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Confused after moving to Klipsch speakers


Pazuzu

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- In 2002, I had bought a JVC home theater setup consisting of a 5.1 receiver, a sub and five small loudspeaker boxes (containing two 2-inch speakers each). Thought it sounded ok at that time.

 

- Two years ago, I swapped the JVC receiver with a Marantz SR 6011. Went through the Audyssey setup and found it quite an improvement especially regarding surround sound. Running with Dynamic EQ OFF and Dynamic Volume ON (because of thin walls in our apartment and not constantly wanting to change the volume during a movie because of the neighbours).

 

- I have just replaced the JVC speakers with a Klipsch 7.1.2 setup (front RP-8060FA, center RP-504C, ...) and ran Audyssey again (also read the lengthy Audyssey FAQ on Avsforum). Again running with Dynamic EQ OFF and Dynamic Volume ON.

 

-> Now I am confused: for my taste, movie dialogue sounds muffled and seemingly devoid of any heights compared to the JVC speakers. It doesn't make a difference whether dialogue comes from the center speaker or from the big front speakers (for example when manually setting the output to stereo for testing purposes). Still sounds muffled on both. With the JVC speakers, dialogue sounded clear and bright. The difference is pretty baffling. Now I am not sure whether the JVCs were totally off or if there is something wrong with the current setup.

 

I know sound is always a rather subjective issue. All the more as I have been accustomed to the JVC speakers for many years. But are there any ways to test how dialogue is "supposed" to sound? Any ideas or thoughts are appreciated.

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On 8/12/2019 at 3:22 AM, Pazuzu said:

Running with Dynamic EQ OFF and Dynamic Volume ON

Try running Audyssey with both set to OFF.  Maybe some type of false error or something is tricking the system and it is compensating in the wrong direction.

 

Also, you may just be used to the tiny JVC speakers and their tinny sound.

 

Bill

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You are not alone, I felt like that for 10 years with my Onkyo and audyssey. Once I moved to Nad with Dirac calibration, problem solved. It is a night and day difference. I’ll give you an example, watch the beginning of Star Wars Last Jedi and there is this scene where a ship flys by and shakes the counter and it is all coming from the center channel. With audyssey, it sounded so quiet and uneventful. With Dirac, there was a rumble and bass and clarity. I actually took note of that scene where as before it didn’t sound like anything special.

 

My only advice with audyssey that helped the issue because I was reading the FAQs and really couldn’t find a solution is to play with the microphone height. I know they say to put the mic at ear level, but also look at the center height. Ear height was higher than my center speaker, and when I lowered the mic to be in line with the center, it went from audyssey setting the center to -12 to -10, closer to the front mains. My front were set to -8 each so I bumped up the center to -8 to match and it helps. You can also play around after audyssey runs and increase the center a few dB to your liking. Also, I find audyssey can over correct, so look to see if there is something audyssey is trying to correct for. Maybe a bad reflection point? 

 

Good luck. 

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Thanks to all for your input. I went through a lot of the sound checks on audiocheck.net and didn't actually find any issues or peculiarities. Sounded ok. But the test files only triggered the fronts and the sub (as they seem to be stereo). So I am not sure how they apply to my situation.

 

My center is well below ear height. So I will rerun the Audyssey setup with the mic lower to see whether is makes any difference.

 

To rule out Audyssey screwing up: does setting, “MultEQ XT32” to Off completely disable any Audyssey settings? Or maybe setting it to “Direct” or “Pure Direct” mode?

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10 hours ago, Pazuzu said:

To rule out Audyssey screwing up: does setting, “MultEQ XT32” to Off completely disable any Audyssey settings?

 

Yes that will disable it until you switch it back on.

 

10 hours ago, Pazuzu said:

So I will rerun the Audyssey setup with the mic lower to see whether is makes any difference.

 

I have used Audyssey on many systems and I found that it usually works best when placing the mic on a tripod and positioning the mic a little higher than my ears position(s), so the chair back does not interfere or absorb the test tones.

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