Bass from various sources?

Are the speakers set as small or large in the AVR's settings?

I don't know how Onkyo word it, but my Yamaha has settings for 'bass out' - Fronts, Sub, or Both. Your Onkyo will have something similar. Make sure it is set on Sub.


Other than that, are you playing music that should definitely have low bass. And what are the crossover settings for the speakers?

What happens if you raise your crossovers to 80hz or higher?

I've had situations similar to yours, and in the end the problem was due to too-big peaks and dips in the bass range.

Setting up a basic acoustics measurement facility is not expensive and is almost always a good idea, but it might be extra-specially revealing in your particular case.

A lot of music does not have loud bass unless you play the music loud. Also, using PL-2 for 2 channel music takes a bit off of the sound quality. I play music in the 2.1 mode. Make sure that you use PL-2 music for the 5.1 mode.

Check the setup settings in your DVD player's menu. How do you connect your DVD player to your AVR?

What model? How do you have listening mode presets set up for the various sources? Is Audyssey engaged? Is Dynamic EQ engaged? Is Dynamic Volume engaged? What reference level offset and or trim is set? Is double bass engaged? What crossover frequencies are set?

A lot of music has very loud bass, it just doesn't go down as low as movie soundtracks.

We are talking about recordings for home use here. Obviously music (all audio for that matter) is not loud unless you turn up the volume control to make it loud. "Loud" to one person may be "quiet" to another person and "normal" to another person.

Loud bass in TV movies is most likely caused by erroneous handling of encoding/mixing by TV stations.

Set all crossovers to 80Hz. Leave the subwoofer LPF at 120Hz.
Switch Dynamic EQ on. This should bring your missing bass back. Now bass from TV stations is probably too loud. Change reference level for that source by setting Main Menu > 4. Source Setup > 1. Audyssey > Reference Level

To get the "purest" reproduction without the AVR doing additional processing/upmixing, go to Main Menu > 5. Listening Mode Preset, select a input source and set it to the following values:

Analog/PCM/Digital > Stereo
Mono/Multiplex Source > Mono
2ch Source > Stereo
Dolby D/Dolby D Plus/TrueHD > Straight Decode
DTS/DTS-ES/DTS-HD > Straight Decode
Other Multich Source > Straight Decode

This has to be set for each input source separately. You have to switch your AVR off and on again for these settings to take effect.

Switch Music optimizer off.

You were talking about how loud bass is in music recordings. You said that it's generally soft in music recordings. This is wrong. It's all over the place because there is no reference level in music production. But generally there's more low frequency content in music recordings than there used to be. Listen to a recent Hip-Hop recording or Björk or...and then compare to something from the 70's.

Now you claim that music recordings generally wouldn't be loud. The opposite is true. Most music recordings are compressed to death to make them sound as loud as possible. Movie recordings are way more dynamic than contemporary music recordings. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Yep. Dynamic EQ was implemented specifically to mimic the dynamic sound of reference level volume (i.e. playing really effing loud) at much lower volume levels. My wife doesn't like the sound to be loud at all, so I live with my Dynamic EQ on all the time. It really does bring the bass out at lower volumes.

Now that you have turned on your Dynamic EQ, have you experimented with your crossover settings at 80hz again? You should, it will probably even out your bass response. Your subwoofer will likely handle 80hz and below better than your speakers will (depending on your speakers of course)

Also setting Auddessey Dynamic Volume can help with the volume issues as well. Each level provides an amount of compression that restricts the dynamic range some, bringing quieter sounds up a bit and louder sounds down some. I find the Day setting to be the best compromise, increasing overall volume a bit (helps hear dialogue in quiet movies) without killing the dynamic range. Experiment with these as well, they may help, but purists don't usually recommend them because they are restricting the dynamic range.
Edited by NuSoardGraphite - 11/12/12 at 8:56am

Yeah, I'm working with a Denon. I'm sure Onkyo's Low, Med, High settings are equivalent to the Denon's Day, Night and Evening modes. I don't have any issues with the Day (low) mode. I watched The Avengers last night with it in that mode and everything sounded just fine. There was still quite a bit of Dynamic Range, with loud explosions and other sound effects, but we could still hear the dialogue clearly.

Surely you know what peaks and dips are?????

IME most TV shows over the air and off cable are missing deep bass and lack good treble.

I balance my systems for CDs which also seems to work out for DVDs and let the TV shows fall where they may.

This thread has changed my whole setup...thank you, thank you, thank you! I have been so frustrated for a month with my bass settings with my Onkyo 707. I tried virtually everything and even purchased another subwoofer to try and address this.

Finding this thread and trying the Dynamic Equalizer changed the entire thing. I nearly did a cartwheel. Now I have an extra sub and more bass than I can handle! Now if I can just prevent my wife from realizing my other sub wasn't actually broken because I am now in love with the dual sub setup.

Thanks again.