I'm looking at getting a receiver with Audyssey (Onkyo TX-NR807) and I'm wondering about how to set the 3 different volume controls in the audio path. 1) Active speaker (Genelec 8030a) 2) Audio source (Satellite, Cable TV, and DVD Player) 3) Receiver.

Before Audyssey measurement, should the speaker and source volumes be set to Maximum?

Could this introduce distortion?

I'm curious because my current setup is that the speaker volume is set at 50% and the audio sources hover around 75%. This is with no receiver and the sources going through a switch box that sends the unmodified signal directly to the active speakers. If I were to set the speakers at 100%, the sources would be at about 25% and I have less granular control over the volume.

The advantage I see to setting speakers and sources volume to 100% is that if by chance these volume setting were disturbed it would be easy to set them back to 100% and preserve the Audyssey calibration. I'm just concerned about distortion from the audio sources driving at 100% of their volume.

Thanks.

Set the speaker gain controls to the middle. The other settings do not matter. If any of the gain settings determined by Audyssey are at the extremes (+12dB or -12dB), you should reset the speaker gains to compensate and rerun Audyssey. There is a neat guide to using Audyssey here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14456895#post14456895

Rule of thumb: never set anything at their extremes, then the signal has no where to go when it needs to "spike!"

Thanks for the responses.

PS: I had already read that post about Audyssey and I didn't see anywhere in there that talked about setting the front speaker volume. What is that mentioned?

Thanks for the responses.

PS: I had already read that post about Audyssey and I didn't see anywhere in there that talked about setting the front speaker volume. What is that mentioned?It is not mentioned because, typically, users do not have active speakers with volume controls and the internal volume settings are ignored by Audyssey. Thus, there is no need to mention this except with regard to the subwoofer. Use that section as a guide for your active speakers.