Anthem MRX Receivers - 300, 500, 700 Owners Thread & Tweaking Guide - Page 12

What problem are you trying to correct that is wrong with ARC's chosen settings?

Is there any way to set DRC to "normal" without resetting everytime playing blu ray?

their usually set to whatever ARC sets them to. One thing I have learned from working with ARC for over 2 yrs. is, not to second guess it. I am now at default settings( except for the sub HPF set to Flat) after all the tweaking and it sounds fantastic. Remember, listening is the true test, not what you see in the charts. The charts do a good job of representing what is going on and to what degree the room was corrected, but always listen before changing anything.
John

i agree, and again, had the same arguements when running audyssey. everyone insisted on leaving it preset, but my ears told me otherwise. in the end, audyssey was way wrong on the crossovers and only after changing it manually did i get the soud that "sounded" right!

arc is a lot better and properly setup my speakers to the right crossovers. but due to my mid-bass "love", i like to tune the fronts to 120hz crossover (as opposed to 80hz from arc). with 120hz, the sound is amaingly punchy and less boomy. i know arc is great, but again, my ears tell me otherwise which is why i like to manually make changes to the crossover. im also trying the "music" preset at 150hz to see what is gained/lost. that is why i want to know about sub cut-off.

ps. here are the settings im using:

MOVIE
LCR- 120hz
SURR- 100hz
SUB cutoff- 120hz

MUSIC
LCR-150hz
SURR- 100hz
SUB cutoff- 150hz

is it fine that i have the sub cut-off at the same frequency as the LCR's? or should i tune it a bit higher for each (ie. LCR 120hz, so sub 150hz)?

I've never seen anyone try these types of settings so not sure what to advise. Let Anthem tech. know, perhaps they can advise you. As for Audyssey, I don't know anyone who hasn't changed their settings using it, not sure what the point of that correction is if you can't trust it's settings.
John

thanks for the reply. i did contact tech support but they wouldn't give me any answer when making changes to arc. im just curious the effects of setting the sub cut-off at the exact crossover frequency of the mains, or if i should play it safe and raise the cut-off to avoid losing any bass info.

I think I would set the sub cutoff higher so that ARC continues to apply correction above the LCR crossovers. It really depends on what your graphs look like for the sub above the crossovers. Remember crossover and cutoff for the sub are not the same thing.

If I'm not mistaken, the .1 LFE portion of a multichannel soundtrack contains info up to ~120hz. It may have been in the Audyssey thread where I read this...

Will these MRX AVR's work with a 6.1 speaker configuration? I require a receiver that can matrix a single back channel by way of PLIIx, or its own internal processing.

i did some further testing tonight and came up with a few observations. firstly, having the sub cut-off at 150hz along with the lcr's at that crossover, the midbass punch is amazing. you literally feel everything hitting your chest. tuning it down to 120hz doesn't have the same punch in your gut feeling, but the little less bass results in a much cleaner dialogue form the lcr's. for music though, i prefer the 120hz setting as its less boomy. for ht, im still not sold on either yet. they both have their pluses and minuses. im going to be adding another sub next week so i will reserve judment until then as the midbass slam may come by adding it into the system and coupled with a 120hz setting will give me the best of both worlds. i will try Shrike645's suggestion as it seems to make sense, although if what BRAC reports is correct, then it really shouldn't matter.

Setting main speaker crossovers that high is bad news unless your main speakers have such lousy bass you have no choice. Among other issues, you will be directing too much dialog to the subwoofer.

Also understand that if you are using ARC, all such experiments must be done using the ARC setup application on the Windows PC. I.e., make changes in ARC's Targets window, re-Calculate and re-Upload the new solution.

If you make crossover changes in the receiver AFTER doing the ARC Uplooad you will invalidate ARC's calculations.

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Both for best dialog, and to keep the output of the sub from becoming localizable, you should try for a solution where the crossovers for the main speakers are down around 90Hz or lower. The "cutoff" for the sub itself can be higher if your sub has good output at the high bass end. This will help with LFE content which goes away around 120Hz.

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If your ARC charts look good but you still feel you are missing something in the vicinity of the crossover frequencies at ARC's choice of crossovers, then check the Phase setting for you sub. You may be experiencing cancellation due to the sub being out of phase with the mains through the frequency range where the mains and sub are both playing the same content (due to bass steering and the crossover).
--Bob

I agree, especially with a ported PB12 Plus which likely isn't that great above 100hz or so. 120 is the max I'd run, and even then only if your sub(s) are located near your fronts.

I use 120 and have tried 150 (even 200) with my own subs, but settled on 120 (geez, or was it 100! ). But my S2's sit right on top of each sealed sub, so localization is not an issue whatsoever.

I am going 6.1 when my MRX 500 arrives so hope that the answer is yes!!

Any comments would be welcomed

Nick, any thoughts on this?

Thanks.

^^^I don't know the answer. The AVM and D series processors handle 6.1 speakers just fine, but the stuff in the MRX is different enough that you need an MRX specific answer.

I suggest you email Anthem tech support with this question, as they will almost certainly see that before they see the questions posted here.

Then post here when you get the answer back!
--Bob

Good suggestion Bob - thanks for that.

