Vocal quality

[mdaleah]

Dear mdaleah,
I have to confess - I'm not a big Polk fan with that said no one had (yet) called you names

like I have mentioned before - best route to diagnose the situation is to measure both uses and see where the issue lies
Measuring is not too complicated. All you need a inexpensive mic, stand for it, some free software and a computer - any will do

Okay, thank you.

 

[j_garcia]

Thank you for your response. I was about to give up on Audioholics because my system sucks and I'm an idiot. All of which might be true, but still hard to hear considering I came here for help and to learn more about the hobby.

To answer your kind questions: My primary listing source is a basic Sony DVD/CD player connected via Toslink to the AVR. When listening to music (which is my primary interest), I listen in two-channel mode with the subwoofers active. As you know, when set to Pure Direct, the subwoofers are de-activated, and the mains receive the full band-width, which is equivalent to running them "large"? I'm pretty happy with Pure Direct: the bass is clean and the vocals have depth, but the subs are de-activated which is a bummer.

I'm not as discriminating when listening to home theater or other sources (i.e. Pandora), so I'm honestly not sure whether this problem is occurring in other modes.

I do think the problem resides with the AVR. This is my second Yamaha. My first Yamaha never seemed to work properly...

Yes, pure direct should bypass bass management on most AVRs. Interesting that your previous Yamaha did not exhibit the same issue. Have you looked at the speaker settings when switching the speaker size to large/small? I'd be curious to see if it is actually applying different settings for each; such as default for one and YPAO settings for the other if it had been run in one or the other state?

 

[herbu]

mdaleah,
You mention that you have your sub set to "LFE". You also mention you miss the sub when using Direct or Pure Direct.
Does your Yamaha have a sub setting for "LFE+Main"? If it's like my Denon, that will send bass to your sub regardless of "Small" or "Large", and regardless of Direct or Pure Direct.

With your L/R set to "Small", the suggestions above about crossovers, room treatments and speaker selection still apply. But if you run D/PD, you CAN add the sub back in with "LFE+Main". It helps mine A LOT.

 

[RichB]

You could always reset the AVR and start from scratch in case some setting got messed up somewhere.

There is really nothing wrong with running your center channel as full range if that sounds good to you. I do that with mine.
It rolls off at 80 Hz but for most sources there is not much bass on that channel so you are not missing much.

- Rich