On December 28, 2016 at 13:26, Ernie Gilman said...
If you generate the regular codes and install them in the Marantz remotes, you can mimic a long button push by using a long button push. There won't be many of them. For instance, a DILA I installed about fifteen years ago used a long push, but only for Power Off.
The difficulty is getting a long button push itself into the remote.
The original Pronto (for sure) and Marantz (I think) remotes, which would include the 9200, issued commands in such a way that a long push macro could be constructed. The 5400 and its family won't do this.
The method was to learn the IR command two different ways.
A.Learn it the normal way.
B.Learn only the repeating part of the command, and not the initial part of the command:
Put the remote into Learn;
push the Marantz's button that you want to learn onto;
cover the face of the remote you want to learn from;
push the button you want to learn from;
after a short time, remove your hand from the front of the remote you're learning from.
Let it learn.
A learns the standard code.
B does not learn the initial part of the code. It only learns the repeating part of the code.
That DILA OFF command was a macro consisting of one A followed by eleven Bs. The remote was a TS-1000, but I believe all the remotes in that family would work the same way.
The NG remotes were smarter and inserted a pause between commands, so if you tried this with them, the controlled device did not see one long command. It saw several short commands and would not give the desired response.
Thanks for the tip on dealing with long button pushes. I can actually rewrite the Hex code directly to emulate a long button push. If I change the part of the preamble sequence that deals with defining how many pairs of codes are issued, and then add a duplicate of the relevant codes then TSS sees it as a valid IR sequence. That should help keep the macro strings shorter and reduce the wait time as the macro is executed, but it's always useful to have a back-up plan so I really do appreciate your input on this. Thanks
Or sell him a better sound bar. The control scenario you describe sounds to me like it's for low end systems. A passive sound bar that uses your AVR's amp outputs would not have this problem. I recently installed a KILLER sound bar from Triad, custom cut to match the width of the TV (but priced well over a grand) that does everything you want to do, since it doesn't have remote commands to get in the way of the audio path.
That's the really frustrating thing. The Sony HT-ST9 soundbar is £1,299 rrp (UK Sterling) which is roughly equivalent to $1,580 USD!! It's not a cheap piece of kit at all. Ditto the 4K Sony TV @ £1,999 rrp (UK Sterling) [approx $2,400 USD]. These are items the client bought independently on a bit of a whim when out shopping with his wife. If he'd have asked my advice before buying then I'd have installed a 4K AVR and something along the lines of the Monitor Audio SB3 passive soundbar with an active sub. That would have solved the control issues instantly and given them much better sound too. Ho hum.
