Posted by Rich Clark on 06/30/06 04:20

<David_nj_7@mailbolt.com> wrote in message
news:1151634576.413875.15920@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
>I have a SONY DVD player that's about 5 years old or so. It workes
> well however on some of the "newer" DVDs I cannot hear the people
> talking. I can hear the music, some sound effects etc... but no
> voices.
>
> I have tried messing around with the audio settings such as surround,
> logic, dolby etc... and still no voices.
>
> Any idea what may be happening here? My TV is a stereo GE 31 inch TV
> which is about 7 years old. It works fine and we have never had any
> audio issues.
>
> I just don't understand why this is only with some of the NEWER DVDs.
>
> Thanks in advance

Somehow you're not getting the center channel. This means that your DVD
player is outputting the surround track (5.1 channels, usually), but only
the front Left and Right are getting to your playback device (which I infer
is your TV's built-in speakers). I'm guessing the player has 6 audio outputs
(Main L/R, Surround L/R, Center and LFE), two of which are also designated
for use as Left and Right (red and white) when connected to a 2-channel
audio system. And that you've connected it to the TV via these two outputs.

The player will have a setup menu of its own, and you need to tell it via
this menu that you want 2-channel output, not multichannel. Consult your
manual. Many DVDs, especially older ones, default to their Dolby 2.0
soundtracks, which is why they sound ok on your 2-channel system. Your newer
ones may not even have a 2.0 (or 1.0) track, or if they do it won't be used
by default. But all players will automatically downmix multichannel to 2
channel if you tell it always to do so via the setup menu.

RichC

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