How to set up my 5.1 surround sound system?

[DVA]

Hey guys, just got JBL's 610 5.1 system. I was just wondering, for the set-up/configuration of the speakers, is there a "best" way to set them up? Or is it solely dependent on the home the system is in?

 

How do you guys have yours set up?

[circeseye]

room set up is a big thing....being able to put surround speakers equally apart in distance from center sitting area to get most out of surround. but if not able to its all about speaker adjustment in the receiver settings. but then again even equal its all about adjusting the speaker settings.
example all my speakers are equal distance..BUT my backs still needed to be set higher then fronts and middle different also....backs set at +15, fronts set at +8, center set at +10.
the built in auto adjuster most receivers have to me are junk when setting it up.
another thing is sub placement....you will have to move sub around to find the best sound from it...corners are good, then a flat wall,,,  but if theres space behind or right in frontm of sub like another room or doorway bass will diminish. you want the bass to bounce

[circeseye]

also a couple site to test surround to see how you have it set to be able to hear
https://www.whathifi.com/features/11-best-film-scenes-to-test-surround-sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spoQqwDOxVI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5M5T5gHkhg&t=159s

[DVA]

47 minutes ago, circeseye said:

room set up is a big thing....being able to put surround speakers equally apart in distance from center sitting area to get most out of surround. but if not able to its all about speaker adjustment in the receiver settings. but then again even equal its all about adjusting the speaker settings.
example all my speakers are equal distance..BUT my backs still needed to be set higher then fronts and middle different also....backs set at +15, fronts set at +8, center set at +10.
the built in auto adjuster most receivers have to me are junk when setting it up.
another thing is sub placement....you will have to move sub around to find the best sound from it...corners are good, then a flat wall,,,  but if theres space behind or right in frontm of sub like another room or doorway bass will diminish. you want the bass to bounce

That's great information to have! Thanks! I have never set up a system like this before, it's always been a simple sound bar or a 2.1 system. Thank you for the information. 

[JZStudios]

On 11/19/2018 at 3:00 PM, circeseye said:

also a couple site to test surround to see how you have it set to be able to hear
https://www.whathifi.com/features/11-best-film-scenes-to-test-surround-sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spoQqwDOxVI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5M5T5gHkhg&t=159s

Those links are bad. Mad Max was thoroughly "meh." Way too hyped up about the audio for what it actually delivers.

Youtube also doesn't have any surround sound anywhere.

[circeseye]

1 hour ago, JZStudios said:

Those links are bad. Mad Max was thoroughly "meh." Way too hyped up about the audio for what it actually delivers.

Youtube also doesn't have any surround sound anywhere.

um yes they do if they dont work something is wrong with how yours is set up. i have found a lot of youtube videos with 5.1...yes a lot doesnt but they are there and the ones i  posted do have it
edit.....ok if your on a comp and dont hear surround on ones like these it might be your system not decoding it....these types of videos use aac-lc codec maybe even HE-AAC ....try this site...it will tell if you can decode it....if you cant decode it rears wont work or will be blended
https://www2.iis.fraunhofer.de/AAC/multichannel.html

 

[JZStudios]

16 hours ago, circeseye said:

um yes they do if they dont work something is wrong with how yours is set up. i have found a lot of youtube videos with 5.1...yes a lot doesnt but they are there and the ones i  posted do have it
edit.....ok if your on a comp and dont hear surround on ones like these it might be your system not decoding it....these types of videos use aac-lc codec maybe even HE-AAC ....try this site...it will tell if you can decode it....if you cant decode it rears wont work or will be blended
https://www2.iis.fraunhofer.de/AAC/multichannel.html

 

Seems like YT might have some 5.1 on Samsung TV's, but I know that on my PC and PS4 it sure doesn't.

In any case it would be a new "feature." This is why I use my PS4 to watch Hulu and Netflix because they won't support 5.1, DD, or DTS over browsers. I've heard that the HTML they use don't allow for it, but as far as I've ever read from YouTube itself, it never supported surround, but someone on Reddit seems to mention it with the paid YT Red.

 

Edit*

I haven't seen that site before, but I have tried others with surround audio (Specifically Pink Floyd's Money) and it worked. Everything on that site you linked also worked.

Still, YT, NF, Hulu, and Prime don't play back in 5.1 on PC. Tested on Opera and Firefox, don't have nor do I want Chrome. I will say that's the first site that I've seen that supports surround in video, which worked on Opera and Firefox.

[circeseye]

38 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Seems like YT might have some 5.1 on Samsung TV's, but I know that on my PC and PS4 it sure doesn't.

In any case it would be a new "feature." This is why I use my PS4 to watch Hulu and Netflix because they won't support 5.1, DD, or DTS over browsers. I've heard that the HTML they use don't allow for it, but as far as I've ever read from YouTube itself, it never supported surround, but someone on Reddit seems to mention it with the paid YT Red.

 

Edit*

I haven't seen that site before, but I have tried others with surround audio (Specifically Pink Floyd's Money) and it worked. Everything on that site you linked also worked.

