Help! Yamaha AVR and Ascend Sierra-2

[nikhilnh]

Couple of months back I purchased Sierra-2 speakers and I have paired them with Yamaha RX-A1040 receiver . The speakers have been eq'ed using Yamaha's YPAO room correction program. When I listen to music using 2 Ch Stereo mode, it sounds great however after about 45 mins to 1 hr of listening to music I get ear fatigue. I had also tried Sierra-1. Sierra-1 with my AVR sounded way too bright. Just after 5-10 mins to listening music my ears would start hurting. Everyone says that Ascend speakers reproduce the sound faithfully with coloring them. This implies that the Yamaha is making the Ascends sound bright.

Based on what I have read on the net and forums Yamaha AVR's tend to sound bright. One option would be to turn off YPAO room correction, which I have done and I'm evaluating it currently. However I don't want to turn off YPAO, the speakers sound better with the YPAO turned on . Yamaha gives the ability to edit the room corrections it makes. So in order to reduce the brightness, can I dial down the gains the YPAO has made at high frequencies? Is it as simple as that or do I have to make any other changes to the setup. I have attached the corrections done by Yamaha , hope you are able to view those. The images were resized to comply with the forum image size requirements. If they are too small to view ,then bigger sized images can be viewed using the link below

RX-A1040 Room Corrections (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kjgJhTCMV3O60LgLYb2twM1YkVEByC5V?usp=sharing)

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[mikesiskav]

It appears that ypao is boosting the high frequencies. If it sounds too bright too you, then I would modify it. Take band 7 on each speaker and set the gain to 0. You could even take it down to a negative value if it still sounds bright.

To my ears, the 4-8khz range is the brightest. So you another thing you could try it changing the freq of band 7 to something around 6khz and then set the gain to -1 or -2.

[N Boros]

Are you being careful with your microphone placement? It should be place on a tripod or boom stand at approximately ear level in the seat and should be about 1 foot away from the seat-back. The Sierra 2s have narrow vertical dispersion to where you could run into issues if you are not at ear level, then YPAO is getting a rolloff and trying to boost to correct it. Or if the microphone was set on the seatback I could see some of the high frequencies getting absorbed and again YPAO trying to boost to compensate.

[nikhilnh]

I did place the microphone on a tripod before running the room calibration. The microphone was at the ear level , however the speaker tweeter is probably 3 inches lower than the ear level. As suggested by Mike, I did take band 7 of the PEQ ( 16 KHz ) dialed the gain back to 0.5. Now the speakers don't sound as bright as before. In the next step I'll set the gain to -0.5 on band 7 and see how it sounds. I want to make one change at a time and see how it turns out. Thanks again for the feedback.

[nikhilnh]

It appears that ypao is boosting the high frequencies. If it sounds too bright too you, then I would modify it. Take band 7 on each speaker and set the gain to 0. You could even take it down to a negative value if it still sounds bright.

To my ears, the 4-8khz range is the brightest. So you another thing you could try it changing the freq of band 7 to something around 6khz and then set the gain to -1 or -2.

Thanks Mike. As mentioned int he previous post I reduced the gain on the 16 KHz band from +2 dB to 0.5 dB and I see an improvement. Next I'll try to lower the gain even further and see if I notice further improvement. I'm not an expert in audio calibration. Just out of curiosity why do I see a dip at 1 KHz for all the three channels ?

[Jack1949]

Hi nikhilnh,

I notice in your screenshots that you have YPAO PEQ set to Flat, which gives the brightest sound (at least that's what it does on my RXA3040). Have you tried changing PEQ to Natural, which tames the highs a little and adds more bass? Personally I like both Flat and Natural settings and switch between them depending on my mood.

Jack

[racrawford65]

Thanks Mike. As mentioned int he previous post I reduced the gain on the 16 KHz band from +2 dB to 0.5 dB and I see an improvement. Next I'll try to lower the gain even further and see if I notice further improvement. I'm not an expert in audio calibration. Just out of curiosity why do I see a dip at 1 KHz for all the three channels ?

looks like negative gains are being applied at 1 kHz. at least one of your charts also show multiple 1K bands -- I'm not that familiar with current YPAO (moved from Yamaha years ago), so I'm not sure why this is.

[nikhilnh]

Hi nikhilnh,

I notice in your screenshots that you have YPAO PEQ set to Flat, which gives the brightest sound (at least that's what it does on my RXA3040). Have you tried changing PEQ to Natural, which tames the highs a little and adds more bass? Personally I like both Flat and Natural settings and switch between them depending on my mood.

Jack

I have tried the Natural PEQ setting. It didn't help either . Although it had -2 dB gains applied at 6.35 and 8.0 kHz bands a gain of +2.5 dB was applied to 16 kHz band. I think I might have to run the calibration again and see it's effect on the sound. However as I had mentioned decreasing the gain on the 16 kHz band did improve the sound.