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2.1 better than 5.1?


Thejtl

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So I'm reworking my media room in preparation for the arrival of the Reference rf-82ii pair I ordered the other day. My 5.1 system has been kind of cobbled together with a Yamaha center (cheap), b&w 685 fronts and Paradigm Atom rears. The rears aren't properly focused and I don't feel like they do a ton. Right now ha have a set of Reference r-62f towers I'm going to return to BB after the other towers get here.

It's going to be a while before I can get more speakers to match what I'm getting. Would I just be better off running 2.1 rather than the cobbled 5.1 or should I just live with it until I can afford more?

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Would I just be better off running 2.1 rather than the cobbled 5.1 ...

That's what I did.

I've had some friends roll their eyes when I say this, but the reality is genuine 5.1 is very difficult to pull off correctly from an acoustic POV...especially where a dual-purpose rig is concerned.

So I simply stuck it out until I found a place with a good room and acquired matching speakers.

If you're trying to drive a 5.1 arrangement and find it more distracting than complementary to the ears, then by all means nix the center and surround channels. But I also agree with what Schu says, in that if there's some adjustability there, perhaps some tweaking can get you by for the interim.

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I don't like using YPAO. I like to listen and decide for myself what sounds best. The amplifier - no matter how smart or state of the art is not me, and likewise it's not going to know my tastes as well as I do.

I'd also recommend going 2.1 instead of mismatching audio. I think you'll feel a lot better going that route. Not much to stick out when dealing with Klipsch anyway, you're still going to get great sound, you won't even miss the smaller speakers.

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I don't like using YPAO. I like to listen and decide for myself what sounds best. The amplifier - no matter how smart or state of the art is not me, and likewise it's not going to know my tastes as well as I do.

I'd also recommend going 2.1 instead of mismatching audio. I think you'll feel a lot better going that route. Not much to stick out when dealing with Klipsch anyway, you're still going to get great sound, you won't even miss the smaller speakers.

Couldn't agree more. I've heard great things about the Audyssey XT32 on my Onkyo 3008. Tried it out(carefully, three times), and was not satisfied with the results. It insisted that my left channel was 1.5db too loud, but my ears strongly disagreed. It smoothed out the high-freq "bite" but left the overall sound feeling hollow and much less "live". Vocals also sounded too bottom heavy, kinda like when you ride in a friends car and they have the bass cranked up so all the DJ's voices are rumbling and muffled.

Turned it off and never looked back.

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The Yamaha has the YPAO system, which is similar to Audessey. There's no obvious way to disable it, but I'm assuming that YPAO only sets levels and doesn't do any processing and when I set up in manual mode it undoes whatever YPAO has done.

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