Harman Kardon AVR 146 with no surround speakers?

Question

If we set up the Harman Kardon AVR 146 with only left, center and right channels (and subwoofer) but no surround speakers (with the setting in the receiver set to None), what will happen with a 5.1 source? The receiver still selects Dolby Digital Mode and all the five channels light up in the display. Should I select Dolby 3-channel Virtual Ref mode if I dont want to lose the surround signals?

Answer 1

Go into the speaker setup section of the On screen display and set "surround" to "none". The receiver will then redirect the sound headed for the surround channels and mix it into the front left and right so that you will not miss out on any sound effects. The "SL" and "SR" will still light up on the main display of the receiver, however, they won't be surrounded by a box.

Note: There may be some slight variation to the way your front panel display looks after this. This is how the *45 series of Harman Kardon receivers shows this information. Provided you have turned the surround speakers off, you have it set correctly.