Help with room acoustics? (Sierra-1 L/C/R)

Golly. I'm really sorry to hear that you're still not getting the results that you're after :( As you can hopefully tell, I've tried to address as many potential causes as I can. One more though...

You wouldn't happen to have your AV Receiver plugged into some sort of surge protector or "power conditioner", would you?

I ask because I had a long conversation on another forum a while back with a fellow who was having some similar issues to yours. He was using the Ascend CMT-340SE speakers, as it happens. He was getting what he described as a very "tinny" or "shrill" sort of brightness, and the same sort of highly localized sound that I believe you are describing. He wanted his speakers to "fill the room" with sound, which the CMT-340SE certainly can. But he found they were sounding "small" and "closed in".

He actually had one solid wall on the left side, and a big opening to another room on the right - so a very similar sort of room layout to yours, in fact!

Anywho, we went through some very similar ideas and recommendations. But what I hadn't known when we spoke was that he had all of his components, including his AV Receiver and subwoofer all plugged into a surge protector. He eventually moved the subwoofer to a different electrical outlet, and nixed the cheapo surge protector in favor of an APC unit with "high current" outlets that I recommended.

Voila! The sound completely transformed for him, and sounded the way I know those Ascend speakers should sound! Only explanation is that the surge protector he was using was completely choking the electrical current being fed to the AV Receiver and other components. Moving the subwoofer to a different electrical outlet and swapping out the surge protector were the only changes he made, so that's the only explanation I could come up with. And it's quite common for surge protectors and "power conditioners" to choke the electrical current, so it's not out of left field.

Anyways, I bring it up, simply because what you're describing reminded me of that fellow's situation, and how he was having similar problems that wound up being an electrical supply issue. You definitely have good speakers and equipment, so you ought to be getting better sound than what you're hearing. As I say, the room acoustics can make a pretty big difference, but not to the level that you're describing. That is something else.

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Originally Posted by jonathan_teller

Golly. I'm really sorry to hear that you're still not getting the results that you're after :( As you can hopefully tell, I've tried to address as many potential causes as I can. One more though...

You wouldn't happen to have your AV Receiver plugged into some sort of surge protector or "power conditioner", would you?

I ask because I had a long conversation on another forum a while back with a fellow who was having some similar issues to yours. He was using the Ascend CMT-340SE speakers, as it happens. He was getting what he described as a very "tinny" or "shrill" sort of brightness, and the same sort of highly localized sound that I believe you are describing. He wanted his speakers to "fill the room" with sound, which the CMT-340SE certainly can. But he found they were sounding "small" and "closed in".

He actually had one solid wall on the left side, and a big opening to another room on the right - so a very similar sort of room layout to yours, in fact!

Anywho, we went through some very similar ideas and recommendations. But what I hadn't known when we spoke was that he had all of his components, including his AV Receiver and subwoofer all plugged into a surge protector. He eventually moved the subwoofer to a different electrical outlet, and nixed the cheapo surge protector in favor of an APC unit with "high current" outlets that I recommended.

Voila! The sound completely transformed for him, and sounded the way I know those Ascend speakers should sound! Only explanation is that the surge protector he was using was completely choking the electrical current being fed to the AV Receiver and other components. Moving the subwoofer to a different electrical outlet and swapping out the surge protector were the only changes he made, so that's the only explanation I could come up with. And it's quite common for surge protectors and "power conditioners" to choke the electrical current, so it's not out of left field.

Anyways, I bring it up, simply because what you're describing reminded me of that fellow's situation, and how he was having similar problems that wound up being an electrical supply issue. You definitely have good speakers and equipment, so you ought to be getting better sound than what you're hearing. As I say, the room acoustics can make a pretty big difference, but not to the level that you're describing. That is something else.

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Wow, you're like the audio Sherlock Holmes. I do in fact have my receiver (and all my A/V equipment) hooked up to a conditioning surge protector. Sadly, my hope dropped when you said switching to an APC fixed the issue, as I am currently using an APC (P8V). Still, I'm willing to give it a shot. Being that I'm not an electrician, I'm not too knowledgeable on how home power works. Currently the surge protector is connected to the bottom socket. Would simply unplugging the receiver from the surge protector and plugging it directly into top socket give it the power it (potentially) requires, or do I need to find another outlet? Thanks!

Just for troubleshooting, try plugging the AV Receiver straight into a wall outlet, and have that be the only device on that outlet. Obviously, this wouldn't be permanent, but we just want to figure out if it might be an electrical supply issue.

The APC P8V is one of their simpler, less expensive units. It's really just a surge protector. You can tell by its light weight that there really isn't much inside that unit. Some of APC's more expensive and elaborate products include noise filters, voltage regulators, and batteries, and they have outlets that are actually labelled "high current" on them, which are designed for things like amps and subwoofers, which draw a lot of current.

Anyways, it should be an easy enough experiment to plug your AV Receiver directly into a wall outlet. If that happens to help, you'll at least know that something was up with your electrical supply before! :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jonathan_teller

Just for troubleshooting, try plugging the AV Receiver straight into a wall outlet, and have that be the only device on that outlet. Obviously, this wouldn't be permanent, but we just want to figure out if it might be an electrical supply issue.

