Home TheaTheater Help

[bluesguy]

Just setup/connected up my little home theater Popped a dvdmovie in the player and kicked back to check out King Kong. Funny thing occured that I don't understand. All the sounds that were occurring during the movie was drowning out a lot of the dialog coming from the center speaker. If I raised the volume to hear the dialog then it was too loud for the rest of the movie, plus I did not want to disturb my neighbors on either side of me in my townhouse complex. Can anyone shed some light on what is occuring to me. This is my first experience with the HT experience. The dvd player is a Pioneer DV588as player and my AV receiver is a Pioneer 1015 receiver.

Thanks in advance,

bluesguy

[DrWho]

You need to set the individual volume for each speaker. Most movies record the dialog into the center channel so it sounds like your center channel volume needs to be turned up a few notches.

If you look in your receiver manual you should find directions on how to activate a test signal to help you set the volume levels. What speakers and reciever are you using?

I've also found that sometimes matching the volumes doesn't work out and you've gotta boost the center a few notches to compensate. You might just start by boosting the center volume until you can hear the dialog just fine.

[sunburnwilly]

Do you have matching speakers all around ?

If not some tweeking is in order .

[oldbuckster]

Check the set-up mode on your DVD player, yes, your DVD player..........

[ironwoods]

Hi, It may also be helpful to fill out your system profile, so we could determin if other causes may be affecting the whole scheme of things....... in this case such as all the speakers makes & models, as you could have an undersized center, paired with highly efficient mains.

Does a "TheaTheater" have 2 screens? []

[sunburnwilly]

Check the set-up mode on your DVD player, yes, your DVD player..........

Good Advice

[bluesguy]

Thanks for all the suggestions/help. I reviewed the set-up instructions for both the Dvd player and the receiver, went thru the setup procedures for both components again with the same results. Since I have no experience with this HT stuff, I plan to take the dvd movie to a salon where everything is setup properly and play it. I then can tell/hear if the same thing occurs. If not, then back to the drawing board. My sig now contains my HT components.

[J.4knee]

Do you have an SPL meter, if not get one. Radio Shack sells one that will suit your needs. You need to adjust your receiver set up so each channel is outputting the same level of sound as measured by the SPL meter at your listening position.

[Guest " "]

while using the reciever test tone routine

[ironwoods]

Hey again, where are you located?

Maybe another forum member in your area could swing by to check your work.

Where did you purchase your gear?

[bluesguy]

I live in Swartz Creek Michigan.

Yesterday I went to a salon and played/viewed King Kong the movies that I had been playing on my HT. While viewing the movie at the salon, I saw/heard right away that my setup was out of kilter. Heard a lot more from the salon's setup, dialogue from the center speaker was clear and crisp, not being overridden from the left/right speakers. Also heard the song being sung from the beginning of the movie.

When I set up my system, I did the auto setup thing that was available from the Pioneer 1015. Re-reviewed the setup for the DVD and the A/V receeiver.Took not of the auto setup parms. The front(mains) were "large" as was the surrounds. The center was set to "small" The left and right was set at -7db, the center was at -10db, and the surrounds were at left -3db and the right was at -4.5db

Have since done some playing using the manual speaker set up. I set the left main to 0db for reference, set the center to -6db and the right to -10db, received same results as before. Also set the center to -3.5 and -1.0 withe the left/right remaining the same. Same results. Obsiously I am pissing in the wind here.

Will play more after church tomorrow. Perhaps some divine inspiration will come to me.

[toddvj]

This might be really obvious, but are you sure you are listening in Dolby Digital? Your receiver will tell you if you are. You have to have an optical or Dig. Coax cable hooked from DVD to Receiver to get Dolby Digital. I think that is what the previous poster was hinting at when he said go into the setup for the DVD player. Anyway, if your receiver does not say "Dolby Digital" something is wrong.

Why would you set the center so much lower than the mains? If you are having trouble with dialog, you should be turning it up, not down. Are you sure that you are hearing anything out of the center? You might be playing it in stereo and not realizing it. Also, I don't know why you would possibly want to set up your left at 0, and right at -10???

