Speakers crackle during certain dialogue

[Kvn_Walker]

Sound and Vision reports UC5s impedance reaches a minimum of 4.76 ohms at 463 Hz. It is a relatively insensitive 85bB/W/m, and you are driving it at +6 dB. This means that this speaker is demanding a lot of current... perhaps more than you AVR can comfortably deliver on that channel.

Conventional wisdom is that upgrading speakers makes the best financial sense, but 4-6k can buy you an AVR capable of driving any speaker so you could go either way.

+6? Yeah it's probably clipping that channel.

 

[R.Elder]

It seems that YPAO sets the levels off of the fronts which are the extremely efficient Klipsch floor standers. I could probably dial them back 3 dB which will give me room to drop the UC5 down to 3ish. I’ll toy around with that this morning when I reconnect the UC5 with the 6ohm setting on the Yamaha.

My plan was to buy some nice fronts (maybe kef R11s or Klipsch RF-7 iii) with my recent unexpected windfall. I just bought that Yamaha receiver in December 2018. Hopefully I can make it work and if not I’ll purchase an amp and see if that resolves the issue. The folks at magnolia aren’t very helpful.

 

[GrimSurfer]

It seems that YPAO sets the levels off of the fronts which are the extremely efficient Klipsch floor standers. I could probably dial them back 3 dB which will give me room to drop the UC5 down to 3ish. I’ll toy around with that this morning when I reconnect the UC5 with the 6ohm setting on the Yamaha.

My plan was to buy some nice fronts (maybe kef R11s or Klipsch RF-7 iii) with my recent unexpected windfall. I just bought that Yamaha receiver in December 2018. Hopefully I can make it work and if not I’ll purchase an amp and see if that resolves the issue. The folks at magnolia aren’t very helpful.

That might help free up some headroom. Just keep in mind that it might not be much since your Kilpsch are reportedly extremely efficient (if Klipsch overstated their efficiency, they wouldn't be the first manufacturer to do so). If Klipsch ratings are correct, then the power saved to achieve a -3dB loss could be less than that saved by reducing your center channel by three dB.

Just raising this to help manage expectations. Every little bit helps though.

Magnolia is a big chain. They likely hire sales staff at either minimum wage or on commission, not knowledgeable sound specialists. If you wish to test their knowledge ask them to calculate output, in dB from an amp driving a certain pair of speakers. If they don't immediately respond with "at what distance" they don't know what you're talking about.

 

[R.Elder]

That might help free up some headroom. Just keep in mind that it might not be much since your Kilpsch are reportedly extremely efficient (if Klipsch overstated their efficiency, they wouldn't be the first manufacturer to do so). If Klipsch ratings are correct, then the power saved to achieve a -3dB loss could be less than that saved by reducing your center channel by three dB.

Just raising this to help manage expectations. Every little bit helps though.

Magnolia is a big chain. They likely hire sales staff at either minimum wage or on commission, not knowledgeable sound specialists. If you wish to test their knowledge ask them to calculate output, in dB from an amp driving a certain pair of speakers. If they don't immediately respond with "at what distance" they don't know what you're talking about.

They definitely don’t know what they are talking about. I asked one salesperson about speakers and he said “most important thing when buying a speaker is to check their frequency response.” I was a bit surprised at how little he obviously knew. I started to explain what infra and sub sonic sound was and why say having a high response means little to nothing above 20k and that a flat response is the grail when I decided that he probably wouldn’t understand.