Center Speaker Clarity

[qwaven]

currently aside from the tv obstruction of the center it is pretty close to ear height. bringing it out front would remove the obstruction but then if would def be lower than it should be. It will not be possible to make the placement perfect in this room.

The point was why would PLII work fine but actual surround not? It would seem that the speaker itself is working fine. Which leaves me to wondering if there might be some settings on the AVR to adjust.

 

[Mpsafranski]

In all honesty setting that center on the floor with a door jam under the front of it to aim it up is going to be better than what you have going on there. There’s no setting in your AVR going to make that type of placement sound okay, unless you turn the center channel off altogether and run phantom center with you L&R. You could spend 2k on a new center and you’ll get similar results putting it behind the tv.

 

[lovinthehd]

currently aside from the tv obstruction of the center it is pretty close to ear height. bringing it out front would remove the obstruction but then if would def be lower than it should be. It will not be possible to make the placement perfect in this room.

The point was why would PLII work fine but actual surround not? It would seem that the speaker itself is working fine. Which leaves me to wondering if there might be some settings on the AVR to adjust.

Don't see the bit about moving it up front would make the relation to ear height much different.

The point has been hard to determine The actual mix is what I'd worry about reproducing in any case.

 

[TLS Guy]

Center attached.

How the Hell do you expect to get any clarity at all with a speaker position like that? That is totally absurd and ridiculous! If you have to have it like that, then get rid of it. You would be far better off without it. Just use the left and right speakers and forget the center.

 

[qwaven]

so my point was that currently the center channel speaker sounds fine. All audio voices and all other sound coming out of it are clear. Its still partially obstructed. The only variable that has changed is the audio type. This would seem to defeat the claim that the partial obstruction is causing the voices in other movies like Interstellar hard to understand. The obstruction is the same regardless of the movie/audio source. Or am I missing something?

Moving the speaker up front would require it to be placed on something that does not also block the TV. This leaves moving the speaker to the shelf below the TV which is lower than it currently is. For the sake of problem solving I am willing to try this but its not something I can do at this time. I will see if I can move things around tomorrow.

Cheers!

 

[TLS Guy]

so my point was that currently the center channel speaker sounds fine. All audio voices and all other sound coming out of it are clear. Its still partially obstructed. The only variable that has changed is the audio type. This would seem to defeat the claim that the partial obstruction is causing the voices in other movies like Interstellar hard to understand. The obstruction is the same regardless of the movie/audio source. Or am I missing something?

Moving the speaker up front would require it to be placed on something that does not also block the TV. This leaves moving the speaker to the shelf below the TV which is lower than it currently is. For the sake of problem solving I am willing to try this but its not something I can do at this time. I will see if I can move things around tomorrow.

Cheers!

Well, I'm telling you the finest center speaker in the world would have no clarity positioned like that. That completely mucks up the speakers sound dispersion and reflects a ton off sounds off the back of the TV causing horrid interference patterns and upsetting the speakers response. It is totally beyond my ken how anyone could expect any speaker to perform other than abysmally with that type of set up. Honestly that set up just defies common sense. Though I suppose I do know by now that common sense is a missnomer and actually it should be called rare sense.

 

[Mpsafranski]

PLII extrapolates a signal that is identical in both the left and right speakers to send to the center. Therefore the L&R are already playing what the center plays which is why you can suddenly understand dialog. That newfound clarity would go away if you stuffed the L&R behind your TV along with the center during PLII playback.

**THIS**
You’re hearing that older movie more clearly because all speakers are reproducing dialogue. I’m guessing not a lot of sound effects or much else going on in that movie either so dialogue is all there is to hear.

Nobody here is meaning to be rude or condescending, but there is 0 need to address any further questions until that speaker is unobstructed.

Basically, your house in on fire and you’re saying that when you go into a room that isn’t yet burning, it’s not as hot.

