Center Speaker Dilemma - poor voice quality

[Dread348]

Hey guys,

This is the best forum on the net! I can usually an answer to any question that I have on audio video. I want to take the chance to thank you ahead of time. I have yet another probably easy question for you.

I'm at my father's house and I am rather disappointed with watching movies on this system. He has a Denon AVR-5803 hooked up to Martin Logan surround system. The main problem is that I can't hear voices well. I don't have the same problem with my home system. His center speaker is a Martin Logan Theater.

The setup is kinda odd. He has an old, pretty tall high def projection TV. The center sits on top and points down. I find to hear the voices, I need to have the bass down and treble up really high but then everything sounds like it was through a tin can and is irritating. I'm wondering if the audio delay between the fronts and the center is off and causing an echo that is muddling the voices.

Another question, I found that the wire hooked up is green and black not the usual red and black. What is the difference? What is the importance of the color difference?

Any thoughts? Thanks again!

Marshall

 

[sawzalot]

The color is not as important as making sure you have the same colors, no matter what they are , all hooked to the same polarity correct terminals at AVR and speakers so another way to say this is simple, all of your blacks should be hooked to the negatives at both source and speakers (-), and the other side of the wire should be hooked to your positives (+) no matter what color it is, just be consistent with these connections.

 

[Dread348]

The color is not as important as making sure you have the same colors, no matter what they are , all hooked to the same polarity correct terminals at AVR and speakers so another way to say this is simple, all of your blacks should be hooked to the negatives at both source and speakers (-), and the other side of the wire should be hooked to your positives (+) no matter what color it is, just be consistent with these connections.

Thanks for checking on that with me. I understand that the black coordinates with the negative terminal and the whatever the other wire is (blue, green, usually red) coordinates with the positive terminal.

To clarify, I noticed that the wire running to the center speaker is green and black one for the positive wire and the other for the negative wire. I also found a picture of this on monster's website: http://www.monstercable.com/productdisplay.asp?pin=823

Check it out and tell me what you think.

 

[Nestor]

My suggestions:

1. Check polarity of the speakers. Electrons don't care what colour of insulation surrounds the wire they go through. Just make sure the colour on the pos. terminal of the receiver matches the pos terminal of speaker.

2. Check speaker volume levels. Most receivers have a tone generator. As long as the center channel speaker isn't grossly different from the mains, your ears should be able to tell if they are roughly the same.

3. If the amp has eq settings for each speaker, make sure they aren't causing an issue. Try a flat/defeat setting and see what happens.

4. Check the center channel speaker by covering the tweeter with your hand. If the highs don't change, then you may have a blown tweeter. This is easier to tell if you can select some sort of "All-channel stereo" mode where the receiver mixes the left and right channels into the center, as Dolby tends to "steer" the audio. Failing that, find a video source with lots of center channel dialogue. I recently experienced this failure. Maybe this is your problem too. I'm not familiar with the Denon receiver, so you will have to consult the manual.