Pioneer 656 multi region and SACD surround problem

Archived from groups: rec.audio.high-end (More info?)

Hi guys,

I have the Pioneer 656A european version that is capable of reading
SACD. About a year ago I found on the net a hack to use with Palm or
other programmable remote device to make it region free. The hack went
successfully and the player was region free giving me the chance to see
US DVDs.

I only have had a stereo system so I never encountered any error on
this procedure. Some time ago I made a test connecting 2 amps with 2
pair of speakers to see how would it be in multichannel. With DVD I got
no problem at all. But with the pair of multichannel SACDs I had I
realized that almost no sound was going out from rear channels. I
checked all the settings but everything looked fine. I thought maybe
these few sacds I have didn't have so much sound on the surround and I
didn't investigate further.

Now I'm finally building a multichannel speakers and surfing the net I
found some time another user had a problem similar to mine. He tested
it with the same SACD (Dark Side of the moon) and he also haven't got
almost no sound from surrounds channel. After some posts and
investigation he realized that he made it hacking by a company (that
probably used the same system I did hacking it via palm).

I'm trying to check to see if any other of you have Pioneer 656A region
free and had/have a similar problem with multichannel SACDs. Does any
of you succesfully solved the problem? Do you know any way to do roll
back?

Please let me know. Thanks!

mario