If you want a better experience you need to fix the placement first, end of discussion. If you’re still having issues then it would be time to look at new gear and/or settings.
[/QUOTE]

 

[snakeeyes]

On the older Yamahas, dialogue lift required front height speakers. On the newer Yamahas you can do dialogue lift with the main left and right speakers to lift the center channel up. I’m not sure on the 2009 ones. On my 2016 it can use main speakers.

Anyhow this can be useful if the center is under the TV to make it seem like it’sactually at the same height as the mains.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Wall mounting ah yes perhaps one day but it will surely bring its own issues. I could possibly run the speaker wire temporarily in front and move the center to the front inside the shelving unit if you really think it will solve my issue. It would make it a little lower though.

Come to think of it, though. I am wondering if its to do with the type of audio? For example I played Interstellar which has TrueHD audio. I had a super hard time understanding some of the people in the movie but when something big happened my room would shake. Now I am watching an older movie which does not appear to even have surround and is using 'PLII Movie' currently and sounds perfect. It also appears to mostly be playing from the center speaker.

Christopher Nolan pissed off a lot of people with interstellar. Much of the dialogue is hard to hear INTENTIONALLY. I don’t get it but it was a creative choice, and a quick trip through googletron and you can read all about it. So that affected everyone’s CC lol.

I would raise the tv and put the center in front of it. If your room
Is highly reflective, that will hurt too.

 

[KEW]

If you want to leave the center where it is, just unplug it from the AVR and run your setup again and it will work out okay!

 

[NINaudio]

move the center to the front inside the shelving unit if you really think it will solve my issue.

Placing it in an enclosed space is also going to have issues. As others have said, if you can't/aren't willing to fix the placement issues you'd be better off just disconnecting it and running a phantom center.

 

[qwaven]

Hi all thanks for your replies.

Some interesting replies, I will try and address it all. So yeah I totally understand the concern with where the center is located. I'm just not convinced that it will solve the issue I have, given the track record I have with the speaker in different environments/setups. All of which in the past did not obstruct the center at all. Moving the speaker to inside the cabinet as mentioned likely will bring other issues. I'm most worried about getting the speaker wire there neatly but also the possibility of turning the whole cabinet into a cheap speaker.

With that said the idea of raising the TV up does appeal more. I just will need to figure out how to do that safely. The TV legs do not really have a very wide spread. So whatever the TV sits on still needs to be stable.

In regards to the PLII I had checked the L/R speakers. I literally walked up to them and they were pretty quiet. It's possible this is because I had turned the center channel so much higher than the rest trying to fix Interstellar. I'm pretty sure I watched the older movie yesterday completely on my center speaker. For what its worth I had no clarity issues.

I'm curious to understand more about the dialogue lift from Yamaha? I have not seen an option that states explicitly this in my settings. My unit looks like it came out in 2007 so maybe I do not have such a feature. FYI I have managed to locate this which provides better spec than I posted earlier. https://www.blu-ray.com/Yamaha-HTR-6190B/14922/?show=specs

Interesting to know that I'm not the only one with issues with Interstellar. Makes me feel at least a little better. I suppose it would not be the best movie to test with then. Open to suggestions there. I do recall Batman Returns (4k version which I believe has at least TrueHD audio) having a hard time with batman's voice but others in the movie were mostly fine.

I will work on coming up with a solution to raise the TV next. As I'd prefer not to do this twice are there any points to note like how high the TV should be above the top of the center speaker body? My preference would be minimal.

Cheers!

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Hi all thanks for your replies.

Some interesting replies, I will try and address it all. So yeah I totally understand the concern with where the center is located. I'm just not convinced that it will solve the issue I have, given the track record I have with the speaker in different environments/setups. All of which in the past did not obstruct the center at all. Moving the speaker to inside the cabinet as mentioned likely will bring other issues. I'm most worried about getting the speaker wire there neatly but also the possibility of turning the whole cabinet into a cheap speaker.

With that said the idea of raising the TV up does appeal more. I just will need to figure out how to do that safely. The TV legs do not really have a very wide spread. So whatever the TV sits on still needs to be stable.

