Broken soundstage

[Placebo005]

When il listening to music, i hear mainly the 2 front speakers when my reciever is set to Advance music, or anything else.
I dont really hear the centre channel as much as i should.

could this be due to my front speakers being too far apart? there 6' apart and my listening area is 7' away

 

[muncybob]

Sounds(pun intended) to me more like the speakers are not calibrated? Or perhaps fronts are set to large and center is set to small? 7' away from speakers 6' apart is not unreasonable.

 

[cyberbri]

That surround setting may not send that much information to the center channel. Have you tried 5-channel stereo?

And like bob says, have you calibrated the speakers?
Have you tweaked the position of the speakers (toe-in, distance from walls, etc.), and do you have the center channel aimed at the listening position?

 

[mfabien]

When il listening to music, i hear mainly the 2 front speakers when my reciever is set to Advance music, or anything else.
I dont really hear the centre channel as much as i should.

could this be due to my front speakers being too far apart? there 6' apart and my listening area is 7' away

"When il listening to music"...

From what medium?

If CDs, that is strictly 2 channel and comes out in the Front L/R speakers. To make use of all speakers with CDs, your a/v should be set to DD PL II music or Neo6:music.

If DVDs, movies or concerts with DD 5.1 or DTS surround have discrete tracks for the different speakers.

Same for DTS music disc and DVD-A connected via digital (different tracks vs High Resolution analogs)

HDTV: must be a channel with at least 384 Mbps audio bitrate and a program which carries DD 5.1. The STB should be set to Dolby Digital.

 

[rschleicher]

To add a little to the previous post about what mode you are listening in - if you are using one of your receiver's built-in proprietary "music modes" (e.g. modes with names like "Rock Concert", "Jazz Club", etc.), many of these don't direct any signal to the center channel speaker. They just use the surrounds to add ambience.

As the previous post noted, DPL II does synthesize a center channel signal from 2-channel sources. But how much gets directed to the center channel will depend on the source material itself. Also, DPL II has a less pronounced center-channel mix for its music sub-mode, than for movies.

If your receiver has a "5 channel stereo" (or "7 channel stereo") mode, then this should give you more or less equivalent volumes out of all speakers, to at least verify that your levels are more or less correct. Using your receiver's built-in pink noise test tone will also tell you that.