"Official" Audyssey thread (FAQ in post #1) - Page 1803

No problem at all, glad we are in agreement.


Even with the advent of Audyssey folks are still free to do such a selection as they wish, its available from menu. Though I remember once Chris K. explained it is the explicit decision of the AVR makers to allow "tweaking" coz as they stated: "Our customers like to tweak". No kidding! Marketing, marketing, marketing!


I really don't know about "most", but I myself select 80 Hz. "Small vs. Large" blog has it all. I don't know of any "much more" scientific way than the way human ears work for localization issues or the lack of them.


As described above, we all may feel free to tweak our gear even to extremes, yeah, it's our's, nobody will control our decision except us. Though knowing and learning basics from the makers might as well limit our curiosity when we settle down. No harm done, just getting back to "Reference vs. Preference" (another excellent blog for the overheated youth!)


Now tandy you are getting a bit casual vs. well established guidelines (aka standards), don't you think? How about putting Front Heights on the floor? Worth a try, eh? JK!


What are those other benefits, please?


Fully agree, extremely high crossovers need to be investigated.


Described above!

Glad to talk to Ya!

Despite the conventional wisdom, I greatly prefer the sound of the surrounds 2-3 inches off the floor, 1-2 inches from the sidewalls, firing up towards the ceiling. I find it provides a much greater sense of envelopment and "non-localization" of the surround effects in both small and large rooms alike. It also allows me to move them around more easily, eliminates brackets and holes in the wall, and "blends in" to the decor more readily than if they were up high. Note that I never listen to multichannel music. To bring it back on topic, the biggest issue with this arrangement had always been a boomy bass due to the close proximity to the floor and sidewall--XT32 completely eliminates that boom.

I understand that I'm probably not getting the full onslaught of treble from the surrounds (i.e. the compromise), but the greater envelopment more than makes up for it IMHO. Plus, you know how finicky I am about too much treble. ;-)

Hard to imagine your setup. Nonetheless, please fell fee to do it your way, but let this be an "attention catcher" even for silent readers on this thread that this is by no means something to be followed. Extreme solutions always pop-up here in this thread, don't be mis-lead by un-orthodox fellas. Please!


I really wonder how you got to that conclusion tandy? Did you do a "conventional" setup and then compared it to your "avantgarde" way? Why don't you want to localize surround effects (full band)? Gun shots, lightning sounds of a thunder storm, etc., these all contain a lot of mid to high frequency contents that make localization a lot of fun. Isn't it all about surround sound?


How frequently do you move your speakers around now that it has become more easy? In my case: never!


Noted.


Can't comment on this. It's your room, you're the only one who can know whats going on there.

So you prefer direct firing speakers for surround...yay! I and many others prefer a more diffuse surround field, so we choose bipole, dipole, or monopole speakers carefully aimed away from the MLP.

More interestingly, though, are you saying folks who prefer diffusion over localization in the surrounds and thus go with these other options are, let me quote, "extreme, unconventional, and avantgarde"? If so, please contact B&W, Focal, and Audyssey itself and ask them to stop manufacturing/recommending such "unorthodox" gear. The nerve of those companies "mis-leading the silent-readers." ;-)

Dipoles are too diffuse for my taste, and monopoles aimed right at/above MLP are not enveloping enough. Plus my setup is in a nice family room where black boxes on the light tan walls just isn't going to cut it. My solution is a perfect compromise for my placement options and tastes, and I highly recommend the silent-readers try it out for themselves.

You crack me up sometimes! ;-)

^^^^^

And my compromise is the surround channel speakers set to the dipole mode and the back surrounds (identical speakers as the surrounds) set to bipole.

"Conventional wisdom" says that this is not the way to do it (don't mix dipole surrounds with bipole surrounds) but in my case it works best this way.

Cheers,
SB

I failed to get good results with SubEQ HT in my room.
Killed two days trying. Admittedly in a tough room - 12x20x8, concrete floor and 3 walls.

I ended up connecting all 3 subs to a single output and doing the Geddes thing - the most powerful sub upfront with the mains and two supplemental ones in limited bandwidth and lower volume through out the room.

There are many arguments for Denon 4311 vs Onkyo 818, but to me SubEQ HT is not among important ones.

My surrounds are configured for TRIpole and my rear surrounds for monopole. Previously had the surrounds as dipoles, but this is better ... a bit more precise imaging but still a bit diffuse as well.

Jeff

WARNING!!! Budget-minded noobie post to follow:

OK I'm totally confused about Audessey and this thread is far too massive to read all the way through.
I always thought the rule of thumb is the less "processing" the better to maintain original signal integrity, yes?
I was happy with manually tweaking my Onkyo 609 (Audessey 2EQ) until I started reading this thread. So I figured i'd give the Audessey a shot. Did the calibration using a tripod. Got some weird distance and crossover measurements. For instance, on my front speakers (Onkyo HTiB 7.1 setup) which have larger drivers and are rated down to 55hz, Audessey crossed them over at 100hz, while the center channel, which has the smaller 3 1/2" driver was crossed over at 70hz. The rear surrounds were crossed over all the way up to 150hz, despite being rated down to 80.
Here's my confusion...why do I want the sub handling all the mid bass as well as the low frequencies? won't that muddy the sound up? I like to have mid bass coming out of my speakers and not just the sub.
Should I just leave everything this way or go back to manual?
And what about dynamic volume and EQ? I've always been against any artificial volume leveling software...
If this stuff has been dealt with already, my apologies and would someone with some knowledge please PM me so as not to clutter up this already bloated thread?

