Heritage HT setup questions...

[vondy]

I'm pretty new at the HT thing. Finally collected enough Heritage speakers to get to that point. Fortes up front with Academy center and the Heresys pulling surround duty. No sub, yet. 2 year old Denon AV, Panasonic Blu-Ray and LG 42" LCD.

Being new at this, I really have nothing to compare to, so I'm not sure if I'm getting everything out of the system. Mostly, the surround. I know I'm not going to hear a lot back there, it's for effects and such, but kind of seems like I'm hardly noticing anything at all.

I have the Fortes and Heresys set as large and the Academy as small. My receiver doesn't process Dolby HD so I have the Blu-ray doing it with the analog out's hooked up. The Denon is set to it's proper setting, "ext in" or something like that.

All speakers are right at 8 feet away from the listening position. The Heresys are up high on book shelves, on their sides. The Fortes are in the corners about a foot from each wall, toed into the listening position.

Guess I'm just not that impressed. It sounds good, but for some reason I figured I'd be "blown away" by the Heritage system. We recently watched the Pirates of the Caribbean triology, which I assume is a quality source for sound. Also several netflix movies.

Perhaps I'm missing something? I'm obviously no expert. I would love any opinions.

Here's some pics of my setup.

Thanks!

[Youthman]

I would offer two thoughts.

1. Your surrounds are mounted extremely high and are firing straight ahead so naturally, you won't hear them that well. I know because my back surrounds are the same way. I just added side surrounds and it is night and day difference. I can now hear the surround effects. If there you can find a way to safely angle them down towards your listening area, you would get a lot more out of them for surround duty.

2. IMO, Pirates isn't that great for surround demo. I have two of them and am not impressed that much with them for sound (excellent movie though). Try something like Master and Commander (first battle scene), Up (storm scene), or Kung Fu Panda (Tai Lung Escapes scene). All three of these have strong surround effects that will give you a better idea of what your heresy's sound like.

[Rivernuggets]

In addition to Youthman,

I think you can set your Academy to large also.

The Denon's default subwoofer setting may be sending low frequency effects to your nonexistant sub instead of your Fortes. If you set it for no sub, you may get more low end.

[vondy]

Thanks for the replys. I will stick a book or something under my Heresys to point them more towards the listening area and see if that helps any. As far as the sub and Denon goes, I told the Denon in the speaker setup that there is no sub so it should not matter. Plus, when listening to DolbyHD the Denon does not do the processing anyway. In my BR setup I told it there was no sub as well.

I set the Academy to small cus I was having trouble hearing dialog on one movie and thought it might help. I also turned on the Dialog Enhancer on my BR player, seems to help.

Figured Pirates would be a good test with all the rain and canon balls wizzing by. You know what I hate most about that Blu-Ray.... you have to sit there and manually skip about 7 previews before it will let you get to the top menu. How annoying is that to have to do it on all three movies! That's just not right on a disc you buy.

[The Dude]

Is it a blue ray disc, I have noticed that none blue ray disc in a blue ray player don't seem that great. But thats my opinion. I to am having problems hearing dialog as well. Nice looking setup by the way.

duder.

[odysseyrevolver]

That's a terrible place for those heresies. 5.1 is designed thusly, with the surrounds positioned just above ear level:

[Chris A]

That's a terrible place for those heresies. 5.1 is designed thusly, with the surrounds positioned just above ear level:

Concur with this advice, strongly. Floyd Toole (recently retired JBL Engineering vice president) states that humans really don't perceive much from sound sources directly from behind. The greatest angle that you should use is about 120 degrees from the front-and-center location, or about 30 degrees behind the "beam" position shown in the diagram when looking forward.

Additionally, if you place the Heresy surrounds on the floor and against a wall (i.e., even with your listening position like the diagram shows), then you can probably use them in the "large speaker" mode.

I'd also think really hard about buying someone's second-hand subwoofer off of craigslist or eBay. Bigger is better for direct radiator subs. If you want to talk about horn-loaded subs, then send up a smoke signal. They can be quite cheap to build, and their output will beat any consumer-sized sub on the market.

[USNRET]

I re-checked but I don't think I read anything here about any speaker setup / calibration being performed. Perhaps I missed it but if not you desperately need to get into the menu and set up the distances and levels. I too had to set up my rears way to high in my current house and coming from a room where I could have the speakers placed properly I know what you are dealing with. Get yourself a RatShack SPL meter and bring up the levels equally.

[dougdrake]

I think you've tripped to this, but since you're using analog exterior inputs on your Denon, all the processing is taking place in the BD player so you need to make all your settings there. I have a similar setup, feeding analog in from my BD player to a Denon. It absolutely kicks ***, especially on HD audio streams.