So I bought a center channel, have some questions about everything sounding quieter

[His dudeness]

Ok, so I made a post about a week ago about changing out my system and upgrading/shuffling things around. A couple days ago I inherited more Cambridge Soundworks stuff in the form of two surrounds. Granted, I know they're not the best in the world but my parents had them and free is free. So yesterday I went out and bought a center channel. I ended up with a Def Tech Pro cinema 1000 since my room is small and I wanted a more compact speaker. I haven't hooked up the surrounds yet, just the center, but one thing I noticed is that at equal volume levels from when I was listening to just my two tower speakers, the sound now is actually not as loud as it was. I'm finding that I have to crank up the volume more. I'm getting a new receiver in the next couple days and hoping that it's just my older receiver being less efficient or cool with power delivery, but I was wondering if you guys could give me an explanation of why after hooking up an additional speaker my system isn't as loud as it used to be.

 

[Pyrrho]

Some speakers play louder at a given power level than others. So, assuming that you had it set up correctly before for two channels, and now have it set up correctly for three channels, it would seem that the center channel speaker you bought requires more power than the tower speakers for a given volume.

This, by the way, has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the sound, or whether the speaker is a good one or not. Some of the best speakers take a lot of power to drive them. And some great speakers take relatively little power.

 

[His dudeness]

Ahhhhhh. Ok, thank you for the info. As I said earlier, I'm planning on getting a new receiver in the next few days so hopefully this helps to give more power output.

 

[Pyrrho]

If it plays loud enough now, you don't need more power than you have. The mere fact of turning a knob further does not, in itself, mean much.

 

[fmw]

It should be just a matter of running the receiver's auto calibration function. That will correct for differences in speaker efficiency.