Pioneer VSX-AX3-K - Manual

Table of Contents 5 En EXPERT BASIC PREPARATION SURROUND SETUP EASY SETUP GUIDE Remote Control ofOther Components ............................ 65 Setting Up the Remote Controlto Control Other Components ........................................ 65 Recalling Settings Storedin the Remote Control .........

Before You Start 6 En Features Multichannel Acoustic Calibration EQ System (MCACC) In order to make setting up as easy as possible for users we have created the MCACC system. This unique and convenient way of getting good surround sound from the receiver makes trouble-free setup a snap. With the inc...

Before You Start 7 En PREPARATION Checking the Supplied Accessories Please check that you have received all of the following supplied accessories. Memo: Multi-voltage model has two power cords. These accessories will be different depending on the country of purchase. Please use the correct cord for ...

Before You Start 8 En Operating range of remote control unit The area in which you can use the remote control to operate the VSX-AX3 is fairly large. To use, point the remote control toward the remote sensor on the front panel of this unit while within the range shown below. Remote control may not f...

Displays & Controls 9 En EASY SETUP GUIDE PREPARATION Home Theater: The Basics Most consumers are used to using stereo equipment to listen to music but many people are not used to home theater systems that give you many more options when listening to soundtracks. In fact, home theater is not rea...

Easy Setup Guide Part 1 10 En Before making or changing the connections, switch off the power and disconnect the power cord from the AC outlet. 1 Hooking Up Your DVD Player and TV In order to use Dolby Digital/DTS soundtracks, which are at the heart of home theater, you need to hook up your DVD play...

Easy Setup Guide Part 1 11 En EASY SETUP GUIDE 2 Speaker Connections Home theater is designed to be setup with five, or seven speakers (front left and right; center; surround left and right; and, optimally, surround back left and right) and a subwoofer, but you can use this receiver with fewer speak...

Easy Setup Guide Part 2 13 En EASY SETUP GUIDE 1 Auto Surround Sound Setup If setting up your surround sound speakers seems like it’s going to be an involved task you only need to use this quick, automatic method, known as the MCACC system, to achieve good surround sound. You’ll need to hook up the ...

Easy Setup Guide Part 2 14 En 8 Select AUTO SETTING with the  buttons and press ENTER. 9 Some auto setup instructions will be listed, make sure to follow them. Make sure you have: hooked up the microphone and moved obstacles to the speakers out of the way. If you have a subwoofer make sure it is t...

Easy Setup Guide Part 2 15 En EASY SETUP GUIDE 12 Use the  buttons to select a speaker press ENTER. Then use the  buttons to select the size of each speaker individually. Press ENTER. Use the  buttons to select OK and press ENTER. The system will output another series of test tones to establis...

Connecting Your Equipment 16 En Connecting your TV Before making or changing the connections, switch off the power and disconnect the power cord from the AC outlet. Connect your TV to the jacks as shown below. Hook up with either S video or composite video cords (the quality descends in this order) ...

Connecting Your Equipment 17 En PREPARATION Connecting Video Components Before making or changing the connections, switch off the power and disconnect the power cord from the AC outlet. Connect your video components as shown on this and the following page. For video components (for example, a DVD pl...

Connecting Your Equipment 18 En Connecting VCRs or DVRs Before making or changing the connections, switch off the power and disconnect the power cord from the AC outlet. Connect the video out of your VCR/DVR using either S video or composite video cords, depending on how you connected the receiver t...

Connecting Your Equipment 20 En Connecting Analog Audio Components Before making or changing the connections, switch off the power and disconnect the power cord from the AC outlet. Connect your audio components to the jacks as shown below. These are all analog connections and your analog audio compo...

Connecting Your Equipment 22 En Connecting Digital Audio Components Before making or changing the connections, switch off the power and disconnect the power cord from the AC outlet. Connect your digital components as shown below. The VSX-AX3 has two coaxial and two optical inputs for a total of four...

Connecting Your Equipment 23 En PREPARATION Digital Input Default Settings Unlike analog connections, the jacks for digital connections are not dedicated to one type of component, they can be used freely. Thus you must tell the receiver what digital component is connected to which jack so your compo...

Connecting Your Equipment 24 En Connecting the Radio Antennas Before making or changing the connections, switch off the power and disconnect the power cord from the AC outlet. Connect the supplied FM wire antenna and the AM loop antenna to the ANTENNA terminals as shown below. These antennas should ...

Connecting Your Equipment 25 En PREPARATION Connecting Speakers Before making or changing the connections, switch off the power and disconnect the power cord from the AC outlet. We recommend a full complement of seven speakers and a subwoofer as shown here but, naturally, everyone’s home setup will ...

