Marantz 7015 and active fronts - volume control

museumsteve

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I'm hoping for some guidance as I try to recalibrate my room after making some changes recently.

I have a Marantz SR7015, nice and capable in my movie room, but got the chance to pick up a Linn active front end for a great price so jumped at the chance. I removed my Q Acoustic fronts and slipped in Linn Isobariks married to a bank of psu/amps/xover/preamp etc. Was thumping enough for me to remove one of my subs and now I am starting to spend more time enjoying stereo but movies will always be my first priority.

This week, I picked up a Linn Centirk III centre to replace my current centre and thought I should re-run audyssey to see/hear the results...shocking :D
It changed everything for the worse so I decided to get an SPL meter and set it up manually and try to get a better understanding myself.

My dilemma is understanding the correlation between the Marantz volume and my Wakonda preamp volume, firstly when it comes to test tones and calibration and secondly during playback.
If I set the Marantz to 0db for test tones what do I set the Wakonda to? When I'm done with calibration and watching a movie, do I need to increase the volume on the Wakonda to match the increase on the Marantz?

It may be a stupid question, but any help would be greatly appreciated :)
 
You shouldn't need to use a pre amp. The AV receiver is the pre amp is such a setup.

Using a handheld SPL meter isn't going to result in a better calibration. The AV receiver's mic will be as accurate as most affordable SPL meters. Neither will you be able to set the distance settings correctly because they are actually determined by the measured delay as opposed to limear distances.

If insistent on incorporating the ore amp then set its volume to about mid way. It should always be set to this whenever using it with the AV receiver. Now level the speakers so that 9db reference on the AV receiver equates to an SPL of 75db when measured from your primary listening location.

Note that a manual calibration will not result in the Audyssey EQ correction having the info it needs to be effective.


As said, if and when usiung the AVR in conjunction with the Wakonda pre amp, always ensure that you set the Wakonda back to where it was set when you calibrated the setup.
 
You shouldn't need to use a pre amp. The AV receiver is the pre amp is such a setup.

Using a handheld SPL meter isn't going to result in a better calibration. The AV receiver's mic will be as accurate as most affordable SPL meters. Neither will you be able to set the distance settings correctly because they are actually determined by the measured delay as opposed to limear distances.

If insistent on incorporating the ore amp then set its volume to about mid way. It should always be set to this whenever using it with the AV receiver. Now level the speakers so that 9db reference on the AV receiver equates to an SPL of 75db when measured from your primary listening location.

Note that a manual calibration will not result in the Audyssey EQ correction having the info it needs to be effective.


As said, if and when usiung the AVR in conjunction with the Wakonda pre amp, always ensure that you set the Wakonda back to where it was set when you calibrated the setup.
Ahh @dante01 you are ineed a star and the one person I was hoping to see this ;)

It never occured to me to leave the Wakonda out, it all came together so just plugged the fronts feed straight into it's input and went from there.
I'm going to take it out this afternoon (handy as still worth a few quid) and plug straight into the active crossover input and run audyssey again.

Thanks for the prompt reply mate, much appreciated.
 
Thanks @dante01 I had a great afternoon/evening playing around and the end result was great.
I have picked up a front speaker hum but that seems to be cable related as swapping the cabling from preout to the crossover reduces the hum by alot so I'll look at better set of cables. I was looking at isolators but dont really want to be adding more connections in the chain.
 

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