"Official" Audyssey thread (FAQ in post #1) - Page 1750

Both. It depends what result you favour. As the FAQ says towards the end of this section:

3. Where should I position the mic for best results? (click here)

"If you are primarily interesting in getting the best result for just one seat (either because you are the only listener or you are the only listener who really cares about audio fidelity), then place the mic for position 1 at the centre of that seat. If, however, you wish to consider other seats, then place the mic in the centre of the listening area for position 1."

So which does your friend favour? Getting the best result for more than one seat, or the best result for one main seat? The answer to the question decides where the mic goes for position No 1.

Edit: Perhaps I should add this as a specific question under the Mic Placement section. It does come up fairly often...

I've never noticed a sync problem in my 4308 or 4311. I wonder if this is a receiver-specific problem? Maybe a firmware upgrade is in order?

This might be one to run by Chris on Facebook.

FAQ UPDATED

New question added:

d)8. Where do I put the mic for the first measurement if my seating is not symmetrical between front R & L speakers? (click here)

The Audyssey site says "use the middle of the listening area" - is correct
Forget other suggestions.

Mic position 1 is always a product of equal distance between front speakers.

I have avoided this controversy by making sure my MLP is exactly in the center of the listening room. Heck, I even re-calibrated to remove a .1 foot difference between the left and right distances, proving my OCD tendencies. Keith, has Chris weighed in on this topic?

FAQ UPDATED


Added a Glossary of some of the common terms used in the FAQ and the thread. If anyone wants to provide any more, please PM me.

For A Glossary Of Common Terms, Click Here

That is good if the seating is symmetrical as in your photo. If the seating is not symmetrical then there are two choices:

1. Place the mic in the centre of the listening area to optimise the calibration for a number or seats.

2. Place the mic at the MLP to optimise for that seat.

It is quite incorrect to say "forget other suggestion" without taking into account the layout of the room. Not everyone has, or wants, symmetrical seating and some people, me included, want to optimise the sound for the seat I actually sit in, and with less regard to the other seats which are unused for 95% of the time. The other seats, with a proper Audyssey mic placement pattern for the other mic positions, will still sound 'good' but my own seat sounds 'better'.

The relevance of mic position No 1 is that it is from that position that the levels and delays are calculated. The EQ is still for the whole room but, in my scenario, the levels and delays are set for my own seat, which provides far superior soundstaging wrt to balancing the left and right channels.

That is great if you can do it. But you couldn't do that in my room. It is not physically possible to have a seat in the centre - both of the seats are, of necessity, off the centre line.

I don't see anything controversial in this, Jerry. In my type of room layout, I could put the mic in the centre of the listening area and the sound would be good for both seats. OR, I can put the mic in the centre of my own seat (the MLP) and optimise for that one seat. This will make the other seat less good, but for 95% of the time that seat is empty so I could care less.

There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of posts in the thread which advocate something similar - it's called the Main Listening Position, not the Main Mic Position for a reason


Not AFAIK. Audyssey always assume that it is possible to put the seating centrally located in the room (Flageborg's erroneous assumption too) but the reality is that it isn't. They assume that the MLP is central.

Even if it IS possible to arrange the seating symmetrically, there will be some who want to optimise for the side of the couch they usually sit at (if they don't worry too much about the SQ at the other seats, like me). In fact, doing it this way yields audibly superior results for that one, offset, seat because you get the Left/Right balance spot on. If you sit to one side but place the mic in the centre, the whole soundstage is biased towards where the mic was, not unsurprisingly.

That is a very self-centered approach...

It's self-off-centred in reality

FAQ Linky doc updated. I placed the glossary link at the beginning ...

 

FAQ Links.doc 22.5k . file

I am in this camp

Bill

Put me in that camp. We have two seats. Mine & my wife's. She watches only TV so will hear voices from the center channel regardless of where she its and so is not much affected by the choice of MLP. I listen mostly to stereo music wherein sitting at or close to the MLP is very important if you want a good sound stage. Hence our MLP is between my ears.

My next challenge to Audyssey is to design a system with 1) multiple simultaneous MLPs or a changeable MLP. The later is doable, but unfortunately the former is not.

Well, OK, but has anyone ever compared a by-the-book calibration to one of these me-me-me calibrations? Does it make a real difference ... or only a .... perceived difference?