Connecting Your Equipment 26 En Speaker impedance You can change the speaker impedance for VSX-AX3 but we recommend using speakers with an impedance of 8 Ω - 16 Ω (the default setting). If you are using 6 Ω - less than 8 Ω impedance speakers, you need to change the impedance setting. Use any speaker...

Connecting Your Equipment 27 En PREPARATION Placing Your Speakers Proper speaker placement is essential to realize the best sound from your system. It is very important for speaker placement to read the instructions that come with your speakers so please be sure to do so. Speaker placement If you ha...

Displays and Controls 28 En Front Panel All the controls on the front panel are explained and/or referenced here. To open the front panel push gently on the lower third of the panel. 1 MULTI JOG dial You can use this dial for many purposes. When you press the SET UP button (13), you can use it to pe...

Displays and Controls 30 En Remote Control This page describes the buttons on the remote control used to operate the receiver. 1  RECEIVER (STANDBY/ON) button Press to turn power of the receiver on or to standby (off). 2 MULTI CONTROL buttons These buttons are the basic controls that switch the mod...

Displays and Controls 32 En 14 MASTER VOLUME (+/–) buttons Use to raise or lower the volume of the receiver. 15 TOP MENU/GUIDE button Use to find stations or menus on a digital TV tuner. For a DVD player use this button to bring up the DVD menu. 16 //// ENTER buttons These buttons can be used fo...

Displays and Controls 33 En PREPARATION Display All the display information is explained and/or referenced here. 1 SIGNAL indicators Light to indicate the input signal you selected. AUTO: Lights when the receiver is set to select the input signal automatically. DIGITAL: Lights when digital audio sig...

Displays and Controls 34 En Back Panel All the terminals on the back panel are explained and/or referenced here. 1 DIGITAL OUT terminals (see page 22) Use these terminals to output a digital signal to a DVD-R, CD-R, MD recorder or any other kind of digital recorder. 2 CONTROL IN/OUT terminals (see p...

Displays and Controls 35 En PREPARATION 10 SPEAKERS terminals (see page 25) Use these terminals to connect speakers to the receiver. The FRONT, CENTER and SURROUND terminals are for the main speaker system and the SURROUND BACK speakers can be set to either the main system, the SECOND ZONE, or the F...

Setting Up for Surround Sound 36 En To ensure the best possible surround sound, complete the following setup operations. Some of these are the same (and take precedence over) the settings you made in the Easy Setup Guide, so consider if the ones you made at that time were adequate. If you feel they ...

Setting Up for Surround Sound 37 En SURROUND SETUP Surround Back System This setup selects how your surround back system will be used. If you want to use it for surround back speakers in your main speaker system choose NORMAL SYSTEM. In this case you won’t have any B (or secondary) speaker system as...

Setting Up for Surround Sound 38 En NORMAL Setup This is the manual method to setup your sound parameters for surround sound. You don’t need to do this, however, if you did the AUTO SURROUND SETUP method on page 13. If you feel the settings in the AUTO SURROUND SETUP do not suit your personal tastes...

Basic Operation 43 En BASIC Stereo and Multichannel Playback The following instructions show you how to play sound sources with the VSX-AX3.Before doing so be sure to complete the setup procedures described in the “Easy Setup Guide Part 2” (starting on page 13) or “Setting Up for Surround Sound” (st...

Basic Operation 44 En Selecting the Input Signal This button selects the type of input signal, AUTO, ANALOG or DIGITAL, sent to the receiver. You need to take special care to switch to the appropriate input when necessary. For example, the switch would have to be on DIGITAL to hear digital sources l...

Basic Operation 45 En BASIC Listening Modes The three listening mode types on the receiver are explained here (to select listening modes see page 43). The kind of playback you can get in the three modes depends on what kind of a source (DVD, etc.) you are using. The basic distinction is between 2 ch...

Basic Operation 48 En Adjusting the Effect of a Listening Mode The DSP (Digital Signal Processing) listening modes have sound processing added to accentuate a certain kind of atmosphere or effect (see the preceding pages for explanation). You can choose if you want to strengthen or weaken this effec...

Basic Operation 49 En BASIC Listening with ACOUSTIC CAL EQ You can listen to the soundtrack with the ACOUSTIC CAL EQ you set automatically when you did the AUTO SURROUND SETUP (page 13) or you set manually on (page 87). To do so follow the instructions below. 1 Press the ACOUSTIC EQ button. Each pre...

Basic Operation 50 En Listening in MIDNIGHT Mode This useful feature makes it possible to get excellent surround sound effects even when listening at low volumes. It can be used with any surround sound source and play soundtracks so that the quieter sounds are audible even while playing a soundtrack...