The APC P8V is one of their simpler, less expensive units. It's really just a surge protector. You can tell by its light weight that there really isn't much inside that unit. Some of APC's more expensive and elaborate products include noise filters, voltage regulators, and batteries, and they have outlets that are actually labelled "high current" on them, which are designed for things like amps and subwoofers, which draw a lot of current.

Anyways, it should be an easy enough experiment to plug your AV Receiver directly into a wall outlet. If that happens to help, you'll at least know that something was up with your electrical supply before! :)

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Really? Damn, I bought it based on a recommendation from Audioholics. I believe it was under their $2000 HT guide and assumed it would be pretty top-notch for the price. Well I'm hopeful once again. It'll just be unfortunate if my surge protector is the issue. I don't really need another one lying around.

Hi Stump,

I am sorry to hear of your difficulties.

Something is definitely not quite right here. The bass response of the speakers, while it will vary depending on room locations, should absolutely not determine whether Trinnov activates and properly calibrates your center channel. From your description, it almost sounds like the microphone is only picking up low frequency sound waves, which is symptomatic of a bad mic, that or the receiver itself is problematic.

I would recommend trying a different receiver over the weekend - or perhaps you can quickly acquire a replacement microphone.

In addition, please post a picture of the front of your room.

We will get this sorted out for you :)

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Originally Posted by davef

Hi Stump,

I am sorry to hear of your difficulties.

Something is definitely not quite right here. The bass response of the speakers, while it will vary depending on room locations, should absolutely not determine whether Trinnov activates and properly calibrates your center channel. From your description, it almost sounds like the microphone is only picking up low frequency sound waves, which is symptomatic of a bad mic, that or the receiver itself is problematic.

I would recommend trying a different receiver over the weekend - or perhaps you can quickly acquire a replacement microphone.

In addition, please post a picture of the front of your room.

We will get this sorted out for you :)

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I'm starting to believe it's a hardware issue. Two things led to my conclusion. If I set the EQ to "Speaker Distance and Level Only", dialogue only comes out the right speaker. Also, the autoroute option is available, and I'm fairly certain that only appears if you have speakers swapped (i.e. Swapped R/L). I'll use my warranty for a new mic and hope it's not the receiver itself :(.

I might have asked this before, but have you tried resetting the R972?

Indeed!

Great to see Dave in this thread, as well! As he says, we will get this sorted!

It's good that we've gone through everything else in detail, though. Obviously, it's quite the time suck, and a lot of effort. But it leaves you very certain when it's a hardware malfunction! Setup problems are very common, so it's always good to make sure all of those sorts of things are in order first.

But at this point, the results you are getting, and the settings that your AV Receiver's Trinnov program are giving you are definitely out of whack. It can be tough to accept a hardware malfunction as being the cause, but when all other possible sources of the problem have been eliminated as suspects, what you're left with must be the truth! ;)

I, too, hope it is just the microphone. They're quite delicate, so a damaged mic is certainly not out of the question! That said, if you completely shut off the Trinnov program in your AV Receiver's menu, and just use a "direct" sound mode or a straight "Dolby Digital" sound mode or something, it might not be optimal, but you should still get pretty good sound quality with those speakers.

To be absolutely sure, I'd recommend doing a factory defaults reset in the AV Receiver's menu. If there is no obvious option somewhere in the Receiver's menus to just reset everything back to factory defaults, look in the manual - sometimes there's a specific sequence of button presses, or a dip switch that you can use to just set everything back to factory defaults.

Once the AV Receiver is back to factory defaults, have a listen without ever running the Trinnov auto-setup. Just put it in a regular Dolby Digital listening mode, and see what kind of sound you get. If you're still getting the terrible sound from your Center and Front Right speakers, then I'm afraid you likely have something wrong with the AV Receiver itself :(

EDIT: oops! Curtis snuck in his reply while I was typing mine! - haha

But yes, we both agree...try resetting your AV Receiver ;)

Thanks for the help everyone. I have reset the receiver quite a few times during this process. The results the system shows me after calibration look fine (in fact nearly perfect), but after it "computes", it's clear by the options available to me that they system believes the speakers are misplaced. Maybe by some physics miracle, I've tricked the mic into believing my right speaker is in the center, but my gut tells me it's broken ;). I've never actually had to return a defective product, but I can only imagine it's a slow process. I've emailed Sherwood, so let's hope I get a response soon. Thanks again!

Just a slight update. To cover my bases, I rotated the center tweeter and stood the speaker upright. Maybe it was just placebo effect, but the hollow sensation I got from the center seemed to disappear. Also when I slouch further in my seat (so that the cushions were right behind my head), the center seemed even clearer. Again, these were just quick observations (possibly placebo), but I wouldn't say I went looking for them (especially the slouch result). Would it be reasonable to think that maybe the EQ is sending dialogue to the L/R specifically to bypass a bad reflection? I'm having a hard time confirming if my hardware is malfunctioning or not. It would probably require me to test in a completely different environment.