The Tower Discussion Thread!

[hearing specialist]

Awesome!!! Here we go...

I would calibrate using the "Front" but not include your subs in the calibration. You would need to unplug the patch cords to them so YPAO cannot sense them or trigger them to come on, even if you have the bass set within the receiver to only be "Front" it will still turn the subs on. Unplug the patch cord! You will hear a completely different sound out of your mains doing this allowing YPAO to do its magic mainly on your towers and forcing your rears to mimic their performance as well, win, win. I am so confident in it because the "Front" just focuses on the problems while still allowing the mains to exercise their talents. All of this I believe is necessary to hear what the leader of this fine company has intended thru proper design and engineering. It's all about extracting all its designed to do within your listening space. Time alignment is too powerful to ignore. My opinion based on tried and true experimentation with the YPAO systems.

Yes treating the room is important, but also use of existing Parametric assistance can't be argued either. If it doesn't sound better I will allow you to poke me in the eye and kick me in the junk!

[merrymaid520]

Brandon, when you get a chance could you please measure the height of the binding posts above the floor? From Dave's pics I would estimate ~ 18" but an exact measurement would help.

Speaker cable considerations...

You got it! When I get home today, I will take a look.

Brandon

[merrymaid520]

Awesome!!! Here we go...

I would calibrate using the "Front" but not include your subs in the calibration. You would need to unplug the patch cords to them so YPAO cannot sense them or trigger them to come on, even if you have the bass set within the receiver to only be "Front" it will still turn the subs on. Unplug the patch cord! You will hear a completely different sound out of your mains doing this allowing YPAO to do its magic mainly on your towers and forcing your rears to mimic their performance as well, win, win. I am so confident in it because the "Front" just focuses on the problems while still allowing the mains to exercise their talents. All of this I believe is necessary to hear what the leader of this fine company has intended thru proper design and engineering. It's all about extracting all its designed to do within your listening space. Time alignment is too powerful to ignore. My opinion based on tried and true experimentation with the YPAO systems.

Yes treating the room is important, but also use of existing Parametric assistance can't be argued either. If it doesn't sound better I will allow you to poke me in the eye and kick me in the junk!

You are very convincing I will give it a whirl using the techniques you mentioned above. Can I just turn off the sub or do I have to unplug the sub cable from the Yamaha? I am also debating on whether or not to buy a better mic/preamp combo for taking more accurate measurements plus the RS meter only is accurate up to around 5Khz. I might not like what I find though(room issues)

Thanks.

[hearing specialist]

Since the auto (turn on) feature for sub is signal based I would turn them off but more importantly and a must do is unplugging the rca's from either the sub itself or receiver. I'm sure it's easier just to do it at the sub amp. You want YPAO focusing on your mains and rears/surrounds only.

Use the mic engineered for YPAO from Yamaha when calibrating and i'm sure you will but just wanted to be sure. I've spent a bunch of time e-mailing Yamaha engineers about the supplied mic and YPAO boundaries. It really is a good system and when I upgrade to the Aventage 3000 receiver that will have their best calibration system with the ability to see what its fixed and adjust off of it by taking the Parametric calibration and then copying it straight into the manual side and tweak till your hearts content.

Sourcing a better mic for REW is always good and the Dayton mic is a good choice and wife friendly (cost), fwiw. There appears to be a lady in your life based on one of your pics, how does she like them and curious what her first reaction to them was???

If I could just figure a solution for the WAF... I would be a rich man...

[malaplace]

Brian,
Thanks for the comments. My yamaha is the Rx-V2600 and does have YPAO and the "front" setting. I have choosen not to use this approach since I already EQ my Rythmik sub using a RS SPL meter(with the calibration file) and REW. I then make the appropriate adjustments on my Behringer FD to flatten the bass repsonse below 80hz in my room. The other issues above this crossover point are typically room related.

Just picking your brain

Brandon

I'd be careful putting too much stock in the RS SPL meter with the calibration file. When I calibrated my sub using a more well regarded calibrated mic, I got much different (and better) results, even on the low end frequencies for sub calibration, which supposedly the RS SPL meter is decent at measuring.

[scape]

I have yet to read thru this whole thread; but first things first: the speaker looks beautiful, Dave-- great job! the ~34hz - ~27khz is also amazing, I'm curious how you go about fixing some of those dips, but as a whole that's amazing.
anyone plan on wiring in a series pair per channel? ;D

[merrymaid520]

Brandon, when you get a chance could you please measure the height of the binding posts above the floor? From Dave's pics I would estimate ~ 18" but an exact measurement would help.

Speaker cable considerations...

Gary,
15.25" from carpet to binding posts

[curtis]

I have yet to read thru this whole thread; but first things first: the speaker looks beautiful, Dave-- great job! the ~34hz - ~27khz is also amazing, I'm curious how you go about fixing some of those dips, but as a whole that's amazing.
anyone plan on wiring in a series pair per channel? ;D

What dips?

[GaryB]

Gary,
15.25" from carpet to binding posts

Thanks, Brandon... much appreciated.

[merrymaid520]

Since the auto (turn on) feature for sub is signal based I would turn them off but more importantly and a must do is unplugging the rca's from either the sub itself or receiver. I'm sure it's easier just to do it at the sub amp. You want YPAO focusing on your mains and rears/surrounds only.

Use the mic engineered for YPAO from Yamaha when calibrating and i'm sure you will but just wanted to be sure. I've spent a bunch of time e-mailing Yamaha engineers about the supplied mic and YPAO boundaries. It really is a good system and when I upgrade to the Aventage 3000 receiver that will have their best calibration system with the ability to see what its fixed and adjust off of it by taking the Parametric calibration and then copying it straight into the manual side and tweak till your hearts content.

Sourcing a better mic for REW is always good and the Dayton mic is a good choice and wife friendly (cost), fwiw. There appears to be a lady in your life based on one of your pics, how does she like them and curious what her first reaction to them was???

If I could just figure a solution for the WAF... I would be a rich man...

Ignore my previous post here....I figured it out. With the yamaha setting the front speakers to large, I have a huge suckout below 30hz. It looked as if the sub was not running but I believe the towers low bass when set to large was canceling out the subs bass in that same freq area.