Basic Operation 51 En BASIC Adjusting Bass and Treble You can adjust the low (bass) and high (treble) frequencies. The TONE button can also be used to bypass the tone circuitry. 1 Press RECEIVER. 2 Press the TONE button on the remote control or the front panel to put the receiver in tone adjust mode...

Basic Operation 52 En Listening in Audio Scaler mode Use to hear CD and DVD, as well as other digital soundtracks, at a wider dynamic range, allowing for finer audio reproduction. 1 Press RECEIVER. 2 Press the HI-BIT button on the remote control or HI-BIT/HI-SAMPLING button on the front panel. Each ...

Basic Operation 53 En BASIC Surround Back Channel Modes Surround Back Channel Mode The SB CH MODE makes available surround back channels through your surround back speakers. You must have chosen NORMAL SYSTEM in the SURRBACK SYSTEM setting (see page 37) and have SURROUND and SURROUND BACK speakers s...

Basic Operation 54 En Dual Mono setting and playback The dual mono setting can only be used when listening to Dolby Digital or homemade discs that have dual mono software encoded in them. Dual mono software usually is used to put two different mono soundtracks, that you can listen to together or sep...

Basic Operation 55 En BASIC Video Select This function allows you to listen to one sound source while you watch a different video source on your TV. The sound source is set in the normal fashion as explained on page 43. You then change the video input with the VIDEO SEL button. 1 Press RECEIVER. 2 P...

Using the Tuner 56 En Using the Tuner Automatic and Manual Tuning The following steps show you how to tune in FM and AM radio broadcasts using the automatic (search) and manual (step) tuning functions. If you already know the exact frequency of the station you want, see “Direct Access Tuning” on the...

Using the Tuner 57 En BASIC Channel Step Setting (multi-voltage model only) The unit has been factory preset to the channel allocation value for the area in which it is to be sold. If this value is set incorrectly, the tunes in frequency may be wrong, or sound may be distorted, resulting in an inabi...

Using the Tuner 58 En Memorizing Frequently Used Stations The following steps show you how to memorize up to 30 radio stations in 3 classes (each holding 10 stations). When memorizing FM frequencies, the receiver also memorizes the MPX mode (STEREO or MONO) and the RF AT T mode (European model only)...

Using the Tuner 59 En BASIC Naming Memorized Stations You can input a name of up to four characters for each preset station in the receiver ’s memory (see the previous page). This name can be anything you choose. For example, you could input JAZZ for that station and when you listen to it the name, ...

Using the Tuner 60 En Recalling Memorized Stations 1 Press the TUNER button. This selects the TUNER function on the receiver and sets the remote to the TUNER operation mode. 2 Press the CLASS button repeatedly to select a class number. Each press switches the display: 3 Use the number buttons to sel...

Using the Tuner 61 En BASIC An introduction to RDS (European model only) Radio Data System, or RDS as it’s usually known, is a system used by FM radio stations to provide listeners with var-ious kinds of information—the name of the station and the kind of show they’re broadcasting, for example. This...

Using the Tuner 62 En Searching for RDS programs (European model only) One of the most useful features of RDS is the ability to search for a particular kind of radio program. You can search for any of the program types (listed on page 61). 1 Tune into an FM station. Refer to “Automatic and Manual Tu...

Using the Tuner 63 En BASIC Basics of EON (Enhanced Other Network information) (European model only) When EON is turned on, the receiver jumps to an EON-linked broadcast when it begins, even if a receiver function other than the tuner is being used. It cannot be used in areas that EON information is...

Using the Tuner 64 En Clearing all stations from the RDS or EON search(European model only) The receiver will automatically register an identifying marker (called a PI code) for any station you input into the memory classes which can receive RDS or EON data. If you want to remove the currently memor...

Remote Control of Other Components 65 En BASIC Setting Up the Remote Control to Control Other Components In addition to controlling the receiver, the supplied remote control can operate your other components (VCR, TV, DVD, CD, etc.) after you program it to do so. If your component(s) are listed in t...

Remote Control of Other Components 67 En BASIC Using Remote Control with Other Components CD/MD/CD-R/VCR/DVD/LD/DVD Recorder/Cassette Deck operations Button(s) Function Components SOURCE  Press to switch the components between STANDBY and ON. CD/MD/CD-R/VCR/DVD/LD/DVD recorder/Cassette deck  Press...

Remote Control of Other Components 69 En BASIC Setting up the Direct Function The direct function is designed in case you have an external video source connected to your TV (a video source that is not going through the VSX-AX3). For this explanation we’ll call this the external video deck. You’d lik...

70 En Recording from Audio/Video Components The following explanations show you how make a recording from one component to another connected to this receiver. Note that an analog recorder (such as a VCR) cannot record from a source that is connected using only a digital connection. Likewise, a digit...

