help setting up my home theater

chuyjr · May 10, 2016

Hello everybody, I'm new to this forum so hopefully I can find some help, I recently purchased this used home theater system, I installed it yesterday and still need to setup the preamplifier, the music sounds flat and the preamp its definitely pretty confusing when I get to the settings, the equalizer settings seems very overwhelming, has any body adjust the settings manually specifically for music and of course for movies.(I dont have the microphone that comes with the preamp for automatic home theater setup)
Do you guys think I will need an actual equalizer separately for music? Or does the preamp has enough to do a good job? I want to be able to listen to the guitar when playing rock.

Thanks in advance!!!

Here's a list of my components:

Amplifier: sherbourn 5 channel 5/5210A
Preamp: Emotiva umc-200
Subwoofer: velodyne dd-12
Fronts: focal electra 906
Center: focal electra cc900
Surrounds: focal cobalt sr800

WaynePflughaupt · May 11, 2016

It’s hard to quantify “sounds flat.” Do you mean it’s lacking highs, or lows?

There could be any number of problems. Perhaps the sub is turned down too low. You seem confused by the built-in equalization; perhaps the EQ is set up for the previous owner’s speakers or tastes.

As for the potential benefit of outboard equalization, it’s hard to say without knowing the EQ capabilities of the pre amp. If you’re confused by it, that suggest to me that it may well be pretty sophisticated (read powerful). I’m guessing it’s parametric with several bands (filters) per channel. If so that's all you need.

I’d suggest contacting Emotiva about a replacement mic. Either that or try ebay.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Latent · May 11, 2016

Never used this unit so can't say what the best solution is but here are a few options.

Spend enough time with the built in eq settings as they should be comprehensive enough but may not be easy to use at first.
Contact emotiva and ask how much for a replacment setup mic.
Find someone else who has the same unit and will kindly lend you the mic for a week.
This is a bit advanced but you can get free software called REW but you need a computer with possibly a good external sound DAC plus you need to buy a calibrated microphone. With this setup you can play sound into the room and it measures and graphs the responses and it will help you find out the correct eq settings to enter to customise your sound to your room. You may be able to re run it after entering the EQ settings to check it fixes any problems.
You can borrow or audition some modern speakers to make sure your older speakers are not the issue. Sometimes older speakers need work on their crossovers and mechanical speaker parts to get them sounding as good as they were originally. As components in the crossovers age the carefully tuned transition frequencies shift and can create issues.
Buy a better preamp that has better setup software like audyssey and lots more options to customize the sound if required. You have two options. Either a proper preamp-processor or you can get a full AVR that has pre-outs. AVR's can save you a bit sometimes especially if you go with an older refurbed model and the other advantage you get is you can later use the built in amp channels to add additional height or surround speakers to your setup as required but keep your power amp for the main channels so you will have loads of power headroom to spare. You should be able to sell your umc-200 to recover some of the cost of a new unit.