Why are the voices coming out of the back?

[IR76]

I've got this old surround system and the voices are coming out of the rear  speakers and not the front? There are five speakers in total and the voices are coming out the opposite side of where the telly is and they are wired through the walls. I've got no knowledge of audio so any questions please ask as this is an old system. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Is any sound coming from the front? 

 

The Front of the receiver seems to be showing that its in 7ch stereo mode, so the back will have all the sound. Look at the manual to see what the different modes do, but you probably want to be in dolby prologic mode if your converting stero to surround, or the dobly digital if its a surround signal coming in.

[IR76]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Is any sound coming from the front? 

 

The Front of the receiver seems to be showing that its in 7ch stereo mode, so the back will have all the sound. Look at the manual to see what the different modes do, but you probably want to be in dolby prologic mode if your converting stero to surround, or the dobly digital if its a surround signal coming in.

Yes all the speakers work its just trying to figure out what setting is needed to get the audio to the right places unless its a wiring issue, I'll try those settings thank you

[GuiltySpark_]

Verify the speakers are connected to the correct outputs (like you don't have the center channel output connected to one of the surround). Then setup the proper mode on the receiver. In 7-ch Stereo, each speaker is going to essentially get the same thing, hence voices coming from the surrounds. 

[IR76]

Yea based on what you all have said It seems to be a mix of a setting issue and a wiring issue so I'll need to YouTube some stuff and play about with it since I have all this to figure out 

[GuiltySpark_]

2 minutes ago, IR76 said:

Yea based on what you all have said It seems to be a mix of a setting issue and a wiring issue so I'll need to YouTube some stuff and play about with it since I have all this to figure out 

 

 

I don't know how many speakers you have but in a traditional 5.1 setup there will be 5 speaker outputs which it seems you have. I see Front L&R, Center, Surround L&R connected to something, you you just need to figure out if those are the correct speakers. 

[aggie113]

Try cycling through the "modes" on the receiver until you view one that is something like "direct".  This should allow the receiver to output whatever signal it is receiving without adding it's own digital processing to it.  If this seems confusing you might benefit from looking over the manual for the receiver.

[Omon_Ra]

Looking at the pic you posted, there's definitely some wacky wiring going on there. For one, the fronts have A and B 'zones.' You'd want your front right and front left in the A section; currently one of the fronts is on what I'm assuming is A-Left, and the other is on B-Left. The center output is wired into two speakers:

 

 

I'm guessing these two pairs twisted together and connected to the center speaker terminal are the surround/rear speakers, which would explain why the voices are coming out of the rear speakers. In a typical 5.1 setup, the center channel is where all of the dialogue/voice audio comes out of.

 

The section on the far right side of your pic without any speaker wires into it I'm assuming is either a Zone 2 or surround rear/side, for a 7.1 setup. If you only have 5 speakers (1 center, 2 fronts, 2 rears/surrounds), this is something else you'd want to check in the settings to make sure the correct terminals are used.

 

Easiest way to identify speaker wires at the receiver end is to set the receiver to any input that is outputting audio (FM or radio is kind of easiest..even if it's static). You'd probably want to just use Front A, so make sure that is selected. Disconnect all of your speaker wires, and then one by one go through the pairs connecting them to one of the front speaker terminals. It doesn't matter which one, but as long as you do it one at a time, you'll be able to identify which speaker is outputting the audio. Relabel as needed and connect to the correct terminals on the receiver. Double check that there aren't settings that possibly change the configuration/location of the speakers as well.