So Yesterday, I got my hands on an Onkyo Integra TX-DS989 with the intent of both having an AC3/DTS receiver and to play any DTS CDs I have (the only one I could test with was Hunchback of Notre Dame, The (1996) [12354 AS] at the moment). However, despite plugging the cables in properly and combing through the settings, I can't get the DTS soundtracks to come out of my TV speakers as anything other than white noise. I checked the cables, unplugged everything that wasn't the digital out, tried the various audio out plugs on the receiver, and even tried using the tape/MD inputs to see if I could trick the unit, but nothing seems to get the DTS tracks to recognize.

This is more of a cry for help if anything since I just sank $300 for a model that came with the remote for it, but I just wanted to see if there was anything I could be missing to get it to work. Perhaps the receiver was designed in such a way that the only way to get DTS is through the speaker outputs, but I was never told this anywhere before I got this thing (not even in the manual ), so I'm beginning to get at my wit's end here! My only hope at this point is that someone here can help me clear out the fog involving this whole debacle (can you tell it sucks being stuck in a desert city like Williamsburg?).

At any rate, it's getting late where I'm at, so I'm just going to put this on the back burner and come back to it later. This isn't worth losing a night of sleep or popping a blood vessel over...

What player are you using and what cables are coming from where and going to where?
Do you have a remote for your player?

Try connecting headphones to your receiver to check if you have proper audio through them.
Also, normally in the display of the receiver a "dts" logo should show once a dts signal is detected.
(Might be not the case for your model, I am not familiar with it).
Also make sure you read the manual of the receiver, it might be just a simple thing you are doing wrong.

I happen to be using a Pioneer DVL-700 (with its original CU-DV001 remote) and for the audio, I was using the AC3RF port, coaxial and optical digital out with the coaxial lead fed to the DD/PCM port on the LD player, and one of the analog pairs (RCA stereo). My original plan was to reset the receiver to its factory defaults, then use the manual to establish the proper connections ((it took me a while to figure out what went to the TV). I was swapping out the different cables and figuring out the different places for them (including the PCM only coax-digital out that I never needed until now), but nothing worked in my favor. For all I know, the DVL-700 is simply too under equipped to output the DTS tracks in a way that would've mattered to anything else.

Also, I was able to get the AC3 tracks and normal PCM/analog audio to read perfectly fine through my setup, so it can't be a case of anything being broken either.

On most AV Receivers with multiple codecs available, there should be a button or menu setting that allows you to force what codec you want to prioritize or listen to.

I would look up something in the manual about surround formats.

Also, why are you connecting left and right audio cables of the LD player to your TV (at least it sounds like you are doing that when you said you hear white noise on your TV speakers)? All the connections should go to the AV Receiver and then you just send video only to the TV to just serve as a video monitor.


Addendum: see page 57 of the manual regarding the use of the “surround” button on the remote to choose your surround codec

https://www.intl.onkyo.com/downloads/ma ... nual_e.pdf

I don’t have a speaker system at the moment and the space/cost of finding one means I likely won’t be finding one for a while, so at the moment the TV speakers are what I’m using (in fairness, it’s a Vizio HDTV40A, which can replicate a surround system fairly accurately). And again, the other things I plugged into the receiver were able to work perfectly fine, so it stood to reason that this wouldn’t be a hassle either.

You probably should have mentioned that in the first place . That is so highly unconventional.

What set of audio outputs are you connecting the AV Receiver to the TV?

I hesitated to say this earlier but there is NO POINT AT ALL in using AC-3 or DTS without a multi channel speaker setup. Zero point. It’s totally totally pointless. If you want to use TV speakers just use the analogs.

The DVL-700 may not output DTS for DVDs but it should for LDs. Just plug is straight into your TV. The receiver it’s maximum pointless without any speakers hooked to it.

I totally agree with Zeta on this as I to continue to get my head around what you are trying to do. And basically, it is no different than simply connecting the player directly to the TV.

If you really want to experience Dolby Digital and DTS, you need to get five speakers and a subwoofer as intended for this AV Receiver. If cost is a factor, it shouldn’t be. People give away free speaker systems all the time on FB Marketplace, Nextdoor, Craigslist, etc.



