How do I turn on my all of my surround sound speakers?

Question

Sound only comes out of the front two speakers and I can't figure out how to get it to come out of all the other speakers.

Also, I know that it isn't just the program I'm watching because on the control box thing, and only a picture of the front two speakers is on, and when all of them are on, a picture of all of them show up.

Answer 1

You don't say what kind of equipment you have so I am only making a guess here. But I will assume you have forgotten to run digital audio cables from your TV back to the receiver so it can decode the surround sound and put it out to the speakers. There are 3 types of possible cables. HDMI, fiber optic, and coax. HDMI is preferred but only the newest equipment will offer that option. Most likely you will have to look on your TV and figure out if it has an optical output or a coax output. Optical is a square looking connector with a flap over it that gets pushed out of the way by the connector. Coax is a standard, round  RCA connector. Your receiver should be able to take both kinds of digital audio. Hook the cable from the TV output to an input on your receiver and set the receiver to auto. Also note. that many shows have very little surround sound content so you will not hear the side (not back) speakers most of the time. But you should still see the 5 speaker symbols lit up on your receiver.

If you have a DVD player you will also need to hook up a digital audio cable in addition to the video cable or cables unless your system is HDMI compatible. HDMI carries both video and audio at the same time.

Answer 2

Make sure your source is outputting surround sound.  Unless it is, you won't get your other speakers to work (since they won't be any signal to amplify anyways.)  Also make sure you have selected surround sound on your amplifier.