In regards to the PLII I had checked the L/R speakers. I literally walked up to them and they were pretty quiet. It's possible this is because I had turned the center channel so much higher than the rest trying to fix Interstellar. I'm pretty sure I watched the older movie yesterday completely on my center speaker. For what its worth I had no clarity issues.

I'm curious to understand more about the dialogue lift from Yamaha? I have not seen an option that states explicitly this in my settings. My unit looks like it came out in 2007 so maybe I do not have such a feature. FYI I have managed to locate this which provides better spec than I posted earlier. https://www.blu-ray.com/Yamaha-HTR-6190B/14922/?show=specs

Interesting to know that I'm not the only one with issues with Interstellar. Makes me feel at least a little better. I suppose it would not be the best movie to test with then. Open to suggestions there. I do recall Batman Returns (4k version which I believe has at least TrueHD audio) having a hard time with batman's voice but others in the movie were mostly fine.

I will work on coming up with a solution to raise the TV next. As I'd prefer not to do this twice are there any points to note like how high the TV should be above the top of the center speaker body? My preference would be minimal.

Cheers!

Yes. Chris Nolan also ruined Tom Hardy’s “Bain” as well.

 

[Matthew J Poes]

Hi all thanks for your replies.

Some interesting replies, I will try and address it all. So yeah I totally understand the concern with where the center is located. I'm just not convinced that it will solve the issue I have, given the track record I have with the speaker in different environments/setups. All of which in the past did not obstruct the center at all. Moving the speaker to inside the cabinet as mentioned likely will bring other issues. I'm most worried about getting the speaker wire there neatly but also the possibility of turning the whole cabinet into a cheap speaker.

With that said the idea of raising the TV up does appeal more. I just will need to figure out how to do that safely. The TV legs do not really have a very wide spread. So whatever the TV sits on still needs to be stable.

In regards to the PLII I had checked the L/R speakers. I literally walked up to them and they were pretty quiet. It's possible this is because I had turned the center channel so much higher than the rest trying to fix Interstellar. I'm pretty sure I watched the older movie yesterday completely on my center speaker. For what its worth I had no clarity issues.

I'm curious to understand more about the dialogue lift from Yamaha? I have not seen an option that states explicitly this in my settings. My unit looks like it came out in 2007 so maybe I do not have such a feature. FYI I have managed to locate this which provides better spec than I posted earlier. https://www.blu-ray.com/Yamaha-HTR-6190B/14922/?show=specs

Interesting to know that I'm not the only one with issues with Interstellar. Makes me feel at least a little better. I suppose it would not be the best movie to test with then. Open to suggestions there. I do recall Batman Returns (4k version which I believe has at least TrueHD audio) having a hard time with batman's voice but others in the movie were mostly fine.

I will work on coming up with a solution to raise the TV next. As I'd prefer not to do this twice are there any points to note like how high the TV should be above the top of the center speaker body? My preference would be minimal.

Cheers!

It's current placement is impacting its response and thus clarity. No way around it. Use of PLII uses the front left and right speakers as well, so the better clarity is probably coming from that.

Rather than arguing with us, I would suggest trying it in a better location. I would temporarily move it out in front of the TV and trying again. Even if it obstructs the TV, it's just a test. If things sound better, there you go. If it is the same, then its not the obstruction.

You might want to try more test material than just interstellar, since that is a known problematic movie.

Last thing, consider downloading a hearing test app on your phone and trying that. Dialogue clarity is also something impacted by specific types of hearing loss. Many people have it and don't realize, so it can be worth double checking. If that is the issue, upgrading the center won't fix the problem. There is a different solution to that.

 

[MR.MAGOO]

My suggestion: The center channel should be aimed toward the seated listening position. If mounted on top of TV angle it downwards, if mounted on bottom of TV angle it upwards.

 

[Pogre]

Center attached.

Uhhhh...

