Sierra-1 NrT = HT. Towers = Music ?

[Blutarsky]

I can make my Towers sound really brittle via YPAO. Use two channel without Sub for a while , listen critically until you get the positioning right, Then run YPAO. Yamaha say's to empty the room. I got better results with my furniture in place, only moving a coffee table in front of my listening position. Record the results, and don't be afraid to try a few times.

I am sure there are more dissatisfied speaker buyers due to set-up than any flaws in the speakers themselves.
B.

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[FirstReflect]

You're welcome! And thank you for the kind words. I'm happy you found my reply potentially helpful

That definitely sounds, from your description, like a room that would have some issues with early reflections that are potentially too strong, some echoes and reverberance - I'd be downright surprised if you didn't have a pretty noticeable "slap echo" in there - and also some unevenness in the bass due to the room having a large opening to another space (the dining room and hallway).

I would recommend even more highly now that you get in touch with GiK Acoustics and make use of their free Room Analysis service. Obviously, they will make suggestions that include the use of their own products. But it isn't purely a sales pitch. You can always substitute other brands, or other materials and items, entirely. For example, while not quite as effective or predictable as dedicated acoustic panels, you can use more "natural" things like wall-hangings, thick drapes, pillows, plush furniture, etc. as absorption, and things like bookcases, leafy plants, and sculptures as diffusion. The biggest value in what you'll get back from GiK are the recommendations for WHERE you need to place absorptive and diffusive objects, and the priority of where they should go. If you happen to use GiK brand products to do that, well, of course, that is their hope. But what you will be getting from them will be invaluable advice about WHERE the acoustic treatments need to go in your room. And that is information that is WELL worth the exorbitant asking price of FREE.

In terms of what I can say just based on your description:

from what you're saying, my guess is that the "slap echo" in your room is the main source of your discontent. Try just sitting in your chair, bring your hands up, and make a short, loud clap. Really pay attention to the sound that follows. I'm fairly certainly you will hear almost a "zing" in the sound, and a pretty clear echo from that loud clap.

If speakers like the Sierra-1 NrT are sounding too "bright", you almost certainly have a pretty bad "slap echo" problem. And, as I said before, while the Sierra Towers with RAAL might improve the sound, it really would be a shame if you were to bring them into that room, but still be disappointed in the sound quality. That would DEFINITELY be a case of the speakers themselves not being the culprit! Buying the Sierra Towers with RAAL would certainly let you know in a hurry if the room's acoustics are the bigger problem! But that's a pretty expensive experiment And if you still weren't happy, due to the real problem being the room's acoustics, well that would just be such a let down.

So, GiK's service is a must, in my opinion. And there is so much more, and so many more options for acoustic treatments than just bits of foam, or ugly panels. There are an endless choice of fabrics. There are patterned fabrics, suede, and even printed or dyed covers. Those printed or dyed covers can be made to look like literally anything you can imagine! They are a wonderful solution when aesthetics are a really big concern. Many people like to decorate their rooms with artwork or posters, anyway. So why not kill two birds with one stone?

You can have temporary panels that go on stands, rather than permanently hanging on the walls or ceiling. Speaking of which, if the walls are not a good option for placement of acoustic treatments, you can do a surprising amount of improvement to your room's acoustics - especially the "slap echo" problem - with ceiling treatments, which are often less intrusive aesthetically. And if ALL panels (even really pretty ones that look like artwork) are a no-go, you can still use all those "natural" objects that I talked about earlier. It's just a matter of having them placed in the correct spots.

The other big consideration that I see right away from your description is the evenness of your bass response in that room. With that fairly large opening to the dining room and hallway, you aren't getting nearly the same "room gain" in the deep bass as you would if your theater area were enclosed. With the 12" Rythmik sub in that sort of room size (the "room size" being the ENTIRE volume of air - including everywhere that the air CAN move in those areas that are open to the theater area), I'd be surprised if your frequency response from top to bottom is truly linear and even.

