You guys are amazing to figure this out. If someone called in with this challenge I know I would not be looking for an A speaker button. (not 100% sure what it would do) and a service call would be heading out. You definitely saved a headache for this customer and for a Shaw support rep as well. I'll add this tidbit of info into my audio issue section of my brain. :) Thanxs again.

Interestingly, the CSR he got had the right answer: "a problem with the receiver." :D

Yes, he did. So I called him back to let him know he was correct and what the specific problem was. That way he can also offer the "A" button solution to anyone else that has similar problems :D

i get the odd audio dropout with some recordings. not just HD, but digital/anlogue channels aswell. does this reciever update firmware on it's own, or do you have to manually do it?

After much screwing around I hit the speaker A button and there was audio...fixed! Or so I thought. The channels that had no audio before now have audio, and even though my shaw dct6416 onscreen menu says DD 5.1, a check of my rear surround speakers reveals NO audio.

Is anyone else experiencing this problem? I suppose I should be grateful I'm getting ANY audio at all, after all, we are talking about shaw hd.

After much screwing around I hit the speaker A button and there was audio...fixed! Or so I thought. The channels that had no audio before now have audio, and even though my shaw dct6416 onscreen menu says DD 5.1, a check of my rear surround speakers reveals NO audio.

Is anyone else experiencing this problem? I suppose I should be grateful I'm getting ANY audio at all, after all, we are talking about shaw hd.

Make sure that you have invoked the correct DSP in your AVR to get audio to the rears. This is usually Dolby Pro Logic II for example, for the channels that are DD2.0 and the AVR often (but not always) picks the correct DSP for an incoming DD5.1 signal, which is only available on certain channels. Sometimes the AVR may simply be set to "stereo" or something else instead of the correct DSP. Read up on the various DSPs in the AVR operating manual and on the Dolby Website.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=17870 DD5.1

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=57741 Useful post for newbies.

Often, even though a feed is using DD5.1 they aren't using all the channels. As result, your rear speakers may be silent until you enable one of your virutal soundfield modes.

As an example... when I copied a F1 race off my DVR I noticed the stream was labelled as DD5.1. It's clearly a 2.0 broadcast though... Speed just didn't use the other 4 channels.

You guys are great! Thanks for the info.

My AVR was indicating a DD 5.1 incoming signal with these HD channels (6 little speaker icons etc...), and I had the DSP set to "Straight Decode" in order to get the raw DD 5.1 audio output sans the extra simulated audio effects. I re-checked and the AVR was definitely not set to down-mix for stereo output.

If the incoming signal were DD 2.0 my AVR would (should) automatically display only 2 speaker icons along with the "DTS Neo:6 Cinema" logo (that's how I have it set to handle incoming DD 2.0). I've never had misidentification issues with signals before so I tend to think the signal indicator on the AVR is correct.

So, as you suggested, it must either be that Shaw had incorrectly tagged the broadcasts as DD 5.1 when they were in fact DD 2.0, or the broadcasts were simply DD 5.1 mixes that didn't utilise the rear channels (to save time/money or whatever?).

Thanks again for your suggestions...great forum.