How to get 7.1...

[User Name]

I was told by the dealer that by adding a Denon POA 5200 to my Denon AVR5700, that I could achieve 7.1 sound in my home theater. However, I have no idea how to set it up and test the tones on all 7 channels.

As far as I can tell the POA 5200 will just amplify my output but don't I still need another input source to get the 2 extra channels? Is that like a decoder or another AV receiver or something?

Can someone please help and if so it's the speaker wires I'm most concerned about. The POA5200 has 2 sets of leads and my AVR5700 has 5.1 but 2 sets of leads for surrounds (same channel A&. So which pieces of the 7.1 do I connect to the AVR5700 and which to the POA5200?

Thanks.

[dougdrake]

Your 5700 does not decode 7.1, or 6.1 for that matter. Unless you are using an external source that DOES decode 6.1/7.1 you must add a decoder to the rear channels to derive a center channel (much like the original Dolby Pro did years ago with the front center channel). In this case, you won't be using the discrete 6.1 coding on the DVD, but just creating one from the rear channels.

If you want to do that, you just need to hook an old Dolby Pro decoding system (like an old Dolby Pro receiver) into the pre-amp outputs of the 5700's rear channels. Then, connect your 3 or 4 rear speakers to the terminals on the Dolby Pro receiver, which will now get to power them. The challenge that may arise, though, is that Dolby Pro receivers did not provide a bunch of power to the rears (like max 25 watts or so) so that you may not get the impact you would like. In that case, you'd need to use external AMPs (like the one you mentioned) to boost the signal to those speakers.

dd