I recently purchased a Sony STR-DG1000 - got a good deal on it and it got pretty good reviews as far as I could find.
I set it up, and everything appears to be working fine, except the volume output seems to be very low. I have to turn the volume up to about 4/5 of max volume to be able to hear it at a reasonable level. At half volume I can only hear it very faintly, if the room is completely silent.
This happens no matter what I choose as the source - even FM Tuner.
I'm assuming this is not normal behavior. I have verified it's not on "night" mode, and it is not muted. I have checked the speaker wire connections and made sure they are correct. I've ran the speaker auto-configuration and it looks like it's setting it up accurately.
The only thing strange that I have found is the autoconfiguration says that my speakers are out of phase - but the user manual says that if it shows this to make sure the speakers are setup correctly, and if they are - this can be ignored. As I said before, the speaker wires are connected correctly.
Does anyone have experience with this particular receiver, or have any ideas on what might cause this behavior outside of what I have checked?
I did as you said, and reversed the connection at the right speaker and found two things.
1) The volume output was not affected. 2) The automatic speaker configuration process still detected the speaker as out-of-phase. Like I said, the manual says this is not a big deal (however I am somewhat curious why it would be detecting it as out-of-phase.)
Is it possible I have a dud of a receiver or am I missing something?
So I stopped by the retailer that I bought my receiver from and they tell me it's normal for it to be so quiet at low-mid volume levels, stating that "It's protection in case you were to 'bi-amp', in which case you could harm you hearing easily by turning up too high." Not sure if that was a load of bull or not, but it seems to make sense.
I did listen to the floor model again and it produced similar results, so I guess I'm just a paranoid noob.
Nic, you are more likely to damage your speakers by 'turning it up too high', but, yes, discreet output is intended to avoid 'unintended audio acceleration', should a little one twist the loud knob. Which they seem to do.