Ok, this surprised me, JBL 520C [emoji44]

[Hetfield]

75 dB with reference to what? A random position on the dial?

There are too many things to try and account for to easily explain a discrepancy. The room, speaker placement, how you held the meter, where you held the meter, did you put it on a stand or hold it in your hand? Was it in the exact same position and height as your your calibration mic? What tones are you using? What spl meter are you using? For instance, I'd trust Audyssey way more than any phone app.

I just never bothered with double checking ALL of my speakers because everything sounds right to me. This seems like one of those fruitless rabbit holes that lead to nowhere.

The SPL meter was on the same tripod as the Audyssey mic and at MLP in same place as the first position of the Audyssey mic when calibrating. The receiver was set to 0/reference before playing the pink noise. That is the correct way as far as I know.
The SPL meter was set to C weight, and slow response and then dial to 70db.

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[Genchic]

Well, the Audyssey numbers are calculated based on 8 different positions, the SPL is reading from one. I agree with pogre, trust Audyssey. It does a good job in system calibration to a given room.

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[afterlife2]

I loved my 520 when I set it up. I use aud them tweak to my liking. It's a good clear center and I'm finicky with sound.

 

[Pogre]

The SPL meter was on the same tripod as the Audyssey mic and at MLP in same place as the first position of the Audyssey mic when calibrating. The receiver was set to 0/reference before playing the pink noise. That is the correct way as far as I know.
The SPL meter was set to C weight, and slow response and then dial to 70db.

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Well, being off by a dB or 2 I wouldn't even sweat it. There may be other reasons for it, such as one of the positions being closer to one of the speakers so it got turned down to compensate- just one possible guess. The 7 dB difference with your surrounds seems wrong, but again I don't really know. Weren't things sounding great before? Seems like this wasn't an issue until you busted out the meter.

You know what I think? You should move that PB1000 behind your couch and run it again. You'll be so blown away with tactile nearfield bass you won't even care about the surround speakers... lol.

 

[Hetfield]

Well, being off by a dB or 2 I wouldn't even sweat it. There may be other reasons for it, such as one of the positions being closer to one of the speakers so it got turned down to compensate- just one possible guess. The 7 dB difference with your surrounds seems wrong, but again I don't really know. Weren't things sounding great before? Seems like this wasn't an issue until you busted out the meter.

You know what I think? You should move that PB1000 behind your couch and run it again. You'll be so blown away with tactile nearfield bass you won't even care about the surround speakers... lol.

I'm gonna put everything back to where it was. Good thing about being crazy in this hobby is I remember exactly what all these channels were set at.
Yeah that sub needs to be moved. I just don't really to run another wire across the floor to the back of them room and tape it down and hide it as best I can. I do have to try it though.

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[Genchic]

We are all picky with sound, otherwise we wouldn't be talking here. LoL!
After the Audyssey calibration, you go into your AVR and do further tweaks. This is how you get the sound you like. Try going into you EQ. Turn off the Audyssey, turn on EQ and do some adjustments there. When your Audyssey is off,, under Options you should see Tone,, you have bass and treble adjustment there as well.. Your calibration will still be there. I use EQ for certain movies and Audyssey for others. It is virtually impossible to have one for all setting of your sound system.

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[Hetfield]

It's all back to where Audyssey set it. It sounds good actually. I'll do some critical listening later. We are going Xmas shopping today which I despise more than running Audyssey and all 8 positions.
I really like this center channel though, 520C. That tweeter is magical. What I want to do here is get a third 570 and use that as the center but I will not let it on it's side. That looks too awful and I'm way too obsessive to allow that. It won't fit in my situation at the moment but I will eventually make it work. When I set my mind to something I will make it work.

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[Hetfield]

I loved my 520 when I set it up. I use aud them tweak to my liking. It's a good clear center and I'm finicky with sound.

I love it! That tweeter is magical man and when working with the 570 tweeter is super awesome.

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[Hetfield]

This does sound excellent now that I dropped the levels back to where they were. The center I bumped 2db. I guess always trust Audyssey .
Hey what is your take on Audyssey flat vs reference? I've been discussions on it and it's kinda so over the place. I have it on flat right now but really I'm undecided.