The way we tend to hear - we make a lot of comparisons, and evaluate sound on a relative scale without even thinking about it. If there is louder bass in the room, we tend to perceive the treble as being quieter than it really is. Similarly, if there is a lack of bass, we tend to think that everything sounds more shrill.

So there's a fairly good chance that some of the perceived "brightness" might be due to a slight lack of low bass. You might also have a situation where the bass response is uneven - as in, some bass notes are considerably louder or quieter than others.

Getting good bass response helps a great deal in the perception of all the higher pitched sounds as being accurate, detailed, and clear. There can be a masking effect if the bass is too pronounced, and, conversely, a sense of everything being too harsh if the bass is a bit too weak.

I don't think the 12" Rythmik itself is any sort of a problem. It's a very potent sub down to 35 or 40Hz or so, which is the most important range in terms of balancing with the mid-range and treble. I'd venture that the super deep 20-25Hz stuff is likely rolling off without the room gain that a sealed room would have added. But what is very likely happening is that you are getting quite a bit of reverberation. With a reflective, echoey room, those long, powerful bass waves are bouncing around for a very long time indeed before they dissipate and lose their power. You're in somewhat of an echo chamber, which means that you might have turned your subwoofer down quite a bit, just so that it would not sound boomy and offensive. And there might also be issues with placement. With a lone subwoofer, from seat to seat, you are going to get large variations in the bass response. Some seats are going to have big peaks and dips at certain frequencies.

I agree with Curtis, also, that calibration and setup of your AV Receiver is tremendously important, as well. But I do not consider EQ (or programs like YPAO or Audyssey room correction) to be a "fix" for acoustic problems. They are much more of a "cherry on top", that can take your audio from being 80 or 90% good and accurate, to 95 or 100%. I know that they are marketed as "correction". Heck, it's right there in the name! "Room correction" But if your acoustics or speakers are bad, "room correction" cannot magically make them good. Room correction can make it a little bit better, but there's no magic. It's just filters and EQ altering the sound that's coming out of your speakers a little bit. If there are big problems - like a slap echo - in your room, then you can't fix that with a room correction program. So I always recommend working big to small. Get good speakers, put them in a good room. Place them correctly. Set up all the basic settings in your AV Receiver correctly. THEN use a "room correction" or EQ program to eek out the last little bits of performance. Cherry on top. Not a panacea

So, bottom line is that there is quite a bit to consider in terms of your room! I DO think that swapping out your Sierra-1 NrT speakers for the Sierra Towers with RAAL would give you an improvement. But I really do not think the Sierra Towers would be sounding nearly as good as they CAN sound, and I also worry that they still might not sound as good as you truly want. I can guarantee that the Sierra Towers with RAAL tweeters would not be the problem! But that is why it is all the more important to give them a good room to play in

[Pianist718]

As always, great info.
I know I am at Ascend forum but I've also looked into Salk HT2-TL $4,500 speaker or Salk HT2 $3,900.
These seem to get great reviews.

Anyway .... Yesterday had a friend over and we tried tweaking things up a bit.

I noticed that I should not run music through just 2channels as if my Sierras were full range speakers. Seems like best sound I get is when I set music to run through all 7 Channels with the Sub present and crossover at 60. This also makes Sierras not sound toooo bright. Seems like YAPO did it's "correction" by dumbing down highs in the sound. On the negative side it does feel like speakers sound more free and airy when I set them to 2ch only. You can also argue that now my "receiver" is allocating all it's "power" into 2ch instead of distributing it through 5-7 channels.

I was also joking with him that I probably spent more time "tweaking" the sound and reading forums than I spent actually listening to music and enjoying my purchase.

He once again argued that for these great speakers I need a better receiver and a good CD player if I want to listen to music. He did promise to give me his old $800 Sony CD player that he argues does a great job at converting sound which he says is very important. He also is now giving away his $150 monster cables that he feels will make a difference.

Anyhow .... once I changed from CD playing music to Home Theater watching movies, I felt like that's where Sierras shine (in a good sense).