Just sent a message via the website. Hopefully when I get up tomorrow (bed time in South Africa) there will be a response from them and I will certainly post the answer.

You can use the MRX with 6.1 setup. To do this hook rear speaker to either back channel. Then engage DD EX or Neo 6, both of which are 6.1 formats(mono to back channels) Do not use DD PLIIx as it is a 7.1 format.
John

absolutely. all changes and calculations are performed in arc software then uploaded into the unit. i rarely make any changes in the GUI.



i will try with phase adjustments and see what happens. i do agree that having the sub crossover too causes dialogue to come out from it. which is why i like the 120hz setting better for dialogue as it is indeed much clearer.

You might consider just boosting room gain and leaving crossovers default to get that extra oomph.

Ok... So, will DD EX work on a TrueHD track? And, Neo:6 was originally designed to take 2-channel content and convert it to 5.1 or 6.1. What about 5.1 or 7.1 DTS content?

It should. NEO 6 should also convert 5.1 to 6.1. I can't try it due to my 2.1 setup.
John

hmmm, thats a good point. arc calculated my room gain around 3.8. can you explain exactly what happens by 1) increasing room gain and 2) decreasing room gain.

thanks!

I didn't know what your room gain was. I believe ARC 3 allows a max 4db room gain where 2.x had a max of 6. I'm not too sure if .2 will be that noticeable. The room gain is the hump in the curves on your graph in the lower freq. Boosting it should give an increase in these freq. or of course the opposite if you decrease. As Bob says movie mixers expect a room gain around 2 - 3 db and music mixers may not have a common agreement but usually for ARC many assume lower and like to have a value like 1.5db.

Here's info I've posted frequently over in the ARC "tweaking" thread:

ARC tries to Measure the actual, inherent Room Gain in your room and preserve that even as it is busily removing other room response characteristics. Due to peaks or dips in your speakers near the crossover frequencies, ARC can get confused by some types of speaker response, and so ARC won't *ON IT'S OWN* set a Room Gain value higher than 4dB (which due to technical math issues results in the number just below 4.0 that you will see). However, you can manually set a Room Gain value higher than 4dB if you feel the need.

Similarly, ARC won't assign a Room Gain value below 0dB, regardless of how big a dip your speakers show in the critical frequencies, because a negative Room Gain has no useful, physical meaning.

Room Gain is a desirable room response characteristic -- part of what you perceive as listening to content in a quality theater. It will show on the ARC charts as the shallow hump in the black, dashed Target curve for each speaker near the crossover frequencies. The Room Gain value is simply the height of that hump (in dB) over the basic volume level of the solution -- the flat part of the Target curve to the right of the crossover frequencies. A Room Gain of 0dB means no hump

What Room Gain means to the sound is precisely what you might expect from the shape of that shallow hump. There is no magic here.

Staying close to the inherent Room Gain in your room is useful because it makes natural sounds that might occur in the room more closely match the same sounds occurring on sound tracks.

A very large room, or rooms with extensive acoustic treatment, will have little or no inherent Room Gain. In such cases, adding a little Room Gain -- say bringing it up to 2dB -- may make things sound better to you. Particularly since Movie mixers assume home theaters will have a small amount of Room Gain. Values in the 2-4dB range are typical.
--Bob

Thanks John for your feedback.

The very quick response from Anthem - Kudos for speed in which they replied to my email.

"They have changed the program without me noticing.
The only issue will be that it will look for a 7.1ch system if you enable the rears.
You may have to connect and disconnect the rear speaker. From ch 6 to 7 to have ARC work properly.

We will try to implement this 6.1ch feature into ARC."

If I am reading this properly at this stage they do not support 6.1 and so it seems best that I buy two more rears to go 7.1 and not 6.1 as planned. Going to look at bit messy... oh well

I am not very technical so maybe I am missing something

Sounds to me like he's saying there is a problem getting the ARC V3.0.1 setup app (the Windows program) to work with a 6.1 speaker system on the MRX because if you enable the rears when doing the ARC setup for the MRX it mistakenly assumes you must actually have a 7.1 speaker system.

Which means ARC will attempt to send test tones to both rear speakers and will, of course not get a response from one.

And then he's suggesting you can fool ARC, for now, by moving the output jack for your single rear speaker from the left rear output of the MRX to the right rear output and then telling ARC to retry that unresponsive speaker. You would have to redo this for each mic position.

ARC will then build a 7.1 speaker solution. Which I guess you then proceed to use with your actual 6.1 speaker setup.

I'm not sure there aren't still gotchas in this. I don't have an MRX so I can't be much help on this one.
--Bob

Thanks Bob for this idea.

So, if I am understanding you correct, the speaker does not move, just move from 6 to 7 on back of the MRX and then re run ARC for each mic position. Interesting. I will mention this to my dealer as he will be doing the install.

I appreciate your time in trying to help a very technically challenged person like myself out

Hope this isn't to lame of a question.
HDMI & component outputs can they be used at the same time.

ex: HDMI to one monitor component to another,what ever i'm inputing plays on both monitors.

Bump, on an excellent question.

Dolby Volume can be set for each source, on or off. Checked this morning, TV had it and Bluray didn't.
John