NAD speaker setup apparent deficiency

[theguy]

When reviewing the new NAD AV receivers, I note that you cannot specify speaker distance by left and right speaker. Both fronts must be set up at the same distance. Similarly for the surrounds and rear surrounds. NAD claim that the surround chip is not capable of anything else and that other companies are merely putting up a smoke screen for consumers thinking that their receivers do something different with left and right.

I told NAD that I thought they were full of S&^%. It sounds to me like NAD cut a corner and used an inferior processor. They went on to state that if I were to enter the greatest distance for each "class" of speaker, I would get excellent results with respect to delay processing.

Is the delay processing that important and accurate? Do we really need exact distances left and right? Is the furtherest speaker away the best answer?

My current Yami 2400 lets me set the distances on a speaker by speaker basis.

Love to hear from one of the audioholic boys if possible. Thanks

 

[Unregistered]

Sound travels approximately 1.1 ft every millisecond. If the distances are off by 1 foot, the sound will be off by 1 millisecond. Considering its been shown that the minimal threshold of perception for humans is 6ms, I personally don't think it will matter one bit.

 

[Audioholics]

First of all, I wouldn't attribute "NAD" to what you heard unless you spoke to one of their actual engineers (as opposed to somebody who happened to pick up the phone). I'm only saying this as I tend to give the benefit of the doubt (I have no idea who you spoke to, but I would not think that the official response from NAD would be as you described). It is, of course, possible that their surround processor isn't capable of doing discrete distance calculations. We don't have an NAD systems in house to even look at it.

Secondly, setting delays for individual channels in a discrete system isn't rocket science and is most certainly not smoke and mirrors on the part of Yamaha, Denon, Onkyo/Integra, Anthem, etc...

 

[theguy]

Thanks Hawke. I spoke to the NAD Canada outside sales rep who said that he researched the answer with his engineers.

Who knows.

Would you care if you could not set discrete distances in an asymetrical setup or does it not really make a difference?

The NAD manual is quite clear. No separate distances for L and R.

Thanks