P.S. I plan on moving to a bigger place in the next year, hence I feel like altering my space right now is not needed. I am not getting crazy echo. I still enjoy my sound, especially on HD movies. I do however feel that at some point (just like my friend predicted), I'll move Sierras as Surrounds, use HTM-200 as the sides for 7.1 system and get wither Sierra Towers RAAL or one of those Salk towers mentioned on top of this post.

Now if I only knew for sure that I NEED to upgrade my receiver? :-)

[Asliang]

As always, great info.
I know I am at Ascend forum but I've also looked into Salk HT2-TL $4,500 speaker or Salk HT2 $3,900.
These seem to get great reviews.

Anyway .... Yesterday had a friend over and we tried tweaking things up a bit.

I noticed that I should not run music through just 2channels as if my Sierras were full range speakers. Seems like best sound I get is when I set music to run through all 7 Channels with the Sub present and crossover at 60. This also makes Sierras not sound toooo bright. Seems like YAPO did it's "correction" by dumbing down highs in the sound. On the negative side it does feel like speakers sound more free and airy when I set them to 2ch only. You can also argue that now my "receiver" is allocating all it's "power" into 2ch instead of distributing it through 5-7 channels.

I was also joking with him that I probably spent more time "tweaking" the sound and reading forums than I spent actually listening to music and enjoying my purchase.

He once again argued that for these great speakers I need a better receiver and a good CD player if I want to listen to music. He did promise to give me his old $800 Sony CD player that he argues does a great job at converting sound which he says is very important. He also is now giving away his $150 monster cables that he feels will make a difference.

Anyhow .... once I changed from CD playing music to Home Theater watching movies, I felt like that's where Sierras shine (in a good sense).

P.S. I plan on moving to a bigger place in the next year, hence I feel like altering my space right now is not needed. I am not getting crazy echo. I still enjoy my sound, especially on HD movies. I do however feel that at some point (just like my friend predicted), I'll move Sierras as Surrounds, use HTM-200 as the sides for 7.1 system and get wither Sierra Towers RAAL or one of those Salk towers mentioned on top of this post.

Now if I only knew for sure that I NEED to upgrade my receiver? :-)

Well the 365/465/665 series was the year Yamaha cheaped out and used integrated ICs instead of discrete amps, you could see in the preceding year, the receivers weighed 23lbs, the xx7 series also weighed about 23lbs, but the xx5 series only weighed 18lbs, there was a huge loss in amplification.

So...maybe

[Pianist718]

It's weird, but on another forum, an owner of Ascend Sierra 1s said not to use Yamaha receiver with Ascend speakers. He said it;'s not a good pairing because Yamaha makes them sound too bright.

Anyway, just orderd Marantz 7005 and Yamaha 2020 from a place where I can return them at $0 loss. So will demo and see what difference I hear.

[curtis]

Curious...and wanted to make sure.

You did run the YPAO calibration routine, correct? Have you made changes to anything since running YPAO?

[Pianist718]

Curious...and wanted to make sure.

You did run the YPAO calibration routine, correct? Have you made changes to anything since running YPAO?

I did on my rx-v465 and when I compare sound I get through that VS Pure direct, I do hear that Yamaha is dimming down the highs a bit. In my opinion it's still not great.

Best sound I heard was when I demoed Denon 4311, it gave awesome movie sound. Then I played with it more, screwed it up, couldn't get it back to how it sounded, didn;'t feel like reading a 100 page manual, did not want to spend $1,600 and simply returned it.

I hope Marantz 7005 works out as the price is right and looks are nice.

[davef]

I am not sure what the cause is, but when we receive comments about brightness, it is has become fairly common that the customer is using a Yamaha receiver. While I have not tested any, it is because of comments like these that I am not confident in YPAO.

[JustABrah]

You should look at the Anthem MRX, I went to a dealer that sold Anthem, Denon, Yamaha and Marantz and the Anthem really sounded noticeably better with ARC when abing them.

[curtis]

You should look at the Anthem MRX, I went to a dealer that sold Anthem, Denon, Yamaha and Marantz and the Anthem really sounded noticeably better with ARC when abing them.

But were the other receiver using their EQ systems, and calibrated correctly? Just one large variable that should be verified.