Need help with sound quality

[sc4s2cg]

Hello,

I have a Yamaha HTR-5930 receiver, but I'm struggling with sound quality. For some reason my 5.1 hookup is not as sharp, crisp and just "good" as my laptop's inbuilt Conexant High Definition Audio driver speakers and my brother's Logitech Z2300. The sound is too deep.

I put the bass down to 0 and the treble to 10, but still it is not as crisp as my laptop or my brother's computer speakers. The receiver's inbuilt FM radio's sound is lacking the same qualities as well. Is there something I'm missing? Do I need different wires to hookup to the speakers? Are there some hidden settings in the receiver?

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

Ps. My speakers are a Polkaudio RM6750

 

[chuck10553]

i have the same reciever and i thought it sounded great (just got the rx-v663) did you get the htib setup... thats what i did in which case you may need to make sure the speakers are set to small otherwise they may output to much bass... even in the little speakers hope this helps

 

[sc4s2cg]

Forgive my ignorance, but what is an htib setup? :S

 

[Adam]

Chuck was asking if you bought a home theater in a box, and he was referring to your speakers. The question is, what speakers are your using? As Chuck mentioned, a lot of auto set-up routines will set the front speakers to "large", even though you'd want them set to "small" if you are using a subwoofer.

Welcome to the forum, btw!

 

[chuck10553]

Chuck was asking if you bought a home theater in a box, and he was referring to your speakers. The question is, what speakers are your using? As Chuck mentioned, a lot of auto set-up routines will set the front speakers to "large", even though you'd want them set to "small" if you are using a subwoofer.

Welcome to the forum, btw!

yea thanks for clarifying that... sorry bout the confusion but adam hit the nail on the head with my comment

 

[sc4s2cg]

Ah, I see!

Yes, I have a home theater in a box (Polkaudio RM6750). I set the the settings for the speakers to be small in the receiver, on the recommendation of Chuck. While doing that I realized that the bass was set to be played through the front speakers and the sub, so I changed that to the sub only.

The quality changed for the better a tad, but it still lacks the crispness of my laptop or my brother's Logitech.

Thank you for the welcome!

 

[fox]

Chuck was asking if you bought a home theater in a box, and he was referring to your speakers. The question is, what speakers are your using? As Chuck mentioned, a lot of auto set-up routines will set the front speakers to "large", even though you'd want them set to "small" if you are using a subwoofer.

Welcome to the forum, btw!

This is something I hadn't been aware of either, that one should set your front mains to small on your receiver. My mains are anything but small, but I have now them to small based upon this recommendation and let my SVS take care of the bass.

 

[MDS]

This is something I hadn't been aware of either, that one should set your front mains to small on your receiver. My mains are anything but small, but I have now them to small based upon this recommendation and let my SVS take care of the bass.

Don't think of Small vs Large as referring to the physical speaker/driver size. It's only loosely related in that in general a larger physical size speaker should be capable of lower bass extension.

Instead think of it as a configuration option as in 'send the bass to this speaker (Large) or not (Small). Unless your speakers are truly full range and can accurately reproduce bass down to 20 Hz (practically none of them) you want to set them to Small and have the bass routed to the subwoofer which is purposefully designed to deal with low bass and nothing else.

 

[fox]

Don't think of Small vs Large as referring to the physical speaker/driver size. It's only loosely related in that in general a larger physical size speaker should be capable of lower bass extension.

Instead think of it as a configuration option as in 'send the bass to this speaker (Large) or not (Small). Unless your speakers are truly full range and can accurately reproduce bass down to 20 Hz (practically none of them) you want to set them to Small and have the bass routed to the subwoofer which is purposefully designed to deal with low bass and nothing else.

This is now how all the speakers are now set (small). I learn something again.
Thank you for that.

 

[Gatsby191]

No Big or Small option for my "875"

My Onkyo "875" doesn't have the Speaker setting option of "Big" or "Small". IT does however, have the crossover setting option available for each speaker position. I have the front left and right speakers set to 70, the front center speaker set to 80, the side left and right speakers set to 80, and the back left and right speakers set to 80. My Subs output dial is set to about "10 O'clock, which is about 5 ticks shy of half way. The output to my sub that comes from the receiver itself is set at 0. Am I missing something major in doing this? I was under the impression that, with all the speakers set to their own crossovers, that the need for setting your speakers to "Big" or "Small" was negated. Right? Whatever falls under the 70 crossover setting for my fronts, gets dumped to my sub, and whatever falls under the 80 crossover setting that I have all of my other speakers set to, gets dumped to the sub. Right?
One other thing. The only confusion I've been left with is, my sub also has it's own crossover dial on the back, and it also has a phase dial on the back too. I feel embarassed to ask what to do with those 2 dials now. Any help? Thanks! Joe B.

 

[Adam]

Joe,

No need to be embarrassed! The cross-over on the sub is used when you don't do the cross-over setting in the receiver (like you have done). So, if your sub has a switch to override the cross-over, or if it has a specific input that doesn't use it, that's the way to go. Otherwise, set the cross-over dial on the sub to the highest frequency so that it won't be filtering out frequencies that you want it to play.

The phase dial is used to adjust the timing of the sub versus the other speakers. I think that's the right way to explain it. You can adjust it and see if it makes any difference in the way that it sounds. I tend to not change mine, but others here do use that dial.

I'm going to look into your 875 owners manual again. There should be some setting for the speakers that is equivalent to "large" or "small". That setting tells the receiver to actually use the cross-over frequencies that you have set. At least, that's what I'm used to. Let me take a look.

 

[Adam]

Joe,

I just looked through the manual. You're good to go. The cross-over settings have something called "Full Band" in addition to all of the frequency settings. The "Full Band" setting is equivalent to the "large" setting on other receivers. Setting it to any of the frequencies (e.g. "80 Hz") is equivalent to the "small" setting on other receivers.

The more that I read of that manual, the more that I like your receiver!

Adam

 

[MDS]

The new line of Onkyo receivers allow independent xover settings per channel and that is why they went with the 'full band' vs a specific xover setting for each channel. Adam is spot on with the interpretation of those settings.

Prior year models have the typical global xover setting and do use the 'Large' vs 'Small' terminology because there would be no confusion - any channel set to Small would use the single xover setting you choose.