I recently upgraded to an Onkyo TX-RZ810 AVR and I am having issues with the speaker level calibration in a 7.1 configuration. I originally had an Onkyo TX-NR626 which used the Audyssey MultEQ calibration system and it worked pretty well. However, with the RZ810, Onkyo switched to using AccuEQ and I’ve been less than enthused with it. I’ve read a lot of forums and the general consensus is that AccuEQ sucks.
I’ve run the calibration on my system a number of times, and while it seems to do a decent job on calculating the speaker distances (other than the sub-woofers) and setting the relative levels from speaker to speaker, it again doesn’t seem to set the sub-woofer levels correctly, and the crossover points are way off in my opinion. It sets every speaker to a HP filter of 40 Hz, and the subs to an LPF of 120 Hz. I am using small satellite speakers and not large floor-standing towers, so that crossover point made no sense to me.
Just FYI, here’s my speaker setup: the mains are NHT Classic Two’s, the center is an NHT Classic Three C, the surrounds are NHT C 1’s and the back surrounds are NHT Classic Absolute Zeros. All of these speakers have a frequency response down to at least 73Hz, so I set the HP filter for all of them to 80Hz, the THX reference. My subs are a pair of SVS SB-3000s, and I left the LPF at 120Hz.
I attempted to manually set the speaker levels using my trusty Radio Shack SPL meter (alas a newer digital and not the classic analog version) but this is where I ran into issues. Even though I had set the volume level to the 0dB reference, when I went into the speaker level calibration in the menu, the pink noise level seemed much less than it should have been for 0dB reference. There was no way to change the volume level and no indication of the volume level of the pink noise. When I tried to set each speaker to 75dB I found I was having to crank up the levels 7 to 10dB+ and when I tested the playback at the 0dB reference volume level it was too loud and was distorting.
Just for reference, these are the speaker level settings set by AccuEQ, and I have validated “by ear” to be pretty well balanced: LF +1.5dB, Center -.5dB, RF +1.5dB, SR +.5, SBR +2.5, SBL +2.5, SL +.5, subs -2.5. And the subs still seem to be off.
So, if anyone has any suggestions on how I can best match the levels on my speakers, I’d appreciate it.
Thanks!