Help Setting System up - Onkyo TX-NR905 & Dali Ikon 6 5.1

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Hi, this is my first post and I could do with all the help I can get please.

I recently bought the above equipment after seeing the excellent reviews in the magazine and hearing a demo in the showroom of the shop were I bought from.

I wanted a system that would be good for both movies and music, as my previous amplifier had broken leaving me with nothing.

For movies, I think the system is excellent and am really pleased with it. I'm not too convinced about music - but am hoping this is something I can tweak in the set up. So I have a number of questions which hopefully somebody can answer.

For movies and music I currently use the PS3. What is the best way to connect this to the amp for audio - HDMI? And what do I set the audio type to in the PS3 - PCM?

Is the PS3 a good enough device for CD playback - or is this letting the rest of the system down. If I really need a separate CD player to get the best out of this I would consider this.

I currently have the fronts bi-wired, afer the manual says speakers must be at least 8ohms to be bi-amped, but this forum seems to say it would be OK to bi-amp the fronts (6 ohms). Would this make a difference? And are the front speakers good enough for decent music, or would I be better having 2 separate speakers for music.

My last questions, is what do I set the speakers to in the settings - do I set these as full band, or set a frequency for them. If they were all full band, this wouldn't use the sub at all would it? Would I be better altering these settings dependng on whether listening to music or watching movies? And for listening to music, is the 'pure audio' the best setting on the amp.

Sorry my first post is so long and may ask some rather basic questions, but after spending what I consider a large amount of money, I would really like to have it sounding as good as I can.

Thanks all

 

[Clare Newsome]

I'm running the Onkyo TX-NR905 with a PS3, so can help you with this!

OK, PS3 via HDMI to the Onkyo for sound and vision. (To achieve this, go to the PS3's main menu, then Settings/Sound Settings/Audio Output Settings - select HDMI. )

Under the PS3's BD/DVD settings menu, there's an option for BD/DVD Audio Output Format - it should be set to Linear PCM for Blu-ray discs and Bitstream for DVDs (so the Onkyo can make the best of the Dolby/DTS soundtrack).

Re CD playback - the PS3 is good at many things, but this isn't one of them! The rest of your set-up is capable of supporting a much better stereo source - even a budget CD player like the Marantz CD6002 (£200 at Richer Sounds at the moment) would be much better with music.

And yes, the Pure Audio setting is the best on the Onkyo for music.

And finally, your front speakers are more than good enough for music - it's a superb all-rounder of a package.

I'll leave someone else to talk you through the bi-wiring/bi-amping etc, as that's never been an expert area of mine.