Pioneer VSX-519V

[markstonecipher@hotmail.c]

I just recently purchased this AV Receiver and have it correctly hooked up for 5.1 sound. Both Blu-Ray and Cable box are using HDMI with audio via optical Toslink cables. My problem is Im not exactly sure which sound to use. The choices are 1:AUTO DIRECT (which includes Auto Surround/Direct/Pure Direct) 2:STEREO/ALC 3: ADVANCED SURROUND 4: STANDARD SURROUND.

/Thanks..

[MrBoylan]

I just recently purchased this AV Receiver and have it correctly hooked up for 5.1 sound. Both Blu-Ray and Cable box are using HDMI with audio via optical Toslink cables. My problem is Im not exactly sure which sound to use. The choices are 1:AUTO DIRECT (which includes Auto Surround/Direct/Pure Direct) 2:STEREO/ALC 3: ADVANCED SURROUND 4: STANDARD SURROUND.

/Thanks..

Depending which Blu-ray player you bought, you might want to use the 5.1-channel analog input on your receiver instead, if you want to take advantage of the new DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD audio formats. But if you don't have multi-channel analog outputs on your player, then optical is the way to go.

First of all, make sure your player's digital audio output is set to "bitstream" out as this will give you the best quality. DTS-HD soundtracks will go out as standard DTS 5.1surround and Dolby TrueHD will go out as Dolby Digital 5.1. If you bought an LG or Samsung player, then set it to "bitstream - reencode" as this will convert multi-channel PCM soundtracks to DTS-5.1, instead of PCM 2.0 over standard bitstream.

On the receiver, I would probably use Auto-Direct/Auto-Surround as this will just default to decoding whatever format comes from the player without additional processing.

Regards,

-Chris