On 2008-06-21 18:22, milleniumaire wrote:
I have a 7 year old Sony STR-DB870 Receiver/amp and recently I noticed that while watching programs in Dolby Digital Surround mode i.e. those using Auto Format Decode (AFD) the voices of people could not be heard while music was okay. Having used the sound test mode I realised this was being caused by no sound coming from the centre speaker. My setup includes a sky+ box and dvd player, both connected to the amp using digital optical cables. All 6 speakers (including the sub) are connected individually to the amp.
Watching normal TV through the sky box doesn't cause a problem as this is not broadcast in surround sound so doesn't use the AFD mode. Also, if I connect one of the other speakers to the centre connections on the amp then I get the same problem in AFD mode so this suggests it isn't a speaker problem. When watching a dolby digital DVD I also get intermittent sound loss from the centre which tells me it isn't anything specific to sky+ or the cables.
The problem therefore appears to be squarely with the STR_DB870. Apparently this intermittent cut-out of the centre speaker has been happening a while according to my children, but I've only just experienced it. I've just had to watch a dolby digital DVD in 2 channel stereo rather than using surround sound as this uses AFD which caused a complete loss of sound (i.e. speach) from the centre speaker for almost the whole movie (I kept switching to AFD to monitor if sound was working again).
I've checked the handbook and gone through all the settings on the amp but can't see anything that might cause this problem.
Is this likely to be a hardware fault? Any idea what I can do to fix it?
Thanks.
