vague feeling that something's wrong

[powerdog]

I have my 3 Sierra 1's in the front, a pair of 340s in back, and a new Yamaha receiver that I allowed to do auto-calibration.

I can't help feeling that something is wrong with the sound, but I don't even think I can describe it. It may be that the voices aren't easy for me to hear, or that the sound from all the speakers seems a bit disorganized.

I'm hoping that the RadioShack sound meter and calibration disk I just got will go a long way to improving the situation, although I'm also wondering if the auto-cal could really be that far off. Anyway, the speakers are just about where diagrams and past experience tell me they should be.

Any thoughts on how you'd start diagnosing this poorly-defined problem? Or suggestions on how to listen critically and apply more specific terms to what I"m hearing. (Right now, I'm sort of like a wine critic who only knows the terms "good" and "bad.")

[davef]

Hi Powerdog,

You have had the speakers for a while now, did something in the sound change when you changed to the Yamaha receiver?

I am not a fan of the auto calibration in most receivers, the first place to start is to turn this off completely and adjust the levels of each speaker manually (using your setup disc and the spl meter).

It could be as simple as the receiver not calibrating everything correctly --- the 340 SE are considerably more efficient than the Sierra-1 so it is very possible that the levels are not matched properly so that your rear speakers are much "louder" than your front speakers, which would make things like vocals very distant and difficult to hear...

Does listening to 2 channel music (a CD for example with the receiver on stereo only) sound right to you?

[powerdog]

Dave,

That's a good question, re stereo. I admit that I've only played with the fake surround settings, but I'll give a listen to a good CD playing straight stereo.

Back soon. Thanks!

[davef]

Don't forget to turn off the auto-calibration

[robruffo]

I own a Yamaha 6060, and I find that the "natural" setting for auto-eq is terrible - way too muddy, and the "flat", on the other hand, is too shrill. basically, I always chose "off" as EQ type. I also turn all speakers back to "small" (Ascend speakers seem to always be judged as "large" by Yamaha.)

If you are using only Ascends all around, you don't need any EQ to better match your speakers as they already all match together.

The Ascend speakers don't need any EQ, and you're better off getting a few panels from Auralex if your room has some freq. bumps you don't like.

That being said, the sound level measurements and distance measurements were spot-on except for the subwoofer.

Another option is to move the speakers further away from walls - wall proximity can boost bass, but it can also create weird bass humps at certain frequencies. I find, for example, that my brick walls tend to "love" 70 hrz, but not 80hrz or 60hrz, so if I put my Sierra mains too close to the wall I get sound where 70Hrz notes and voices are too loud. Moving them forward about a foot more (to 3 feet total) solved the problem for $0.

[powerdog]

Well, I manually recalibrated using a Radio Shack meter. Some of the auto-cal settings had been way off, and others were slightly off. Manual resetting offered some definite improvement.

It could be that some of the problem I was hearing was in the recordings themselves. Hard to describe, but you know how listening to someone who's speaking into a microphone sounds different from having them speak directly to you. I think I was aware of the microphone. Then I found one CD that didn't sound like that. (Songbird by Eva Cassidy).

The other thing I have to admit is that my hearing isn't great...not even great for a 50+ y.o. listener. Maybe I have no right to own such good equipment!