Gravelly Sierra-1 Center Issue

[seemonkey]

Hi all-

I'm a very happy Ascend owner of just a few months. I'm running 11.1 with mostly stock Sierra-1's on a Denon 4311 and powered with Emotiva XPA amps. On most material I'm extremely happy with my setup. I usually source from an htpc playing bluray but occasionally I use an Oppo 93.

Once in a while I hear harsh dialog through my center. It's almost always a male tenor-ish voice and usually during fairly quiet passages. An example of dialog that is bad is just a couple of minutes from the end of episode 9 of Pacific. A man tells the squad to pack up and leave. It's gravelly harsh. On my other systems it's clean.

I've tried swapping my center with another Sierra-1 and it is still harsh. I've messed with settings on my receiver until my fingers are numb without luck. I've also tried bypassing the Emotiva and powering directly with the receiver. The room was professionally treated so I don't think it's an acoustics problem. I'm going crazy trying to figure it out. Has anyone else had similar issues or have any advice?

Thanks-

[curtis]

I've never experienced anything like it on my Sierras.

Any EQ involved?

[Dr. House]

If you are using audyssey EQ disable it in the receiver settings and try again.

[scape]

try it with audyssey multieq and other audyssey features disabled, still harsh?
try it on just dolby pl2 for 5 channel..
try it on different volume levels, if still harsh i would say then that it is not indicative of the speaker.
try it on stereo direct, it should downmix the channels to L and R removing the center from the equation


if you got this far and it's still harsh, either the sierra is fundamentally flawed, and i highly doubt it's the speaker; or it's the audio mix.
i watched layer cake the other day, pretty intense score they mixed into the movie. then i realized later on, wow this is way too intense, i can hardly hear the dialogue.
sound engineers and recordings they work with aren't always good.
i think if it was the speaker you would be able to reproduce it over and over, with tons of different material.

[davef]

Hi seemonkey,

From what you describe, it sounds like some harshness in the source material itself. The Sierra-1 are very revealing / detailed loudspeakers and will reproduce more of the source than most speakers, the good and the bad... In addition, I have often found that some of the transfers to bluray are really bad and things get even worse when transfers are done for made-for-television sources.

One thing worth trying is to get the standard DVD version (not BD) and then have a listen. One thing to remember is that speakers are linear devices, if you are not hearing this same harshness with music and other sources but yet hear it consistently with a certain section of a recording and from multiple speakers (assuming the same speaker) -- look to the source material itself as the culprit... Never assume the source itself is correct, trust me, these days there is more bad source material out there than good

[seemonkey]

Thanks for the responses. I'll test these as soon as I can and report back. I am using audyssey. At one point I did some tests without it and fundamentally disliked the sound in comparison. I'll try it again.

[scape]

Maybe try pure/direct mode. I tried it without audyssey for a while but noticed that the time/domain measurements and EQ applied seem to go hand in hand for audyssey and removing one will skew the other; probably b/c of the extreme changes audyssey is attempting to make for room acoustics. Pure/direct mode on your receiver should disable everything and just play them amped.

[seemonkey]

Dave,

I think you actually nailed it. It's not an eq issue. I think I've exhausted just about everything I can think of. Foley effects and well recorded music sound exceptional. All of the battle sounds in Pacific are really good and it's just occasional voices, which I'm guessing are mic'd and recorded differently.

If I get some time I'll hook up my 2 channel components to it and see if it makes a difference, but I'm guessing it won't.

Thanks all for the suggestions.

[davef]

Dave,

I think you actually nailed it. It's not an eq issue. I think I've exhausted just about everything I can think of. Foley effects and well recorded music sound exceptional. All of the battle sounds in Pacific are really good and it's just occasional voices, which I'm guessing are mic'd and recorded differently.

If I get some time I'll hook up my 2 channel components to it and see if it makes a difference, but I'm guessing it won't.

Thanks all for the suggestions.

Issues like these are more common than most people think and the better the loudspeaker, the easier it is to hear flaws in the source material. I actually have several disks that I use for listening tests where specific sections are recorded poorly and the idea is to see if I can hear those flaws

If a loudspeaker sounds good on most everything else but you continuously hear some distortion on a specific section of a recording, always look to the source material first... As I previously mentioned, give the standard DVD a try (non-bluray)