My Onkyo 605 and its Working Relationship with Panasonic's '10A Blu ray Player...

[DJ Scotty]

Hello Friends...

My system's setup is as follows:

A Panasonic 'BD10A Blu ray Player is running HDMI OUT for both audio AND video (that's all that is coming out of the player -- no analog connections, etc....JUST HDMI) to an Onkyo TX-SR605 receiver's HDMI IN (1)...from there, a second HDMI cable is going from the 605's HDMI OUT to my Sony KDS-50A2020 rear projection HDTV's HDMI IN...

First of all, before I get to "system behavior problems" I have been experiencing, can someone confirm for me that this equipment is set up properly for passing high definition video AND audio from the player to the receiver and then on to the TV? The connections I described above are not using ANY other connections -- it's one HDMI cable out from the player to the receiver and then another HDMI cable from receiver to TV...THAT'S IT...

Now...the tricky part...

I have the Panasonic's DIGITAL AUDIO OUTPUT menu selections all set to BITSTREAM except for the DOLBY DIGITAL PLUS/DOLBY TRUEHD output which I have set to PCM, because this player cannot pass bitstreamed TrueHD signals (which my Onkyo can decode) and so it must decode the track internally and send it as PCM...

The problem is, under the Panasonic's "SPEAKER OUTPUT" settings menu, there are selections for 2 CHANNEL and MULTI CHANNEL...according to the manual, 2 CHANNEL should be used when the player is connected to equipment that CAN decode soundtracks, do calibrations, etc., and MULTI CHANNEL should be selected when connected equipment CANNOT do calibrations, distances, etc., so the '10A has to do them. I of course am connected to a receiver that CAN do these things, so according to the manual, I SHOULD be leaving this setting on 2 CHANNEL...only this setting does not play back my PCM tracks correctly at all -- it sends my receiver a two channel mixdown of the track and makes me select those horrible DSP modes which I KNOW are not the right way of playing back PCM multichannel tracks...

Now, if I switch to MULTI CHANNEL at the player, I get that menu that pops up asking me to set speaker sizes, delays, etc. AT THE BLU RAY PLAYER...I did all these adjustments IN MY RECEIVER already, but my question is, when I play multichannel PCM soundtracks on Blu rays, are the speaker sizes in the PLAYER'S menu making a difference in how these tracks are sounding?

Let me break it down even further...when my player is left on MULTI CHANNEL output and I play a disc with a TrueHD or uncompressed PCM track, my receiver reads "MULTICH" as the listening mode and "HDMI/PCM/MULTICHANNEL" illuminates in small letters above it...is this correct when playing back PCM tracks?

Now, if so, let's get back to what the speaker output selections in the player are doing here...I have been told TONS AND TONS of opinions on this matter and can't seem to get the right answer -- if I need to keep the Blu ray player's speaker settings to MULTI CHANNEL in order for these PCM tracks to pass correctly to my receiver, then what should the speaker sizes, distances, etc. be set to on the player so the tracks are passed correctly....or does this even matter over HDMI? I have been told that that speaker setup menu on the Panasonic is JUST for when you're connected via ANALOG OUT -- but what about MY situation where I'm connected JUST HDMI out? Do these speaker settings make a difference?

I took the advice from another site and changed these speaker settings to LARGE for every speaker in my system last night inside the player, and watched I AM LEGEND and selected its TrueHD track -- it didn't seem to sound any different than when I had the speakers set any other way; I don't really know what's going on here, but some people tell me that I need to have the speakers on the 10A set to LARGE so that there is no "double crossover" going on before it gets to my receiver, while some say just to leave the two main speakers on Large only, while some say if I'm running HDMI only, this menu shouldn't matter because once you're switched to HDMI AUDIO ON on the player, this multichannel speaker mode becomes "disabled" but I cannot seem to get a definitive answer on what these speaker settings should be set to when playing decoded PCM tracks...

The bottom line is that I just want to be sure I'm hearing those decoded TrueHD and uncompressed PCM tracks from my '10A when they're passing to my Onkyo receiver...

Can someone please help clear this up for me?

Thank you in advance....