There's your problem right there. How can you not realize almost completely blocking a speaker will negatively affect it's performance?

Rather than arguing with us, I would suggest trying it in a better location. I would temporarily move it out in front of the TV and trying again. Even if it obstructs the TV, it's just a test. If things sound better, there you go. If it is the same, then its not the obstruction.

Exactly. At least give it a try before shooting us down. I mean, how much trouble could it be? It's not like we're suggesting that you spend 2k on a pair of subs or something.

That comes after you fix your center channel... lol

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Uhhhh...

There's your problem right there. How can you not realize almost completely blocking a speaker will negatively affect it's performance?

Exactly. At least give it a try before shooting us down. I mean, how much trouble could it be? It's not like we're suggesting that you spend 2k on a pair of subs or something.

That comes after you fix your center channel... lol

Iirc, he said he’s had the same intermittent problem since he has owned this speaker. Even when it wasn’t behind a tv, and fairly open. Also, the two films mentioned that he had the most trouble with(and probably others) were 2 Nolan films with NOTORIOUS dialogue problems. Not everyone knows that, but it’s true.

 

[qwaven]

ok ok relax everyone. I'm not really sure where this got lost in all this discussion but I've said several times that I was open to trying to change things but I needed to find an appropriate time. IE doing the change at midnight is probably not the most ideal time for me to start moving things around. Not to mention I don't think I ever disagreed that the placement wasn't ideal. I was simply trying to re iterate that I've had this issue in 3 different houses with 3 completely different setups (aside from the hardware) so it seemed more or less unlikely that putting the setup back to something fairly close to what I had before would solve all my problems. The only differences being it was a different room and the TV was mounted on the wall.

With that said I have propped the TV up on some 6x6 posts. It looks a little odd I have to say

Tried playing a few scenes hear and there through Interstellar and Batman returns.

Interstellar does sound some-what better but its hard to tell if its just because I'm already familiar with what they are saying since I just finished watching the movie the other day I could be just filling in the silence. As this is supposed to be a bad example to use I won't focus on it much but I figured I would still give this a shot since its what spawned this forum post in the first place.
Batman returns: similar issues as before. Batman often sounds harder to understand vs others in the movie. Almost like the bass just for his voice has been played with to muffle it. It's also why I am thinking my issue is usually with male voices instead of female which are typically not as deep sounding. Similar in Interstellar the male voices were def worse. Actually I'd even go as far as to say the female voices were generally fine in Interstellar.

Next I have tried Gemini Man. This actually sounded quite good. I would actually argue that perhaps my center speaker is now turned a little to high as sound effects wise did not seem to add much "wow" factor from any of my other speakers but the general speaking audio was at a good level. There were a few parts where I did feel Will Smith got quieter than he should be but no where near as bad as the first two movies.

I suspect my issue is more to do with the movie than the setup. There are definitively improvements over all by moving the placement but I am not sure its really resolved the issue I came here with, nor does it look (er sound) like it can be resolved. Unless there might be some settings on the AVR to try such as with the EQ or something but I've got no clue what to do there. I'm also not clear if its "normal" practice to bump the center channel higher than the L/R speakers?

Anyway thanks all for your input.

Cheers!

 

[Matthew J Poes]

ok ok relax everyone. I'm not really sure where this got lost in all this discussion but I've said several times that I was open to trying to change things but I needed to find an appropriate time. IE doing the change at midnight is probably not the most ideal time for me to start moving things around. Not to mention I don't think I ever disagreed that the placement wasn't ideal. I was simply trying to re iterate that I've had this issue in 3 different houses with 3 completely different setups (aside from the hardware) so it seemed more or less unlikely that putting the setup back to something fairly close to what I had before would solve all my problems. The only differences being it was a different room and the TV was mounted on the wall.

With that said I have propped the TV up on some 6x6 posts. It looks a little odd I have to say

Tried playing a few scenes hear and there through Interstellar and Batman returns.

