possible issue with vovals

[khoi911]

I have 340 mains and center. They are 6 months old. I have watched 2 movies that during a particular scene in both movies, the vocals get bent out of shape. The 1st movie is the Aviator and the vocals sound horrible during the scene where HH is defending himself in front of congress. It seems the tweeter is vibrating badly during this scene. I replayed this scene in stereo to see if the mains exhibit the same tweeter problem and it does.

The 2nd movie is Serenity. At the end of the movie, the crew of Serenity is on the planet Miranda and come across a hologram. They replay the hologram and the 340s have a difficult time reproducing the vocals accurately.

I'm not sure what is going on. Does it anyone have these DVDs and can they play it on their systems?

I also have 170s for the rears and may use one of them as a center to see if I get the same result.

Thanks,
Khoi

[bikeman]

I just received Aviator from Netflix. I'll check on this tonight or Saturday. I had no issues with Serenity.

David

[khoi911]

The scene is towards the end of the movie. I usally play my movies 4-5 db from reference levels. Please let me know.

Khoi

I just received Aviator from Netflix. I'll check on this tonight or Saturday. I had no issues with Serenity.

David

[Asliang]

Some movies have sub-par dialogue. For example, even in the movie theater I could barely understand what Jeremy Irons was saying in Kingdom of Heaven.

Maybe pick up a pair of bookshelves at a local store like Bestbuy and see if you can emulate the problem?

[einsteinjb]

I have 340 mains and center. They are 6 months old. I have watched 2 movies that during a particular scene in both movies, the vocals get bent out of shape. The 1st movie is the Aviator and the vocals sound horrible during the scene where HH is defending himself in front of congress. It seems the tweeter is vibrating badly during this scene. I replayed this scene in stereo to see if the mains exhibit the same tweeter problem and it does.

The 2nd movie is Serenity. At the end of the movie, the crew of Serenity is on the planet Miranda and come across a hologram. They replay the hologram and the 340s have a difficult time reproducing the vocals accurately.

I'm not sure what is going on. Does it anyone have these DVDs and can they play it on their systems?

I also have 170s for the rears and may use one of them as a center to see if I get the same result.

Thanks,
Khoi

Have you tried your DVDs with the problems on any other system? Also have you tried this at a lower volume to see if the problem happens at any volume or just loud?

When you say you play your movies "4-5 dB from reference level," how loud is this exactly? Have you measured that volume with an SPL meter?

Trying one of your 170s in center position to see if it has the same result is a good idea. Have you tried that yet? The fact that you said it happens when you try it in stereo mode suggests strongly that the problem is on the DVDs themselves. However, I don't have Serenity but I watched Aviator on my engineering partner's system (B&W 802s LR, 600 series center and surrounds, SVS PB12 Ultra/2, Rotel pre/pro and plenty of Rotel power amps) and I noticed no problems with dialog. But it sounds like you're watching at a higher level than we did. We had it at a respectable volume but nothing that would shatter windows. My strong opinion is that the 340 is a stronger center channel than the B&W 600 series my friend has so if his had no trouble with it, yours should be fine.

You might also email David F about it directly and see what he says.

[bikeman]

The scene is towards the end of the movie. I usally play my movies 4-5 db from reference levels. Please let me know.

I didn't get out my SPL meter but we cranked it up and had no issues whatsoever. I really enjoyed the movie to boot.

David

[BGHD]

Recently returned Serenity. No specifics, but immediate impression was the dialogue clarity wasn't great. But I really only watched the first 1/2 and last 5 minutes.

[swank121]

Just watched Serenity last night on my Ascend SE setup : 340SE L/C/R and 4 170SE surrounds.

No subwoofer yet (waiting for my HO).

The dialog in this movie is crap. I enjoyed the movie but it was hard to understand what people were saying at times. I had to rewind once or twice to catch a line that was drowned out by sound effects.

This is not a problem on any other DVD I have listened to so far. I watched the Matrix trilogy, Star Wars, War of the Worlds, and many other DVD's with excellent results.

[einsteinjb]

Just watched Serenity last night on my Ascend SE setup : 340SE L/C/R and 4 170SE surrounds.

No subwoofer yet (waiting for my HO).

The dialog in this movie is crap. I enjoyed the movie but it was hard to understand what people were saying at times. I had to rewind once or twice to catch a line that was drowned out by sound effects.

This is not a problem on any other DVD I have listened to so far. I watched the Matrix trilogy, Star Wars, War of the Worlds, and many other DVD's with excellent results.

Gasp! What a beautiful setup but you're watching major LFE movies without a sub! Shame on you. You're just going to have to watch them all over again anyway. Wait for the HO, and in the meantime watch movies like The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail... You know, dramas, light comedies and chick flicks!

War of the Worlds without a sub. Indeed. hehe.

[linecircle]

War of the Worlds without a sub. Indeed. hehe.

Hehe, I did that. Then I watched it again with a sub. Wow... it was a different level of experience altogether.

With the sub, the "comfortable" volume level was 5-10db less than without. I know where the loud bits were, and I cringed in anticipation because I'm not yet very familiar with how much output there will be for a given volume setting.