Still, YT, NF, Hulu, and Prime don't play back in 5.1 on PC. Tested on Opera and Firefox, don't have nor do I want Chrome. I will say that's the first site that I've seen that supports surround in video, which worked on Opera and Firefox.

see no again something doesnt seem right here.....yea amazon doesnt do 5.1 (THAT pissed me off, they dont do uhd unless you have a actual device also), netflix plays 5.1 in a browser but not uhd video you have to use the app. yt only certain types do surround and does 4k (i think its 4k lol) but i did watch a yt red show (free) and it was full surround besides the certain other yt videos....no clue on hulu thou. hell even my grey area stream sites play 5.1 in browser.....
i play everything from my comp (dp, dp to hdmi) video to my tv 4k 60hz and audio (hdmi) to my receiver....i have comp set at 5.1...receiver is set at raw, auto surround, pcm...so basically what my comp throws out the receiver plays what its detecting
the speaker separation is there. i have no clue what can be different. i have no enhancements enabled...just what ever the show/movie is putting out thats what my receiver gets.
 

[JZStudios]

13 minutes ago, circeseye said:

see no again something doesnt seem right here.....yea amazon doesnt do 5.1 (THAT pissed me off, they dont do uhd unless you have a actual device also), netflix plays 5.1 in a browser but not uhd video you have to use the app. yt only certain types do surround and does 4k (i think its 4k lol) but i did watch a yt red show (free) and it was full surround besides the certain other yt videos....no clue on hulu thou. hell even my grey area stream sites play 5.1 in browser.....
i play everything from my comp (dp, dp to hdmi) video to my tv 4k 60hz and audio (hdmi) to my receiver....i have comp set at 5.1...receiver is set at raw, auto surround, pcm...so basically what my comp throws out the receiver plays what its detecting
the speaker separation is there. i have no clue what can be different. i have no enhancements enabled...just what ever the show/movie is putting out thats what my receiver gets.
 

Auto surround? Sounds like faking it to me.

I just have my PC straight to AVR via HDMI, so anything that doesn't have actual 5.1 only plays in whatever format it has. DVDs play in 5.1, that site you linked played 5.1, I have an album in quad that plays quad, any games that support 5.1 all play. Outside of things like the site you linked, everything on browser plays stereo. Maybe for some asinine reason you're on Win10 and I'm on Win7 so it works for you, but that really shouldn't effect browsers, and if that were the case I'd assume that test site wouldn't work.

Kind of sounds like you have a matrix mode on somehow, which my AVR won't allow since Win7 is "always" sending a 5.1 signal, just the other speakers are "outputting" silence.

 

What browser you use? If you are on Win10 I think the "apps" act differently than the browser, so surround might be supported there.

Hulu: https://help.hulu.com/en-us/surround-sound

Netflix: 5.1 surround sound is not currently supported while streaming on a computer using Microsoft Silverlight or HTML5. However, it is supported in the Netflix app for Windows 8 and Windows 10.

Prime doesn't either.

 

Edit* someone mentioned running Youtube videos through VLC, which I didn't know was a thing, but I'm not sure that "works" either since it takes stereo music and spans it across all the speakers for some reason... but when it has actual quad or 5.1 it works correctly.

[circeseye]

1 minute ago, JZStudios said:

Auto surround? Sounds like faking it to me.

I just have my PC straight to AVR via HDMI, so anything that doesn't have actual 5.1 only plays in whatever format it has. DVDs play in 5.1, that site you linked played 5.1, I have an album in quad that plays quad, any games that support 5.1 all play. Outside of things like the site you linked, everything on browser plays stereo. Maybe for some asinine reason you're on Win10 and I'm on Win7 so it works for you, but that really shouldn't effect browsers, and if that were the case I'd assume that test site wouldn't work.

Kind of sounds like you have a matrix mode on somehow, which my AVR won't allow since Win7 is "always" sending a 5.1 signal, just the other speakers are "outputting" silence.

 

What browser you use? If you are on Win10 I think the "apps" act differently than the browser, so surround might be supported there.

auto surround on my receiver is raw signal. if it comes in as stereo i  get stereo if it s dts it uses dts, if dolby it uses dolby and so on.
yea im on win 10...i only use firefox.....and no i have no enhancements on.....and only app i have to use is netflix app (just so i can watch the movies/shows in uhd)
and same games if they support 5.1 play beautifully i really enjoy hearing footsteps coming from behind me in a game lol.......

[JZStudios]

4 minutes ago, circeseye said:

auto surround on my receiver is raw signal. if it comes in as stereo i  get stereo if it s dts it uses dts, if dolby it uses dolby and so on.
yea im on win 10...i only use firefox.....and no i have no enhancements on.....and only app i have to use is netflix app (just so i can watch the movies/shows in uhd)
and same games if they support 5.1 play beautifully i really enjoy hearing footsteps coming from behind me in a game lol.......

Well then Hulu should sure as hell NOT be surround. Unless Firefox changes between 7 and 10, I don't know what the difference is.

And I edited up above that NF ONLY has 5.1 on PC through the app. If you're getting 5.1 on the browser then something funky is going on in your setup.

 

Also, Plex, I know our ripped DVDs have surround sound, but I'm pretty sure it only plays stereo over the PC on browser.

[circeseye]

1 minute ago, JZStudios said:

Well then Hulu should sure as hell NOT be surround. Unless Firefox changes between 7 and 10, I don't know what the difference is.

And I edited up above that NF ONLY has 5.1 on PC through the app. If you're getting 5.1 on the browser then something funky is going on in your setup.

yea i honestly have to clue what is different with my system. i checked through all my comp settings and again nothing is checked but 5.1....and still the only enhancements i have available anyways is room correction and loudness equalization and even then both are not enabled. very very interesting