Anthem MRX Receivers - 300, 500, 700 Owners Thread & Tweaking Guide - Page 183

Is the latest beta any better than 50.09?

If your referring to the popping it's the same.

[quote=stepchal;20622070]
Stepchal,

Why is your Low pass filter set at 80 Hz, unless I'm mistaken (I have yet to have my first cup of coffee... So if I'm confused someone who is more of a morning person will correct me ) You want your low pass filter set as low as it will get, 25Hz and your high pass as high as it will get or better yet NONE which I believe is how you have it set.

So along with Shrike645 suggestion of phase at 0 I would put your low pass filter at 25 Hz or as low as it goes.

Has anyone else noticed when you run the speaker sweeps, the sub sweep is very loud?

You mean louder than it used to be? As I recall you are running beta firmware. What are you contributing the loudness to? The firmware or just in general from what you recall with your old MRX?

Yes, I am running the beta firmware. I never ran the sweeps on my previous MRX so I can't compare the two. I assume the sweeps are at reference and the sub's sweeps seems very loud to the point that I get a rattling noise out of my SVS which the gain is only at 10 o'clock. Doesn't seem like port noise but not sure.

[quote=Tigger!;20622535]
+1 Too bad there wasn't a TURN EVERYTHING OFF switch.
John

Interesting. Im thinking they fixed the sub sweep as it used to be about 3db too low. Perhaps the fix is increasing the sweep level to compensate. Would be nice if someone in the know can confirm.

Also wondering if it's now necessary to re-run ARC or simply upload the original file from previous firmware.

ARC may have come up with a viable solution, considering your system as a whole. If the 300 hz mode is a room mode, it will also exhibit harmonics - so, reducing the mode response may create more problems at other frequencies. Looking across all your drivers, there do seem to be some peaks at around 300hz. The 300hz mode may also have modes at 150hz (among others). There also seems to possibly be some 150hz peaks across some of your drivers. (These modes, by the way, may correspond to ceiling to floor height effects). It could be, then, that correcting the 300hz mode may have rolled off your 150hz response, and rolled off your surrounds above a subwoofer frequency for which ARC could develop a solution.
You may be able to resurrect your tweeter. Make a loop of masking tape and gently place it on the center of the inverted cone. Pull gently. It may take a couple of tries. You MUST be careful to pull straight up and gently, as you don't want to bend the voice coil former or pull the tweeter dome past its excursion point, therefore rendering the tweeter useless. This has worked for me. Sometimes I've needed something with a little more stick, like scotch tape. Do this at your own risk. If the tweeter was heavily smashed for a long time, the voice coil former may already be distorted, which would limit high frequency response. In any case, a replacement Seas tweeter would cost around $43.00 US.
An off axis response drop off above 10khz is typical of many dome tweeters, and this could be what's reflected in your curves.
Is the tunnel sound present when the Zaph is disconnected? If so, it could possibly be a room resonance. I've chased that tunnel sound myself before.

I also found the sub sweep to be lower than the other speakers. I ran ARC twice this weekend and that's what I thought

Generally with firmware updates we don't do new measurements but some people like to do a fresh upload of their previous ARC file, since they're already hooked up and it only takes around 10 minutes to do.
John

Just talked to Anthem and they confirmed that the sub sweep output is too loud. They will be lowering it.

Hi Hanser,

Yes, I reported this problem to Anthem back in April. At the time, I was running 50.04 firmware and hitting the problem a lot with both Organ music and sci-fi material with anything 50Hz and below. Eventually I found it was simplest to reproduce the problem using MP3 test test tones I downloaded from RealTraps.

I have since upgraded to 50.10 firmware (and re-run ARC). The problem is better, but not gone. If I had to quantify the improvement with new firmware, I'd say problem is:
- 50% better using the test tones
- only 25% better with movies/Tv shows (and still annoying!)
- below audible levels for organ music

The only real workaround I've found so far to make the problem go away 100% is to disable ARC.

I'm curious to know how similar your setup is to mine... I've got a 7.0 system at the moment (no sub) and I'm running my fronts full range (Studio 60v5's). What's in your setup?