Jeff

Thanks!

Exactly. And nicely put too if you don't mind my saying so.


Ya canna change the laws of Physics, Harrison

It makes a difference if you are forced to sit off the centre line, as I am. Calibrating with the mic in between the two seats (ie on the centre line) biases the soundstage to my left quite readily noticeably. OTOH, using the centre of my own seat as the No 1 mic spot puts everything back where it rightly belongs. Of course, it makes the soundstage correspondingly less good for the other seat, but that is of no concern to me.

Not sure but I would be interested in the results. I always took the MLP literally and since I am the only one enjoying things 95% of the time that is how I run Audyssey.

Now you have me wondering if I went with a center to all seats location or even a center to my 2 front seats location for the MLP how it would sound, aside from the further back location being louder up front of course.

Bill

There is a third dimension to this as well. Some people have found superior results by taking all of the mic measurements in a very tight pattern, all around one seat. I am not in favour of that personally and only use the 'offset' No 1 position - all the rest of my mic positions are distributed around the listening area in the way Audyssey recommends and I find that works best for me, in my room.

As my buddy always says "I want one room, one chair and 2 speakers screw the rest of you"

Bill

Yes, I always tend to remember who paid for it all at times like these

MLP = Main Liquidator Position

Bill

That's good that you've compared ... you have practical experience. Many times I read posts and you can tell that the member is arguing the theoretical.

Jeff

Oh yes. When I first got XT, I followed the Setup Guide as closely as possible and used the approved method of placing the mic in the centre of the seating area/listening area. While I was very happy with the improvement XT made, I did notice that there was a bias of the soundstage to my left (I sit right of centre line). If I leaned across and put my head in the centre everything snapped into place. When I leaned back, the soundstage was biased to the left. I spent quite a bit of time pondering whether to deviate from the Guide - this was in the days before I posted here. But the bias to the left was annoying me and so in the end I bit the bullet and re-ran XT with the mic where my head actually is when I am listening. Wonder of wonders - an amazing improvement to the soundstage - everything was now properly located for the first time. It was like moving the old 'balance' control on a stereo amp a little.

When I upgraded to XT+ the EQ1, I again tried it with the mic in the centre and, of course, got the same result. When I upgraded to XT32 I just used my normal mic positions and got a superb result first time. I am expecting to do the same with my Pro kit (eventually).

TOW, my preamp was delivered to Audyssey at 9.25 this morning (LA time) and I have just asked Luke how long the turnaround will be.

I suppose you have yet to see the upcoming THX steerable line array speaker system...

http://www.thx.com/test-bench-blog/t...ward-in-audio/

Audyssey sets my speakers xovers to 120hz (6 seats) or 110 for 1 position. The speakers are atlantic tech 450s. My previous smaller energy rc 10s were set at 80hz. Any ideas?

I did get a phase warning on the center. But the xover was set to 80!

Quote:
Originally Posted by SoundofMind
When we set speakers to small, use the AVR's active internal electronic crossover and run the sub channel pre out to the sub's amp, are we not biamping?


[quote=craig john;20667533]In a sense, yes we are. However, the key difference between that and what NCoastTweaker is doing is that he has a passive crossover in his speakers in addition to the electronic crossover in his receiver's Bass Management.

Craig[/QUOTE

I just wanted to let you guys know that Audyssey XT32 can handle my setup where the regular Audyssey could not.. Back in July 2011 I was on here asking for help. I was told that cascading passive speaker crossovers with the denon active crossovers was a no no.. due to the potential summing of the freq slopes of the HPF and LPF at 120Hz. Also had some concerns about any phase changes introduced by the sixth order Butterworth alignment used in the Legacay Classic speakers.

The builtin active crossovers in the Denon AVR-5308 do not allow for variable phase or slope adjustments. The Denon crossovers have fixed rolloffs.. but they are still classified at active crossovers. (but are limited in function)

Low Pass Filter: -24db per octave
High Pass Filter: -12db per octave


I have an email out to Legacy Audio to see if they can provide any additional info on the crossover slopes employed on the loudspeaker.. The manual says the Legacy Classic speakers use a sixth order Butterworth alignment.. Not sure if Legacy Audio will want to help me given the age of my speakers. I can't find any info online about the slopes of the rolloff..

