Dunno why I bothered :(

ManWithNewName

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Hello all

After spending what seems like an age reasserting, planning, haggling, installing and finally setting up our new system, my wife decided last night she couldn't hear what the people were saying on the film we were watching.

The film was 'Dark Night', the system you can see from my sig below, essentially a Yamaha 1067 + Canton 125 MX Speakers and a D7000 TV.

I had it set to 'Straight' so no DSP going on, I had the volume somewhere around -32db - as loud as I dare go without bothering the neighbours with the rumbling and explosions.

I didn't notice any problems with the sound. At some points it was a bit muffled, but the characters were speaking (or whispering) at the time so I would expect it to be a little harder to hear.

To cap it all, after trying a few different settings (which included the setting, I forget the name, that enhances the sound at low volumes) she thought the 7channel sound was good, but the one she preferred the best was when I switched off the amp altogether and had the sound coming direct from the TV!

One thing I have to try, is the YPAO again. When I first set the system up and ran YPAO it was without carpets in the room. We've now had them laid, is the 1067 sensitive enough to change the sound to cater for different acoustics from a change in flooring?

Can anyone else offer any other suggestions? I thought the 7 Channel setting was rubbish, sounded like the same thing coming from all 5 speakers, and the TV sound - well...... :rolleyes:
 
I would do the YPOA as your room acoustics have changed. Also there are settings in the menu for the speakers, you can turn each speaker either up or down, I had to move my centre speaker up slightly. Don't be scared to go into the manual menu and have a play about with the settings as if anything isn't to your liking you can always perform a factory reset.
 
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spend £30 on a sound level and manually set the volume of each speaker with the test tones, can make a difference in terms of the cohesiveness of the sound and make sure that everything is presenting even and that one isnt drowning out the other.

i know how you feel, i have a very similar attitude in my house, after spending thousands, one remark will cut through all of the work and effort and make me think why i bothered, but then i put on my favourite adventure movie, crank it up and hear that bass in my chest and those effects on the surrounds, and remember whats what! :)
 
Remember to ignore the new shoes your wife is wearing and don't mention the new hairstyle ;)
 
Thanks for the replies...

I'll try YPAO again this evening and see what difference it makes. If that doesn't sort it I have a SPL meter app on my iPhone, will that be good enough to set the individual volumes?

@Dante01 - I'm brave, but not that brave!
 
personally, the least i would settle for is the radioshack spl, not a software version on a phone, nope.
 
I have one on my phone and it's not accurate at all, get a dedicated level.
 
More importantly do you hear a difference? Do you prefer the TV or amp? Was the wife against the amp and speakers from the start hence predisposed to not like them?
I have the opposite in that my wife now dislikes watching TV at friends houses due to the poor quality TV speakers!!! She then moans at me for making her this way!!! So you really can not win.
 
More importantly do you hear a difference? Do you prefer the TV or amp? Was the wife against the amp and speakers from the start hence predisposed to not like them?
I have the opposite in that my wife now dislikes watching TV at friends houses due to the poor quality TV speakers!!! She then moans at me for making her this way!!! So you really can not win.

Is she still under warranty? Russian brides are doing a two for the price of one deal this Christmas!
 
She's been quite open to the whole thing from day one. She's been wanting to have an extension built onto the house, so saw conceding to my AV whims as a good way to get the extension complete (it worked!).

Warranty ran out long ago I'm afraid, not sure if Sale of Goods act would work? Mother-in-law is coming over for a few days during Xmas hols, maybe I can complain to her?
 
I've played a blinder there, made sure I used up all my holidays during the year so got to go in for the days between Xmas & New Year.

If only we were to have a few network related issues that'd result in me having to stay back late...
 
I would do the YPOA as your room acoustics have changed. Also there are settings in the menu for the speakers, you can turn each speaker either up or down, I had to move my centre speaker up slightly. Don't be scared to go into the manual menu and have a play about with the settings as if anything isn't to your liking you can always perform a factory reset.

+1
I used to use a yamaha dsp-ax861 and had the centre speaker level turned up to make the dialog easier to hear.
 
WonkyEwok said:
+1
I used to use a yamaha dsp-ax861 and had the centre speaker level turned up to make the dialog easier to hear.

Mine is a DSP-AX763. Must be a Yamaha thing!
 
Thanks everyone - I'll give these options a try this evening, if they don't work I'll go for dante01's suggestion ;)
 
I recently bought this speaker package. Great value for money and amazing sound quality for such diminutive speakers. Replaced my ageing Sony Dav-S300 all-in-one with what's in my signature. BIG step up from what I had before..

Though must admit it's taking a while to get these speakers set up to my liking. I've had similar comments about the dialogue from the centre speaker. Checked what the auto set-up calibrated the speakers at and the centre was set at -7db, while the two front satellites were at -2db. Could not quite understand that, so increased the centre to the same as the 2 fonts and it made a reasonable difference. Though my AV amp is not the same as yours. Onkyo do something called "Dynamic Volume Control". I've tried this at the 3 different settings (low/medium/high) and the high setting seems to bring the centre speaker out better, while not allowing the surround effect to dominate. Not sure if the Yamaha has anything the same? I've also found that I've had to play around a fair bit with the position of the rear satellites to get the best out of them. A couple of feet above ear height and fitted slightly wider apart than most people recommend seems the best option so far. I have a feeling that it may be harder to set up smaller speakers to get the best out of them. Though even in a decent sized lounge like ours, I remain amazed at their ability. Not kidding myself they are HiFi quality (which they are not) but still pretty decent for the money.

PS. Just had Dark Knight blu-ray turn up this morning. So I'll be able to hear how it sounds myself soon.

Good luck.
 
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Ha, this is almost identical to the experience I had years ago on a similar, but lesser, set up. She'd pretend to enjoy it but actually hated/hates bass and found it difficult to understand what people were saying. I resolved the audio bit at that time by simply raising the channel setting of the centre speaker and turning down, ever so slightly, the fronts and backs.

For the bass I'd simply pretend to adjust the volume when she'd make reference to it as it would usually only be a particular scene or two where'd it would be dominant for her liking :-D
 

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