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[Pogre]

This does sound excellent now that I dropped the levels back to where they were. The center I bumped 2db. I guess always trust Audyssey .
Hey what is your take on Audyssey flat vs reference? I've been discussions on it and it's kinda so over the place. I have it on flat right now but really I'm undecided.

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Flat is just that. A flat response through the frequency range. Reference rolls off the highs a little bit, but... adjustments in the editor app only affect the reference setting.

 

[Genchic]

Flat has it's potentials with volume close to reference point which is "0". Because we rarely listen music, or watching movies that loud, we, at list I, have to use Audyssey Reference settings, which compensates for the low volume by boosting low and high frequencies. Same applies to Direct and Pure Direct. Those settings are good in sound room with perfect speakers placement and sound treatments worth hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
So, my go to settings are Audyssey Reference and Manual EQ with Audyssey Off, ofcause.

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[Hetfield]

Flat is just that. A flat response through the frequency range. Reference rolls off the highs a little bit, but... adjustments in the editor app only affect the reference setting.

Ah that is kinda what I thought. I'm on reference now. It's all good, sounds really good.

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[Genchic]

Glad you dialed it in the way you like it. It is a tedious and interesting process. At list how it is for me.

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[Pogre]

Flat has it's potentials with volume close to reference point which is "0". Because we rarely listen music, or watching movies that loud, we, at list I, have to use Audyssey Reference settings, which compensates for the low volume by boosting low and high frequencies. Same applies to Direct and Pure Direct. Those settings are good in sound room with perfect speakers placement and sound treatments worth hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
So, my go to settings are Audyssey Reference and Manual EQ with Audyssey Off, ofcause.

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If you turn Audyssey off then you're not using reference or flat. Unless you mean instead of turning it off you're bypassing the mains.

Reference doesn't boost the highs, but DEQ might. I know for certain DEQ boosts the bass frequencies. I have a couple of charts to illustrate what the different DEQ settings do for bass.

I have each sweep labeled with the RLO setting so you can see there's about a 2 dB boost for each consecutive setting. I use a combination of DEQ, RLO 10 and my subs' eq 2 setting for my room curve.

And for the Audyssey haters this is what it did to the bass response in my room, with no additional eq.

Before:

After:

Not perfect, but one hell of an improvement over none at all, and made it very easy for me to dial it in the rest of the way.

 

[Hetfield]

What are the "offsets" for? Any reason to mess with it or leave it at 0? This sounds amazing right now. Watching "The Bourne supremacy". Whew awesome!

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[Pogre]

What are the "offsets" for? Any reason to mess with it or leave it at 0? This sounds amazing right now. Watching "The Bourne supremacy". Whew awesome!

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Look at my post above yours. "RLO" is how I labeled the offsets.

*Edit: DEQ off is flat and RLO 15 is the lowest boost with an additional 2 dB each step as you go from 15 to 0.

 

[Pogre]

What are the "offsets" for? Any reason to mess with it or leave it at 0? This sounds amazing right now. Watching "The Bourne supremacy". Whew awesome!

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To add, I turn DEQ on and use RLO - 0 for movies. It has the strongest boost and adds some balls to 'splosions and stuff. I use RLO 10 for most of my music.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

What are the "offsets" for? Any reason to mess with it or leave it at 0? This sounds amazing right now. Watching "The Bourne supremacy". Whew awesome!

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This is what DEQ looks like. When you set the offset to 0, it engages at a much lower MV level. With the offsets, it basically does nothing until you get closer to MV -0.
With any of the RLO’s as you can see. When MV is -0, there is zero DEQ engaged. It’s only to boost lows and highs at volumes BELOW -0.

 

[Pogre]

This is what DEQ looks like. When you set the offset to 0, it engages at a much lower MV level. With the offsets, it basically does nothing until you get closer to MV -0.
With any of the RLO’s as you can see. When MV is -0, there is zero DEQ engaged. It’s only to boost lows and highs at volumes BELOW -0.

Right, and just to simplify, the more you turn the volume up the less boost is applied as you get closer and closer to max reference volume.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Right, and just to simplify, the more you turn the volume up the less boost is applied as you get closer and closer to max reference volume.

Exactly.
I was trying to articulate but…still shaking cobwebs. Lol