Audyssey Questions

[Ras777]

Why does Audyssey keep setting my front speakers to large and setting the individual crossover of fronts to 40Hz? I am meticulous when I run Audyssey making sure I follow all the tips from their website and this forum. I also notice that the distances are off by a few feet. Is this to be expected or should I go in and adjust for actual distance. Also, my HT is 21 x 18 x 8 and all my seating is located with just one row with no outlier seat to throw off the calculations. Any ideas?

Marantz SR6007/MultEQ XT
Emotiva XPA 3
Aperion Verus Grand Towers and Center
Aperion Verus Forte Satellites
HSU VTF 15H MK2

 

[tyhjaarpa]

Audyssey sets crossover automaticly to what your speakers can produce. You can change corssover to your preferred after you have ran it. Distance can as well be a little of ass it uses microphone to get the values and if something reflects in your room it can effect on it. Many leavy the distances as what avr suggest. I myself have changed some of them a bit to match for left and rigth for example when I know they are at identical length.

 

[Latent]

For the distances only the first microphone position matters. So make sure the microphone is very well placed at this one and there is a clear line of sight to all speakers so it can hear the direct sound loudest and not a reflection. If the microphone is placed to low then it may not have a good line of sight for example.

if your speakers can produce down to around 40hz it always sets the speaker to large. Since this is about as low as any sane non sub speaker will go it should only set them large if they are capable down to this level. This does mean you will lose some < 40hz info in this channel as it will not be redirected to your sub but there is not a lot of content in this frequency range in most music and for movie mixes the .1 encoded channel already redirects most of this range to the sub so your setting won't have much of an effect anyway. So ideally you should set the speakers to small to recover any <40hz info to your sub for the rare exception where it matters. But you may also want to raise the crossover to 60 or 80hz to free up your speakers from doing this low bass they may not do as well as your sub and take power away from other frequencies. If they did the setup properly and choose small for your speakers then there would be basically no situation where they would ever choose large and then they would have people complaining how rubbish Audyssey is because it didn't set their particular what they think is large speakers large. So they just cater to the mass market who don't really know what they are doing but secretly tell you to ignore the auto settings and make them small.

 

[lovinthehd]

FWIW it is the avr manufacturer that chooses to not call your stuff "small"....as far as Audyssey's own advice goes, they say if you have a sub use it and set your speakers to small. Be helpful to know as far as what Audyssey might be doing if we could see your speaker setup...got a pic you want to share?

I've always had Audyssey get speaker distances fairly accurately but subs can vary from actual distance due to the inherent delay built into the sub's amp for processing time. Distance is just a setting of delay. General recommendation is to use the avr's setting.

As far as raising crossovers in Audyssey, that's fine, just don't lower them below the recommended one from the avr, so that you have no gaps in the filters set by Audyssey.

 

[herbu]

Why does Audyssey keep setting my front speakers to large and setting the individual crossover of fronts to 40Hz?

Why do you keep running Audyssey? One "meticulous" run should be enough.

Your car may redline at 6500rpm. That doesn't mean it is most efficient there. Just because your speakers can reproduce some sound down to 40Hz doesn't mean they are efficient there.

For the vast majority of systems with a sub: set your speakers to small, set your crossover ~80Hz and leave your distances alone.

But you don't mention a sub, so I suppose you don't have one. You should. Without a sub, you pretty much have to set at least your fronts to Large, and crossover doesn't apply. (Without a sub, there is nothing to cross over to.) I have 4x Verus Grand Towers and the Grand Center. The addition of a great sub made a world of difference to my system. Until then, your speakers are Large with no crossover.

 

[Ras777]

I just added my sub to my equipment list...sorry about that. Thanks for the info. I will just change the speakers to small and my crossover to 80hz. Herbu I reran Audyssey because I replaced my Aperion subs with the HSU. Do you change the crossover on your center or let it play down to 60hz? Thanks for all the great advice.

 

[tyhjaarpa]

I just added my sub to my equipment list...sorry about that. Thanks for the info. I will just change the speakers to small and my crossover to 80hz. Herbu I reran Audyssey because I replaced my Aperion subs with the HSU. Do you change the crossover on your center or let it play down to 60hz? Thanks for all the great advice.

I would set the center for 80Hz.

 

[herbu]

Do you change the crossover on your center or let it play down to 60hz?

I played w/ the crossovers quite a bit to see what sounded best to me. In the end I put the towers at 80Hz, and kinda swapped the center back and forth from 80Hz to 100Hz. I was trying to make voices as clear as possible. And I have 2 capable subs.

 

[everettT]

The real question is how do you like the subs

 

[Grassy]

Should the centre channel be the same db volume as front mains.

 

[herbu]

Should the centre channel be the same db volume as front mains.

