I bought an Oppo 103 to use in a setup with BV7, BL5, BL3, Overture and Mac Mini. I was hoping to create a 4.0 system with a phantom center.

Ideally I would want the Oppo to down mix the audio to 4.0 and send it as lpcm through hdmi, so the BS3 in BV7 can route it to the right speakers ( both in TV and cinema mode ). I still have no luck... The manual delivered with the player almost a year ago said downmixing was only available on the analog pre outs. That now changed, But I still can't see how to make a 4.0 down mix. Is it possible at all? with the pre outs? via HDMI?

soundproof wrote:

You will definitely not need separate subwoofers, once you connect and set up your Oppo to the BL5s.

And you will be very satisfied with the phantom centre channel, once you set that up right (deselecting centre channel).

For movie playback, I would go with the 7.1 pre outs from the Oppo, to BL5 and BL3s.
Balance the audio level on the BL3s using the set-up on the Oppo.
Store a comfortable opening volume on the BL5s (see the manual). Use the Oppo set-up for multichannel to balance the channels - you'll get pink noise to separate channels, and they are all to be perceived to be at the same level from your listening position. If the volume adjust on the pre-out set-up doesn't let you get the BL5s to the right level, then adjust the start-up level for the BL5s correspondingly. It won't take you long to get them all balanced correctly.

Download one of the SPL-apps if you want to get the surround-levels as close to perfect as you can.

Then it's down to how technical you want to get in your setup, when watching movies. I used the volume control for the receiver to adjust the volume up and down on the speakers. That is, I used the Beo4 to switch on the BL5s, and then used the receiver remote to control audio, etc.