Flakey Speaker Setting On H/K AVR3700
?Dec 4, 2013
I like Harman Kardon. And this year they’ve come out with a really revolutionary new home theater receiver with amazing sound and functionality – plus one very serious quirk.
My customer purchased the AVR3700 and tried to set it up himself, but after making all the connections, he couldn’t get any sound from it. Only from his TV speakers. Not good! After three HOURS on the phone with Harman tech, they advised him that his new unit was defective, and sent him a replacement. He called on me to set it up.
Oddly, the replacement had exactly the same problem! After checking over everything I had done, I began to suspect some arcane setting on the receiver, and explored the setup menus with great care. Finally, in the “General AVR Settings” menu, I found it. For some reason, beyond my ability to explain, HK has provided an “HDMI audio to TV” setting, and if you leave that setting “ON” to route sound to the TV – a function that is absolutely standard on any other receiver I’ve seen – it mutes the HK speaker outputs. If you turn it “OFF”, no sound is routed to the TV, but at least the other speakers work!
I also determined that the setting affected not just the HDMI connections, but even the analog inputs! Why, Harman Kardon, why did you do this?
My customer was furious with HK, and thought I was something of a genius for identifying and resolving a problem in one hour that their tech couldn’t figure out in three. I was just amazed that their tech wasn’t even familiar with their own product’s setup menus. And still scratching my head over what is the point of this ?crazy setting!