That's up to you. In TV/Movies, most of the dialog comes from the Center. With the Center at the same volume as the Left/Right, my wife and I found sometimes the effects from the L/R overpowered the voices from the Center, making it hard to understand the voices. So we increased the Center volume. I think a lot of people do that. In fact, some AVRs have something called "Voice Enhancement", or something like that. It simply increases the Center volume. Do whatever is necessary for your ears.

 

[lovinthehd]

Should the centre channel be the same db volume as front mains.

Yes, as measured at your primary listening position....but that doesn't mean you need to leave it there...preference rules.

 

[Grassy]

That's up to you. In TV/Movies, most of the dialog comes from the Center. With the Center at the same volume as the Left/Right, my wife and I found sometimes the effects from the L/R overpowered the voices from the Center, making it hard to understand the voices. So we increased the Center volume. I think a lot of people do that. In fact, some AVRs have something called "Voice Enhancement", or something like that. It simply increases the Center volume. Do whatever is necessary for your ears.

Yea same here, sometimes depending on the movie the centre channel can be a little harder to detect clearly.Its there, but a little harder for my ears to adjust to the volume its at.It must be me getting a little older.

 

[Grassy]

Yes, as measured at your primary listening position....but that doesn't mean you need to leave it there...preference rules.

Thanks mate,just checking as i noticed in one of Gene's video's on "setting up a receiver" that his mains were the same db as the centre but i have had to turn my centre up in the speaker settings. My mains are at -6.5 for both and i have turned up my centre to -1.0.As you can see there is quite a difference. Mind you there is nothing wrong with the speaker as it just seems a little hard to hear sometimes.

 

[PENG]

Why does Audyssey keep setting my front speakers to large and setting the individual crossover of fronts to 40Hz? I am meticulous when I run Audyssey making sure I follow all the tips from their website and this forum. I also notice that the distances are off by a few feet. Is this to be expected or should I go in and adjust for actual distance. Also, my HT is 21 x 18 x 8 and all my seating is located with just one row with no outlier seat to throw off the calculations. Any ideas?

Marantz SR6007/MultEQ XT
Emotiva XPA 3
Aperion Verus Grand Towers and Center
Aperion Verus Forte Satellites
HSU VTF 15H MK2

lovinthehd answered your questions in post#4 but there are a lot more to learn about Audyssey from their FAQ linked below.

https://audyssey.zendesk.com/forums/84181-Audyssey-101

https://audyssey.zendesk.com/entries/21056242-Help-on-Audyssey-Set-up

The 2nd link explained Audyssey was not responsible for setting your speakers to large, the manufacturers, Marantz in your case did.

 

[JOHN FICKEL]

Thanks mate,just checking as i noticed in one of Gene's video's on "setting up a receiver" that his mains were the same db as the centre but i have had to turn my centre up in the speaker settings. My mains are at -6.5 for both and i have turned up my centre to -1.0.As you can see there is quite a difference. Mind you there is nothing wrong with the speaker as it just seems a little hard to hear sometimes.

Something else has to be going on there, you Shouldn't have to increase the center channel that much more DB over the other speakers.

 

[Grassy]

Something else has to be going on there, you Shouldn't have to increase the center channel that much more DB over the other speakers.

Hi John, I was thinking that there is a big difference in sound levels myself between the front mains and the centre.I was also thinking that I might need to bring the front 3 speakers forward a good foot or so.The main sweet spot where I am sitting is a good 4.7 meters from the centre channel as it is a big room.I will give it a try tonight and see if there is a difference.Maybe 3 or so feet forward even.

 

[herbu]

Hi John, I was thinking that there is a big difference in sound levels myself between the front mains and the centre.

So what? A "big difference" in what? What some setting in your AVR menu says, or what your ears hear?

Listen, Grassy. Your ears are the final arbiter. It is a lesson some take a long time to understand. I suggest an initial setup w/ Audyssey. It will set all speakers so they are the same volume at your microphone/listening position. Then YOU tweak speakers so they sound best to YOU. Why in the world would you default to some menu setting when something else sounds better to you?

My wife's chair is close to our Right Surround speaker. It was too loud for her, so I turned it down. We both had trouble understanding some dialog in TV/Movies, so I turned up the Center speaker until it sounded good to us. So what if it's 5dB louder than the Left/Right? That sounds like an Audioholic cartoon: Wife says, "I'm having a hard time hearing what they say". Husband says, "Yes, but the Center speaker dB level matches the Left & Right speakers".

All of your speakers and the fancy adjustments in your AVR are for one purpose... to make things sound good to you. Use your knowledge and tools to give you a good starting point. Then use your ears and judgement to make it best for you.

 

[JOHN FICKEL]

OK , if one speaker is much much louder than another it's going to draw attention to it self... Are all the speakers the same input sensitivity ? I have always increased the center by 1 or 2 db. If I was to increase the center channel by five or six DB I would not have to turn up the volume that loud. And all the other speakers would suffer. When all of the speakers are relatively close in volume, You get a much more cohesive surround field

 

[JOHN FICKEL]

Otherwise why level match all the speakers to begin with