Ribnet Posted July 22, 2019 Share Posted July 22, 2019 (edited) Hi Everyone! My wife and I finally moved into the new house we built and I was able to setup the new Klipsch gear that I purchased back in April (when it was on sale at Crutchfield). I've setup several Klipsch home theater systems and never had issues until now. Specifically, it's hard to hear dialog in movies. The voices just sound a bit muddy. Here are the specifics of the system: Center: R-34C Fronts: R-820F Sub: R-120SW Receiver: TSR-7850 Room: 18 x 26, two story family room I ran YPAO and absolutely hated the results. So, I choose a flat frequency response, set all speakers to small, set the crossovers on the fronts to 80 Hz and the crossover on the center to 90 Hz. Last night, while hosing some friends to watch Star Trek Discovery, I actually had to bump up the gain on the center channel to +5 dB just to make out the dialog (with all speakers set to 0 dB my old sound pressure level from RadioShack seemed to have everything balanced, so this really had the center channel running hot). Even with the higher gain, it still was difficult to make out the dialog at times. I'm honestly just stumped at this point. I don't think the speaker is defective. The wiring is correct (not operating out of phase). Should I try bumping up the crosser to 100 Hz? Any help that you can provide will be greatly appreciated! Edited July 22, 2019 by Ribnet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frzninvt Posted July 22, 2019 Share Posted July 22, 2019 It is typically not your system that is necessarily at fault it is the sound engineer that mixed the soundtrack. I have the same issue from time to time and I have three La Scala's up front. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babadono Posted July 22, 2019 Share Posted July 22, 2019 4 hours ago, Ribnet said: Last night, while hosing some friends 😀 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ribnet Posted July 22, 2019 Author Share Posted July 22, 2019 Haha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babadono Posted July 22, 2019 Share Posted July 22, 2019 1 hour ago, Ribnet said: Haha Sorry, couldn't help myself. But seriously what about network TV like a newscast. Usually the anchors are mixed dead center or even center only. Does this sound Ok? Intelligible? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cincymat Posted July 22, 2019 Share Posted July 22, 2019 Did you manually set the distance to each speaker too? cincy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ribnet Posted July 23, 2019 Author Share Posted July 23, 2019 TV shows generally sound great and I can definitely hear newscasters perfectly. I switch the crossover on the center channel to 100 MHz and that night have helped a bit. I used the distance that YPAO calculated. They seem about right to me, but I'm happy to tweak them. Any suggestions? Do I simply measure the distance with a measuring tape? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wvu80 Posted July 23, 2019 Share Posted July 23, 2019 6 minutes ago, Ribnet said: TV shows generally sound great and I can definitely hear newscasters perfectly. First of all welcome to the forums. Regarding your center channel problem if you can hear TV dialog perfectly then the source is likely the problem. I've not heard that particular Star Trek video so I can't tell you what is usually sounds like. Other than the source mixing I might suspect your Yamaha is not set up properly. I don't know YPAO well enough to help you there either as I have Audyssey in both my Marantz 6011 and Onkyo 717 AVR's. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WMcD Posted July 23, 2019 Share Posted July 23, 2019 Troubleshooting: Has this particular unit ever been known to work properly? Has it ever been been abused? Can you hook it up to an amp to just play a single channel of unprocessed music and voice for testing? Determine whether the tweeter is working by using a paper towel roll as an improvised stethoscope. WMcD 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maz4bz Posted July 23, 2019 Share Posted July 23, 2019 Lobing? I've switched off my horizontal centre channel and I haven't missed it ..... https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/vertical-vs-horizontal-speaker-designs If I could get an acoustically transparent screen in my room I'd put in a normal vertically arranged speaker and switch my center back on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ribnet Posted July 24, 2019 Author Share Posted July 24, 2019 Thank you for all of the ideas and insights! I did some more testing last night. I used the paper towel tube method and verified that the tweeter is working. In fact, I covered the tweeter and four woofers with my hand one-by-one and could tell that part of the sound was gone with each. So, it seems that the speaker itself is probably working fine. Everything was brand new and I never abuse my speakers, so I just wanted to rule out that the speaker was defective out of the box. Also, I re-checked the wiring yet again. I re-ran YPAO several times and each time the sound was similar. So, it's not a calibration issue or at least not an issue that I can fix automatically (might go back to manual tweaking later). Now, what I think is happening is that the center channel might be overwhelmed by the two fronts. The large dual 8" woofers of the R-820Fs just have much more presence in the large room than the quad 3.5" woofers of the R-34C. I can compensate by bumping up the gain on the center channel, but playing a test tone on each even with the same sound level (measured with the SPL) the left and right channels just sound more substantive to my ears. The other thing that just occurred to me -- the center channel is too high. Sadly, when I was building my house, I neglected to think about where the TV and speakers would be located when designing the rooms. The floorpan is very open so the only location for the TV is above the fireplace (I know, it's not ideal and I never thought I would position a TV so high). The center channel is flat on the mantle which means that it's actually pointing one or two feet above the seated ear level. I'm going to try and get some larger rubber feet for the back of the center channel speaker so it tilts forward, pointing it at ear level in the seated position. This probably will be the most impactful change that I can make. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJkizak Posted July 24, 2019 Share Posted July 24, 2019 Remember too that every time you switch to a different TV channel your receiver switches to a different Dolby sound version. (of which there are numerous) When you view a movie from a Bluray player there are numerous settings you can use like PLC11Z or Music or Movie. So you have thousands of combinations available to mess with your brain. JJK 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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