[IndyKlipschFan]

HT ALERT HERE>>>> Remember in most movies 70% of the sound dialog comes from the center channel so try it one of two ways..

1 Allow it (the center) to be large.... Sounds like your not going to crank it so it will be fine.. Keep the other front maybe even the back speakers large as well.

OR

2. Make every speaker small, especially the left and right speakers when you get the sub, let it handle everything 80Htz on down.. (put the sub up front, too, if you do this..) in stereo mode, switch back to large for the left and right speakers of course...

In a ideal perfect world, the front three speakers.. They should all be the same.. Or at least in the same class as well. (Like yours are a RC 25 with a RB25, so your in the same ball park.)

[toddvj]

There goes the magic 80Hz number again. []

There is a problem with the way he has it set up, I seriously doubt large vs small has anything to do with it.

[DrWho]

First off....don't do the auto setup thing. They rarely work and are

based on what I consider to be a 'false premise' - but that's a totally

different issue.

Are you equidistant from all of your speakers? And do you have them all

pointing towards the listening position? If you take the grills off you

should be able to look right down the throat of the horn.

As a starting point I would go ahead and set all your speakers to small

and use an 80Hz crossover to the subwoofer. Then set all of your

channel levels to 0. And finally you should correctly enter in all the

speaker distances.

The RC-25 has a sensitivity of 95dB (1 watt / 1 meter) and the RB-25

has a sensitivity of 94dB (1 watt / 1 meter). So at the very most put

your center channel to -1. And then the RS-25's are 96dB (1 watt / 1

meter) so they should probably be set to around -2. But all this

assumes that the speakers are the same distance from the listening

position...if a speaker is closer, then its volume will need to be

turned down - or if its further then its volume will need to be turned

up. As a very loose rule of thumb I'd say about one notch for every

foot.

I hope this helps...I know it contradicts what your auto setup thing

said, but the settings it spat out were far far from anything that

makes any sense at all.

[toddvj]

The Auto-Setup thingy did come up with some strange numbers, but basically it set the fronts at 0, the center at -3, and the surrounds at +4, and +2.5, so it probably wasn't totally off base. When I owned a Pioneer, it had an option to do the auto setup based on the Mains, as well as the generic setup.

Again, I doubt any of this has to do with his problem.

[bluesguy]

Finally able to post again. Went out of town over the holiday and had not had the time/opportunity to make changes or to try to correct my problem. My sub from Vann's finally arrived so I bought a sub-woofer cable and got it connected up. My connections are now :sub-woofer cable from the sub to the receiver via rca plugs,

DVD to receiver via the red/white/yellow audio cable

DVD to receiver via S-VIDEO TO S-VIDEO

RECEIVER(monitor out) to TV via S-VIDEO to S-VIDEO

Hope to get time this weekend to work on the HTS

bluesguy

[DrWho]

For discrete surround sound you are going to want to connect a single digital cable for the audio between your dvd player and your receiver. If you have a normal "coax digital output" then you can just use a normal RCA cable. A lot of players will also have optical outputs as well which would involve purchasing a new cable. Either way the same signal gets sent to the receiver so I'd just go the cheapest route.

[Steve_L]

Bluesguy, did you run the auto-equalization routine with the microphone that came with the Pioneer 1015?

That's the first thing you need to do. There are also some settings in the DVD player on that Pioneer that you need to make sure are set properly. I'll check my DVD settings, I can't remember what I did there, but I have the same Pioneer and if you run the auto-equalization properly.

[Fish]

I would agree with Who,forget auto set-up for now.Get a RS db meter and set manual.The Pioneers are not known for good auto calibration.Hk are considered one of the bast at auto and I still prefer manual.There is a-lot of material out there that just requires loud volume to hear the center,its just mastered that way.

Last but not least,believe it or not all pre/pro/avrs dont handle the signals the same.I've heard the same dvds dialog sound fine on one unit and worse on another,both calibrated the same.