Forgot to comment on this.

If you really feel the TV can truly replicate surround fairly accurately, then you don’t need an AV Receiver. But I’ll tell you this much, I have never seen a TV do what you are claiming it can do (even with fake expansion technology used on a lot of TVs). Two speakers do not equate surround sound.

1.5 years later...

Is everybody gone... OK...

It took me long enough, but I hopefully figured out where I got stuck. On the DS989, a 1/4" headphone jack can let you monitor the speaker output quality through a 2-channel fold-down. Since nobody had any footage of the DS989 online (outside of being the world's most expensive radio, anyway), I completely missed this feature when I started plugging everything up. Since this was my first time working with anything other than wireless headphones for audio and the odd bit of A/V gear, I went into a mild panic about what I was missing and couldn't figure out what I had forgotten.

As for why I'm only saying this now... the answer is just plain . After my little freakout from earlier, I largely stepped away from the forums worried about what my status would look like. But now that the forums are being integrated into the database directly, I might as well get it out now during the testing phase.

TL;DR: Everything's cool now, I was just going through some fear of buyer's remorse for a few weeks.

There is no shame in asking questions!

The only shame is asking the same question again and again, and completely disregarding the answers -- and we had a member here who was obsessed with playing DTS on a wireless stereo headphone before...

So... did you find the issue or is it still a problem?

A 2000 A/V Amp should be working normally but, by any chance, can you force DTS decoding on the amp or is it only automatic detection for Stereo/AC3/DTS?

Julien

I was able to find what I was looking for. Just need to keep a 1/4' headphone adapter around until I can get some decent speakers (and the room for it).

I did see that there is an option for DTS on the amplifier, so I think that's how you can force the DTS detection in case the receiver doesn't want to find it. Honestly, though, the automatic detection worked well enough for me that I didn't need to use it.

There is still no point, zero point, in getting a two channel fold down of 5.1 DTS. The producers already did that, they created a two channel mix and it’s the two channel Digital track on the non-DTS version of the movie. You will not get better quality stereo by mixing down a multi track digital surround version to stereo yourself. DTS LDs were only made for people with surround systems. This isn’t a gatekeeper/classist thing, it’s a technical reality. We aren’t trying to hurt your feelings. We are not “haters”. You are not being persecuted. It’s just that what you’re doing makes no sense.

You jacked up your pickup truck 8 inches but you didn’t buy bigger tires so now it’s just a great big unwieldy truck that tips over easy.

Are you the Turtle Beach guy again? You can tell us.

No, I don’t use Turtle Beach stuff. I was actually the guy who tried adding video game consoles to the database before the admin reminded me that’s not how it works around here. What happened was that the TV that I had (a Vizio flatscreen I had since 2010) had some surround option that widened the output from its speakers into something resembling surround. Since I never interacted with an actual surround setup outside of the theaters, I thought that was good enough for me. At any rate, I was able to crash course my way into how everything properly worked by myself, and just figured you needed an update now that the forums were becoming more visible.

Was there some forum frequenter that gave you guys trouble earlier? This is all new information to me, so I’m not really in the loop about anything here.

Enjoy!

=> Looking for AC3 RF to S-PDIF converter

Julien

Well, I just skimmed over the thread, and… oof, that guy looks like he was a pain. Seems like he mistook an AC3 processor for an AC3 decoder: Judging by what he was looking for, it seems he needed something like the DP870 that I used for AC3 movies before getting the receiver. If it helps with anything, I was only an active user for a few months when I made my initial post, and I had only started collecting LD stuff for *I think* a year or two, so I was basically winging everything I did. First time interacting with a forum as well, and I’ve seen a few horror stories about getting on a forum’s bad side.

At the very least, I figured I could add my finding on the DS989 to the database entry itself since the entry was almost barren otherwise. Unfortunately, next to nobody has really bothered to talk about how it worked outside of contemporary reviews, and with no real speaker setup on hand, I just had to punt out whatever I found based on what reviews I could find.