I'm guessing that the 120Hz crossover (120hz cutoff at -3db) in the legacys LPF roll off at -24db per octave.
the HPF.. -12db per octave..

So at the very worst, cascading the denons active crossovers with the Legacy Classic's passive crossover would cause a severe droop in freq around the 120Hz. Another consideration is any Phase changes being introduced by the crossovers.

I recently had my Denon Upgraded. One of the upgrades was Audyssey XT32 and a new mic. I had been running it as a simple 5.0 channel with all LFE and low bass routed to front mains. (by default) This allowed the regular Audyssey calibration to work.. (got good distances on speakers and decent sound)

It sounds ok, but lacks that "punch" on the bass that I'm looking for..

So I reconfigured the receiver and front L/R Legacy speakers for bi-amping.. and am using SW1 SW2 lineouts from the denon to the external 2ch amp to drive each set of 10" woofers in the Legacy Classic towers. Using Denon active
crossovers to route LFE (120Hz and below) and Bass freq from the other speakers.

Ran Audyssey XT32.. this time got error about L/R subwoofer being too loud or too soft.. (no way to adjust it from inside audyssey) I moved the Mic from the MLP to approx 6" to the left and re-ran the subwoofer test.. this time it was within the 75dB target range. (MLP shows 80+ dB for L/R subwoofers)

I then got phase errors on the center channel.. (reversed pos neg cable and tried it again.. it passed)
I then got phase error on Front L/R chans.. (reversed pos neg cables and tried it again.. got phase error again on Front R speaker... switched it back.

After that Audyssey ran successfully.
Here are the settings produced from Audyssey XT32..
SPEAKER CONFIG:
Front:
Center:
Subwoofer:
Surround:
Surr. Back
Front Height:

SUBWOOFER SETUP:
Config <2SP L/R>
Mode

SPEAKER DISTANCE:
Step <0.1ft>
Front L <12.2ft>
Front R <12.8ft>
Center <11.7ft>
Subwoofer L <12.7ft>
Subwoofer R <12.9ft>
Surround L <6.4ft>
Surround R <7.4ft>

CROSSOVER FREQ:
Front <120Hz>
Center <60Hz>
Surround <60Hz>
LFE+Main <120Hz>

CHANNEL LEVEL:
Front L <+2dB>
Front R <+1dB>
Center <-4.5dB>
Subwoofer L <-8.0dB>
Subwoofer R <-7.0dB>
Surround L <+2.5dB>
Surround R <+4.0dB>

Not sure if I should have changed the cabling on the Front L and Center speaker, but it sounds ok.. and it now passes the Audyssey tests without errors..

Now the system is sounding good.. (most likely a placebo effect! ) I like having the two 10" woofs dedicated to low bass and LFE and driven from the proton D1200 amp. I guess this would be considered a 5.2 surround.. Now that its working properly, I may try some diff settings.. (like 2sp Mix) and LFE+THX just to see how audyssey handles it.

Finally.. some success!

The MLP makes modest difference to five channel sound such as that from movies or TV. There you have a center channel for dialog that every seat recognizes and the background sound from the satellites that will be a bit off if you are sitting to either side of the MLP. But that shift in background sound will be modest and not very disturbing.

Listen to stereo music, and it's a very different story. If a singer is standing between two mics, you will hear him/her in the middle of your sound stage only if you are sitting in the MLP. Move more than a foot to either side and you will hear the singer's voice coming from the right or left main. The singer's band will also shift some in the same direction.

And, of course, there are issues that Audyssey can do nothing about. E.g., the comb filtering effect on monaural components of the sound that arise if the mains are not equidistant from your ears.

For me it's easy. My wife watches TV and so is not much affected by the choice of MLP. I listen to music and I like to have the singer in the middle and the instruments distributed properly across the sound stage. That happens only if one is sitting at the MLP (or in front of or behind the MLP).

We are almost finished working through the setup guide edits. I would like to direct your attention to section V., point F:

You will have to look at it in the Word document, as the strike-through and red-colored text does not come through.

I don't remember who provided the input, but wanted to make sure you are OK with this section as it is.

Thanks.

Mark

I suppose the qualifier is "most seating configurations" but I have measurement positions that are five feet from MLP/position #1. And apparently there is no longer any mention of the centerline for position #1.

Nevermind ... just thinking out loud.

Jeff