and check the player’s output setting.the channels included in a typical 5.1-channel recording are front left, front right, center,surround left, surround right and lfe (low-frequency effects). the lfe channel is denotedas “.1” to represent the fact that it is limited to the low frequencies.digital formats include dolby digital 2.0 (two channels only), dolby digital 5.1, dolbydigital plus (7.1), dolby truehd (7.1), dtS-hd high-resolution Audio (7.1), dtS-hdMaster Audio (7.1), DTS 5.1, DTS 96/24 (5.1), 2-channel PCM modes in 32kHz, 44.1kHz,48kHz or 96kHz, and 5.1 or 7.1 multichannel PCM. (Your AVR will downmix the discretesurround back-channel information in 6.1-channel and 7.1-channel recordings into yoursystem’s surround left and surround right channels.)when the AVr receives a digital bitstream, it detects the encoding method and thenumber of channels, which is displayed briefly as three numbers, separated by slashes(e.g., “3/2/.1”).the first number indicates the number of front channels in the signal: “1” representsa monophonic recording (usually an older program that has been digitally remasteredor, more rarely, a modern program for which the director has chosen mono as a specialeffect). “2” indicates the presence of the left and right channels but no center channel.“3” indicates that all three front channels (left, right and center) are present.the second number indicates whether any surround channels are present: “0” indicatesthat no surround information is present. “1” indicates that a matrixed surround signal ispresent. “2” indicates discrete surround left and right channels. (bitstreams with discretesurround back left and right channel signals will be indicated by a “4,” although theAVr downmixes the surround back-channel information into the surround left and rightchannels.)the third number is used for the lfe channel: “0” indicates no lfe channel. “.1” indicatesthat an lfe channel is present.dolby digital 2.0 signals may include a dolby Surround flag indicating dS-on or dS-off,depending on whether the 2-channel bitstream contains only stereo information or adownmix of a multichannel program that can be decoded by the AVr’s dolby pro logicdecoder. by default, these signals are played in dolby pro logic II movie mode.When a PCM signal is received, the PCM message and the sampling rate (32kHz,44.1kHz, 48kHz or 96kHz) will appear.when only two channels – left and right – are present, the analog surround modes may beused to decode the signal into multiple channels. If you would prefer a different surroundformat than the native signal’s digital encoding, press the Surround modes button todisplay the Surround modes menu (see Selecting a Surround Mode, on page 22).the Auto Select option sets the surround mode to the native signal’s digital encoding,e.g., dolby digital, dtS, dolby truehd or dtS-hd master Audio. for analog 2-channelmaterials, the AVr defaults to the logic 7 movie mode. for dolby digital 2.0 programs,the AVr defaults to the dolby pro logic II movie mode, which creates a 5.1-channelsurround-sound presentation from the 2-channel program. If you prefer a differentsurround mode, select the surround-mode category: Virtual Surround, Stereo, movie,music or Video game. press the ok button to change the mode.each surround-mode category is set to a default surround mode:• Virtual: Virtual Surround.• Stereo: 5-CH Stereo.• Movie: Logic 7 Movie.• Music: Logic 7 Music.• Video Game: Logic 7 Game.you may select a different mode for each category. below is a complete list of availablesurround modes. (the actual surround modes available will depend on the number ofspeakers in your system.)• Virtual: Virtual Surround.• Stereo: 2-CH Stereo or 5-CH Stereo.• Movie: Logic 7 Movie, Dolby Pro Logic II Movie, DTS NEO:6 Cinema.• Music: Logic 7 Music, Dolby Pro Logic II Music, DTS NEO:6 Music.• Video Game: Logic 7 Game, Dolby Pro Logic II Game.once you have programmed the surround mode for each type of audio, select theline from the Surround modes menu to override the AVr’s automatic surround-modeselection. the AVr will use the same surround mode the next time you select that source.please refer to table A8 in the Appendix for more information on which surround modesare available with different bitstreams.