There have been a lot of posts lately about the MRX's not sounding good. When I first received mine, I too was in that camp. However, there is plenty of information in this thread to help get it sounding it's best. There have been some members here providing steadfast help from the very beginning of the thread, JayRay and Tigger come to mind and there are others. Thanks to them for all the great advice!
I picked up a 300 a little over a year ago. I'm using it as a prepro. Once a year my dealer has a 20% off sale, so a 300 for $800 is a real value. I suppose there are those who will pay $5000 more to get the extra 10% improvement. But the MRX's are good sounding. Here's a few general tips that I found invaluable.
1. Use ARC. I could never get mine to sound good without it.
2. Take care when measuring the room. Pay particular attention to mike height. Try to get it ear level. Too high or too low will result in sound that is either too bright or too muddy. Do it multiple times if you have to.
3. Don't change ARC's settings, even if you don't agree with the crossovers it chooses. It accounts for nulls in the room, I think, that we can't anticipate.
4. There are a lot of bass junkies in this forum, not that there's anything wrong with that. But, I remove the "hump" that ARC adds and listen to a perfectly flat frequency. I believe that mid bass hump obscures some of the mids. Of course, that hump is helpful if you have very small speakers, to add some power to the sound. This one is very subjective. I used to play guitar in a band quite a few years ago and I can't stand overly bassy sound. I also want to hear the music/movie as it was intended to be heard without putting my subjectivity into it. Play with it a bit. It's easy to do after the measurements because you can simply change that setting and recalculate within the ARC software. I know this partially contradicts #3, but this one setting is worth playing with a bit.
I picked up a 300 a little over a year ago. I'm using it as a prepro. Once a year my dealer has a 20% off sale, so a 300 for $800 is a real value. I suppose there are those who will pay $5000 more to get the extra 10% improvement. But the MRX's are good sounding. Here's a few general tips that I found invaluable.
1. Use ARC. I could never get mine to sound good without it.
2. Take care when measuring the room. Pay particular attention to mike height. Try to get it ear level. Too high or too low will result in sound that is either too bright or too muddy. Do it multiple times if you have to.
3. Don't change ARC's settings, even if you don't agree with the crossovers it chooses. It accounts for nulls in the room, I think, that we can't anticipate.
4. There are a lot of bass junkies in this forum, not that there's anything wrong with that. But, I remove the "hump" that ARC adds and listen to a perfectly flat frequency. I believe that mid bass hump obscures some of the mids. Of course, that hump is helpful if you have very small speakers, to add some power to the sound. This one is very subjective. I used to play guitar in a band quite a few years ago and I can't stand overly bassy sound. I also want to hear the music/movie as it was intended to be heard without putting my subjectivity into it. Play with it a bit. It's easy to do after the measurements because you can simply change that setting and recalculate within the ARC software. I know this partially contradicts #3, but this one setting is worth playing with a bit.
