02 5 Minute Guide; Introduction To Home Theater; Setting Up For Surround Sound - Pioneer VSX-AX5Ai-G Operating Instructions Manual

5 minute guide
Chapter 2:
5 minute guide

Introduction to home theater

You are probably used to using stereo equipment to listen to music, but may not be used to home theater systems that
give you many more options (such as surround sound) when listening to soundtracks.
Home theater refers to the use of multiple audio tracks to create a surround sound effect, making you feel like you're
in the middle of the action or concert. The surround sound you get from a home theater system depends not only on
the speakers you have set up in your room, but also on the source and the sound settings of the receiver.
DVD-Video has become the basic source material for home theater due to its size, quality, and ease of use. Depending
on the DVD, you can have up to seven different audio tracks coming from one disc, all of them being sent to different
speakers in your system. This is what creates a surround sound effect and gives you the feeling of 'being there'.
This receiver will automatically decode Dolby Digital, DTS, or Dolby Surround DVD-Video discs, according to your
speaker setup. In most cases, you won't have to make changes for realistic surround sound, but other possibilities (like
listening to a CD with multichannel surround sound) are explained in Listening to your system on page 38.

Setting up for Surround Sound

This receiver was designed with the easiest possible setup in mind, so with the following quick setup guide, you should
have your system hooked up for surround sound in no time at all. In most cases, you can simply leave the receiver in
the default settings.
Be sure to complete all connections before connecting this unit to the AC power source.
1 Hook up your DVD player.
For surround sound, you'll want to hook up using a digital connection from the DVD player to the receiver. You can do
this with either a coaxial, or an optical connection (you don't need to connect both). If you hook up using an optical
cable, you should refer to The Input Assign menu on page 81 to assign the optical input to DVD/LD.
Use a standard RCA video cable to connect your DVD player video output to the receiver using the jacks shown below.
2 Hook up your TV.
Use a standard RCA video cable to connect your receiver to the TV using the jacks as shown below.
Optical cable
Coaxial digital
audio cable
DIGITAL OUT
DVD player
VIDEO OUT
S400
S400
S
Standard RCA
video cable
VIDEO IN
TV
Standard RCA
CENTER
CE
video cable
SELECTABLE
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