Room Gain in Target Settings

I'm not sure why I see differences in the Room Gain between Movie and Music.
Latest was Movie 3.454393 and Music 1.655707

Previous settings have been...
Movie 3.945749 and Music 3.945749
Movie 3.945749 and Music 3.454393
Movie 3.945749 and Music 2.875280
Movie 3.021878 and Music 3.021878

Can anybody explain the reasoning behind the differences or no difference in the gain related to Movie VS Music settings?

Is anyone else interested in an iPod app for their MRX?

Interesting, great response... and it has challenged how I thought the room correction worked. If a 150hz mode is affecting my graph at 300hz, would that not mean the 300hz peak in the graph is a harmonic, and not from the primary tone from the loudspeakers having a peak there? (The graph, after all, would show the cumulative response of everything the microphone hears during the sweep.) Does this also imply that room correction cannot compensate for harmonics of room reflections? It sounds like the frequency response graph is too little information to understand why ARC has made its selected changes (but the graphs are useful for experimenting with speaker placement). I'd love to read a white paper on how this technology works.

Again, thank you for the reply. I had actually already sucked the dome back out (it didn't take much) before taking these measurements, and the high frequencies still roll off rather early. I'll try swapping in another speaker to that position but the L/R channels sound fantastic in comparison (admittedly in their different locations with different material). It needs further examination. In any event, I'm not too worried about the $43 for a new tweeter... more upset that the movers were so careless. The foam surround on the woofers on my main speakers was pressed flat for the same reason, enough that the surround started to separate from the frame. Lesson learned: some movers don't know which side of a speaker can be load-bearing.

Have you had a chance to do any critical listening between ARC on and off. Please let me know if you experience much of a difference.

The Manual Sweep was slightly quite (the sweep you used if you were manualy going to adjust each speaker with SPL meter). It is my understanding that the sweep used when ARC ran was not affected by this. [Note: this is for the current public production firmware]

Before everyone panics, please remember Eric-t is running BETA firmware!!! If you are using public production firmware this is not something you should need to be concerned about (unless you are manualy running the sweeps and measuring with SPL meter). Beta firmware is, by definition beta... and not ready for public use.

If adjusting the gain on your sub, do you need to rerun ARC?

I should have stated that I am on beta as well Tigger

Yes

Absolutely. Since my 700's in a cabinet, I'd benefit from some way of controlling functions that currently rely on the receiver's screen. I'd e-mailed them for more comprehensive OSD but an app would work too.

I'll e-mail them.

Where you standing / sitting in the exact same place? Anything else different... temp, etc.? Everything plays a small part. maybe the microphone was not perfectly vertical or different measuring points etc.

Actually...with the most recent measurements I was anal as hell with the mic placement, positioning...etc. I think that with each passing room sweep...I pay more and more attention to the details, because I'm ultimately wanting better sound than the previous sweep.

Movie 3.454393 and Music 1.655707 is a big difference in gain. I'd just like to know the purpose behind it.

You know there is no end to this
John

HOW did you get the new version? I checked out the Anthem website and they still have the old one.

It's a beta version. You have to get it from Anthem Tech support, not downloadable for everyone.
John

Kinolau,

Here are a couple of great posts on Room Gain that may help you (Thanks go to Bob Pariseau and Jayray):

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=4411

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...ostcount=31216 (Similar to above post with slightly different details from the Anthem Statement thread)

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=5186

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=4389

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=1577

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=1467

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=1438

Older Posts but with nice descriptions (these are superseded by the information above, but may be an interesting read as well):

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...ostcount=15372 (from the Anthem Statement thread)

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...&postcount=354

Jayray, should we add another section to the FAQ for a few of these???

I havent had hardly any popping!! It was so bad before that i would mute before i stopped a movie!!! Glad that for the most part it is gone!!!

Totally agree, so much better!

The pop will likely never entirely go away as Nick has mentioned it is a fine balancing act. The Pop occures when transitioning from one Codec to another, normal practice is to "mute" the transition, however some times the transition takes more time and sometimes less... as a result if you mute for too shor a period of time, you will occasionally hear the "pop". If you mute for the longest possible time, than you risk the loss of material. On a movie where the soundtrack probably is quite at the start, the loss is not noticed. With music, it can be very problematic if you clip the start of a song...