very little volume coming out of rear centre speaker -- help!

[supervij]

Hi All,

Like the title says, next to no volume coming out of my rear centre. And I'm going nuts!

But first, a little background . . . I'm using a Yamaha RX-V750 for a receiver, all Athena speakers, F2 fronts, B2 sides, C1 centres (front and rear) and SB400 subwoofer. I've also got a Kenwood RFU-6100 hooked up to the centre rear channel to make it "wireless".

When I do the Yamaha YPAO, the fuzzy sounds coming out of all the speakers are roughly identical in volume (so I figure the problem ain't the RFU nor the speaker itself). And the results are:

Front Centre 10.0 feet +4.5 dB small
Front Left 9.5 feet +7.0 dB small
Front Right 9.5 feet +7.5 dB small
Surround Left 5.5 feet +6.0 dB small
Surround Right 5.5 feet +6.0 dB small
Rear Centre 8.5 feet +7.0 dB small
Subwoofer 12.0 feet -7.5 dB crossover: 120 Hz

Okay, all the info looks weird set up like that. The posting thingie wouldn't let me lay it out all pretty-like, so sorry, everyone!

The fronts are small?! They always seemed like tall suckers to me, but okay. I've noticed that the dialogue seemed a bit low, so I pumped up the front centre to about +8.5 dB. The crossover seems a bit high, and the Athena sub (freq. response of 23 Hz to 120 Hz) recommends a setting of just under 45 Hz if paired with the Athena F2 fronts (freq. response of 35 Hz to 20 KHz). Should I go with Athena's recommendation of just under 45 Hz? Or Yamaha's opinion of 120 Hz? Or the standard that most everybody seems to prefer of 80 Hz? I've been trying to detect the audio differences for the three crossover points, but I end up confusing the heck out of myself, not to mention giving myself a bit of a headache.

Now, even when I pump up the rear centre to +10.0 dB (the maximum it'll go), I can still hear barely anything coming out of that speaker, even though the fuzzy YPAO sounds are roughly identical in volume from each speaker. So I figure I need to decrease the volume coming to each of the other speakers. But to what? I tried reducing each of them (except the rear centre) by about 5 dB, and that seemed okay. But something was off. I think the fronts were just a bit too loud. Or was it the sides? Again, I was listening so intently and to so many variations that my brain finally turned off in protest. So what I'm asking is: If I decrease the fronts by x dB, should the decrease of the sides also be x dB, or should it be a bit more, or a bit less?

Or is there something else I should consider, instead of decreasing the levels of the other speakers?

If this post seems confusing, don't worry, it confuses me too. Any advice would be hugely appreciated. (Or if any of you wonderful A/V enthusiasts want to come up to Toronto to set up the levels for me, that'd be okay too!)

much thanks to all who can help, and cheers,
supervij

 

[ctribble]

Response

I would do a test tone on your speakers and see what you are hearing then.. I had the same problem with mine and it turned out to be a loose connection. It was the only one my friend hooked up!!!! Hopefully it's a loose connection and that's it!
C.T.

 

[supervij]

Test tones have sounded fine. And the Yamaha tells me if any of the speakers are mis-wired. No such luck. Sigh.

 

[Red]

Is this happening when you are listening to 6.1 encoded material? Does this happen in all DSP modes? Have you tried to wire your rear center and test it that way? perhaps it is a problem with the Kenwood wireless set up?

If your Athena's go to 35Hz do not set the sub at 120. Experiment between 45 and 80

 

[supervij]

Is this happening when you are listening to 6.1 encoded material? Does this happen in all DSP modes? Have you tried to wire your rear center and test it that way? perhaps it is a problem with the Kenwood wireless set up?

If your Athena's go to 35Hz do not set the sub at 120. Experiment between 45 and 80

Yeah, so Star Wars and Austin Powers 3 (both of which are 6.1) -- I hear very little coming from the rear centre. It also happens anytime I engage 7 speaker stereo, or any of the PLXii modes. It's only when I put my ear right up to it that I realize that anything's coming out at all. So I disconnected the wireless units and plugged the rear centre into the receiver, and the sound coming out of it was . . . well, I want to say it was miles better, but . . . 7 speaker stereo sounded much, much better, with actual sound coming out. And while Star Wars sounded better, I think Austin sounded roughly the same. It's a real hassle, hooking it up directly to the speaker, then hooking in the wireless. So I don't want to be continually changing between the two, trying to hear the difference between the two.

And the Kenwood wireless unit lets out these occassional, strange banging noises out of the speaker too, whenever it's not in use. I could go to their hq tomorrow to get it fixed, but I'm told it would take a week minimum, and I'm just tired of this whole mess. I'm starting to think that hooking the speaker directly into the receiver and then running the speaker wire (nearly 50 feet!) around the room is the least complicated option. Sucks, though, cos the whole reason I finally leapt into the HT thing was because of this wireless unit. Sigh. Well, that's another $30 (Canadian) I'll be spending on speaker wire.

Thanks for the advice about the crossover settings; I'll experiment with it.

Anybody have any other thoughts as to what I ought to do?

cheers,
supervij

 

[MasterChief]

Strange!

Something is very wrong. The AS-F2's would not be small not even the B2's, its recommended small for eveything but the reciever would not choose small for them. When i done MCCAC on the pioneer and other recievers i would get around the same large large lare not small. if it goes under 80Hz it will set them as large i read somewere.And as you know all the auditions go under 80Hz. My room is small-medium and all the speakers range from 6ft-10ft ,+1.0db - +1.5db - +2.db . It must be something with your reciever prolly not the rfu unit.but what hmm is eveything connected properely with good cables ?

 

[supervij]

My Yamaha tells me that all the speakers are wired correctly, and I'm using Thunderline cables -- these were recommended to me by the salesguy.

Are you saying that the Yamaha should be choosing my F2s, B2s (and maybe my C1s) as large? If so, then there seems to be something wrong with my receiver. Terrific. Should I keep all the speakers as small, then, or should I change them all to large? -- all the speakers do go below 80 Hz.

thanks, and cheers,
supervij

 

[markw]

Do you get anything at all through the rears?

First off, all speakers can be set to large, although this would not be the problem. Neither would your choice of cables, which I've never heard of, BTW.

I've hears several comments that YPAO doesn't always do everything perfectly. Try doing it manually. It ain't that difficult or timestaking. If you run the manual setup (non YPAO), and adjust all speakers to the same relative loudness, you should be set to go.

...but, there might be some question as to what you expect the hear in the rears. Unlike a stereo music recording where both channels have sound eminating from them virtually constantly, movies generally don't do othat much with the rear channels. They force most of the sound to the front (center, generally), and the rears are used only occasionally for sound effects, ambiance and the like.

IOW. there can be quite a few times where you don't even know they are there and that's normal. Remember, this isn't srereo music. It's a movie and different rules apply.

 

[supervij]

I think I may have hit upon it. I set the crossover to 55 Hz (the lowest my smallest speaker can go is 50 Hz), turned down the volume on the sub from 6.5 to 5, ran the YPAO again, and all the values came in between -3 dB and +3 dB. It set all the speakers to small (I'm not complaining, as that's what they ought to be anyway), and I manually pumped up both centres a bit. The test tones on all the speakers now come out to much closer than it did before, which is great, but I think I'm still going to invest in an SPL meter and calibrate it to a finer degree. Hey, I'm obsessed, is that so wrong?!

Thanks, you guys, you really helped me out. Much much much appreciated!

cheers,
supervij