Interstellar does sound some-what better but its hard to tell if its just because I'm already familiar with what they are saying since I just finished watching the movie the other day I could be just filling in the silence. As this is supposed to be a bad example to use I won't focus on it much but I figured I would still give this a shot since its what spawned this forum post in the first place.
Batman returns: similar issues as before. Batman often sounds harder to understand vs others in the movie. Almost like the bass just for his voice has been played with to muffle it. It's also why I am thinking my issue is usually with male voices instead of female which are typically not as deep sounding. Similar in Interstellar the male voices were def worse. Actually I'd even go as far as to say the female voices were generally fine in Interstellar.

Next I have tried Gemini Man. This actually sounded quite good. I would actually argue that perhaps my center speaker is now turned a little to high as sound effects wise did not seem to add much "wow" factor from any of my other speakers but the general speaking audio was at a good level. There were a few parts where I did feel Will Smith got quieter than he should be but no where near as bad as the first two movies.

I suspect my issue is more to do with the movie than the setup. There are definitively improvements over all by moving the placement but I am not sure its really resolved the issue I came here with, nor does it look (er sound) like it can be resolved. Unless there might be some settings on the AVR to try such as with the EQ or something but I've got no clue what to do there. I'm also not clear if its "normal" practice to bump the center channel higher than the L/R speakers?

Anyway thanks all for your input.

Cheers!

Ok so I think the next best thing to look into then would be two other issues.

First, I think it's worth doing a hearing test. The reason is that when you start to get a bit of hearing loss in certain critical frequencies, it becomes harder to follow conversations in movies. It's an interaction between the mechanisms the brain uses to ignore other sounds in the room and the loss of sensitivity at those frequencies. Everyone has hearing loss as they age, but how it happens varies person to person, and not everyone is as bothered by it. For the most part we lose our "cocktail party effect" as we get older.

If that is true, then the second thing I would do is try to measure the acoustics of the room. Even if you have no experience with that, we can still potentially do it. By measuring the rooms acoustics, you will be able to see if the natural reverberation of the room is contributing. Rooms that are more lively tend to make dialogue clarity worse.

If measurement is totally out of the question for you, you can describe the room to me with pictures. Show the floors, walls, windows, etc. Dimensions as well. From that I can guess what the RT likely is.

When I get clients with similar complaints to you, the first thing I do is check their room's STI (I standard measure of clarity). I then measure there center and often their hearing if need be. This provides me all I need to know in order to best address the problem. The typical solution is to reduce the RT of the room, adding absorption to critical locations. This doesn't have to mean adding actual acoustic panels. It could be modifying the curtains or changing them out. Adding a carpet if there isn't one, or adding a thick pad. Sometimes it can also include adding panels to key locations.

While I get that these movies are hard to understand, I also think that these treatments may be helpful for you.

 

[qwaven]

Thanks for the reply.

Had to look up what cocktail party effect is. Reading that description I've never been good at that. I'm typically very aware of whats happening around me. The exception would be for working I am equally good at tuning others out. However in terms of getting some testing done. I'd rather table that for now with all the epidemic stuff happening. Perhaps when things are a bit more normal I would revisit that aspect.

I'd be up for the second part as best I can. I have no experience or idea how this is done however. Let me know what you'd like me to try/check.

I'll write a brief outline of my room below.

General shape would be rectangular with a few area's that have "chimney's or the likes going up" so its not a perfect rectangle. There is an open archway to another rectangular room. There is another archway that leads to a hallway. Technically speaking there are 2 windows but these windows do not lead directly outside anymore. There is now an enclosed porch on the other side of them.

The windows have reasonably heavy light blocking curtains.

The floors would be hardwood with a decent carpet that covers most of it in that room.

The walls are all plaster and lath (not drywall) ; unless there is a heavy bass from the sub or the volume is quite high its usually reasonably quiet in the house outside that room (not a lot of sound escapes)

Furniture: couch and a comfy chair. There are a few oak pieces and a coffee table with a glass top.

Cheers!