Using Other Functions 71 En EXPERT SPEAKERS B Setup Stereo playback in another room (SECOND ZONE) This setup enables you to listen to a pair of stereo speakers independently of the main speaker system (A speakers) hooked up to the receiver. You can choose SECOND ZONE, and use the speakers hooked up ...

Using Other Functions 72 En SPEAKERS Button If you selected NORMAL SYSTEM in the SURRBACK SYSTEM setup (see page 37) your surround back speakers will be used as part of your A speakers (main speaker system) and this button will simply switch it off or on. If you selected SECOND ZONE in the SURRBACK ...

Using Other Functions 73 En EXPERT Connecting Additional Amplifiers This receiver has more than sufficient power for any home use, but it is possible to add additional amplifiers to every channel of your system. Make the connections shown below to add amplifiers to power your speakers. Before making...

Using Other Functions 75 En EXPERT Multi Operations Multi operations allow you to tell the receiver and your other components to do a number of things with the push of only two buttons on the remote control. For example, you can program the unit to turn on your TV, turn on your DVD player and start ...

Using Other Functions 77 En EXPERT System Off The SYSTEM OFF feature allows you to tell the receiver and your other components to stop and/or turn off with the push of only one button on the remote control. The steps below show you how to program a string of up to 5 different SYSTEM OFF operations. ...

Using Other Functions 78 En Resetting the Remote Control Erasing Multi Operations 1 Press and hold both the REMOTE SETUP button and 8 for more than 3 seconds. LED lights will blink 3 times and all multi operation settings will be erased. Erasing Learning Remote Control Commands 1 Press and hold both...

Using Other Functions 79 En EXPERT Resetting the Main Unit The following operations allow you to reset the unit to the default settings. Put the receiver in the STANDBY mode. 1 While holding down the TONE button press the STANDBY/ON button for about three seconds. 2 When you see RESET? appear in the...

Fine Tuning Your System 80 En THX CINEMA Setup This setup lets you choose which decoding method for 2 channel sources the receiver will use for THX CINEMA. For more information on the decoding (playback) formats see “Techno Tidbits” starting on page 94. 1 Turn on the receiver and your TV, press RECE...

Fine Tuning Your System 81 En EXPERT Assigning the Digital Inputs If you did not hook up your digital equipment in accordance with the default settings for the digital inputs (see pages 17, 19 and 22) you need to complete the procedure below. You have to do this in order to tell the receiver what di...

Fine Tuning Your System 82 En Function Rename Use the FUNCTION RENAME capability to rename the display on the receiver and your OSD for different functions (DVD, etc.). For example, you could rename VCR1/DVR as DVR-7000. For this particular setup using the controls on the front panel is more conveni...

Expert System Settings 83 En EXPERT EXPERT Setup The settings here can only be done if you’ve performed the more basic preliminary setups. Thus, before doing these settings do either AUTO SET TING on page 13 or NORMAL setup page 38. These settings are to further heighten your surround sound. They ar...

Techno Tidbits and Problem-solving 94 En Dolby Dolby Digital Dolby Digital is a discrete digital surround format used for multichannel surround sound. It was developed after the Dolby Surround System and Dolby Pro Logic Surround System. Dolby Digital is a high quality digital sound format that is us...

Techno Tidbits and Problem-solving 95 En EXPERT DTS-ES DTS launched a new surround format in November 2000. This has come to be known as DTS Extended Surround or simply DTS-ES. The technology has been advanced to include two new home formats DTS-ES Discrete 6.1 format, and DTS-ES Matrix 6.1 ch forma...

Techno Tidbits and Problem-solving 96 En Cause Remedy Troubleshooting Incorrect operations are often mistaken for trouble and malfunctions. If you think that there is something wrong with this component, check the points below. Sometimes the trouble may lie in another component. Investigate the othe...

Techno Tidbits and Problem-solving 102 En Preset Code Brands DVD Manufacturer Code PIONEER 1001, 1002, 1003 DENON 1004 JVC 1005 PANASONIC 1002 PHILIPS 1006RCA 1007 SAMSUNG 1008 SONY 1009 TOSHIBA 1010 YAMAHA 1011, 1012 LD Manufacturer Code PIONEER 2001, 2002 DENON 2003 KENWOOD 2004 PANASONIC 2005 PHI...

Techno Tidbits and Problem-solving 103 En EXPERT Specifications (European model) Continuous Power Output (DIN) Front ................... 100 W +100 W (DIN 1 kHz, THD 1%, 8 Ω ) Center ...............................100 W (DIN 1 kHz, THD 1%, 8 Ω ) Surround ........... 100 W +100 W (DIN 1 kHz, THD 1%, ...