I'm confused. A sub is more localized by having crossovers for the speakers high or low? What is localized? Sorry for dumb question here just learning about crossovers.

High. Localized means you can tell where the sound is coming from. I believe the general rule is that frequencies 80hz and below are too low to be localized. So if your sub is playing frequencies in this range, you could place the sub anywhere in the room and you should not be able to tell where the bass is coming from. If your sub is playing higher frequencies, you can "hear" it's location in the room. There could be some unwanted consequences because of this. Say a deep gunshot sound (around 120 hz) is meant to be heard in front of you, but you hear it behind you because your sub is playing frequencies say 150hz and below and the sub's position is behind you.

I should add that as far as real world home theaters, I'm not sure how much of an issue or problem this really is....or if you would notice. Most sounds are dynamic using multiple frequencies, then there are things like crossover slopes, room acoustics, etc.

My favorite advice in this 5 year old thread comes from Pepar. "How does it sound"?

Higher frequencies are more localized. So you are less likely to be able to tell where a tone of 40hz is coming from as opposed to say a tone of 100hz.

As such you want the crossover of a sub to be lower as you want to hear the bass but not hear where its coming from so it envelopes you.

Higher frequencies (like voices) you WANT to be directional so you can tell where things are spatially/directionally in a movie.

For example you dont want dialog coming out of your sub, but you DO want it coming out of your center.

The higher you set the crossover for your sub the more likely it is going to produce some of those "directional" type sounds.

That is an old perspective from the analog era and is not as applicable when digital processing is already presumed.


Speaker specs are notoriously unreliable and, in addition, do not entirely predict the performance in your particular room setup. Tiny speakers, in particular, usually come with very optimistic specs.


Agreed. OTOH, the trade-off may well be a "hole" in the FR below what the speakers can actually produce.


Your move. Unless you have some way to measure what is really going on, your ears are your only guide.


Your move. I don't use it. Many love it.

So if the mains crossover is low the sub will be low too?

They are the same thing. The so-called sub crossover is really a low pass filter for LFE only.

If you set a crossover of your mains at say 80 (the THX standard) all frequencies ABOVE 80 go to your speakers. All frequencies BELOW 80 go to your sub.

Re crossovers and Audyssey's front/surround AND subwoofer/mains integration -

My surrounds are crossed at 100Hz and my LCR at 80Hz. In the cave/escape sequence in Iron Man, Stark's assistant "buys him time" by running after his captors with a machine gun. At one point he is on screen and the next moment the camera switches to the next section of the cave towards the mouth with him firing - quite consistently and randomly - and entering the camera shot from the right side (of my room). The whole machine gun firing sequence is throaty and chest-pounding with only changes in sound to correspond to the camera shot wrt the cave acoustics, or what the viewer would imagine that they would be.

I know my right surround is crossed at 100Hz and I know that what is pounding my chest is way below that, yet the entire "machine gun fire effect" comes from the surround. There is zero spectral tearing and ZERO localization.

With good integration, we perceive sub frequencies as coming from the direction of the "rest of" the sound effect, i.e. the main speaker reproducing it.

I got one more ... Sherlock Holmes in the meat processing plant where Lord Blackwood's disembodied voice bounces around the room. On a system with proper integration his voice sounds identical regardless of whether it is in the front, on the side or in the rear ... or somewhere in between.

If I had to point to just one benefit from Audyssey - and it has gotten better and better the "stronger" the flavor of MultEQ has been - it is integration of my surrounds with my fronts and my subs with my main speakers. With Pro and MukltEQ XT 32, it is SEAMLESS.

Jeff

Thanks for the replies!


Well, they're just Onkyo speakers from the HT-S5400 HTiB system that I've paired with my Onkyo 609, so its not like I'm dealing with $2k speakers or anything. But they're the nicest home audio speakers I've had so far (most of my high end experience is with car audio), so I'd like to get all the settings optimal, if possible with just my ears.


Let's assume my fronts and center can handle down to 90, and the smaller surrounds down to 100. Would it be OK to go ahead and set those manually after the audessey calibration or will I lose some calibrated settings that way?

Also, with a 10" onkyo self powered sub should the LPF of the LFE stay at 120hz?

Yes, you can manually set your speaker crossovers and it won't interfere with your Auddessey settings. It just changes the frequency at which your AVR sends the bass to the sub. The listed settings that Auddessey comes up with are just its recommendations based on its measurements, they aren't required for Auddessey to work properly.

However, it's advised to always raise the x-over and not lower it. If you lower the x-over from what Audyssey found, then there will be no EQing of the speaker below the x-over point set by Audyssey & the receiver.

another thing is the fact that if you lower the X-over freq. it will make your system try to play frequencies that it can't reproduce, those frequencies that are lower than the speaker's cutoff frequency (F3). that would increase distortion.

Audyssey always EQs down to the -3 dB (F3) point of a speaker (or to 10 Hz which ever comes first) where F3 can be smaller or can be equal to the crossover frequency set by the AVR against the F3 point reported by Audyssey.

Hi Guys, I really have no intention to divide members here into different camps in regards of diffuse or localizable surround sound fields, especially not to argue on which one is better and why. Our MMV, as the saying goes, but if we look into new trends we can see something interesting coming up. Yeah, it's Dolby Atmos. Here's an excerpt on what Audioholics says:

Qte

"Dolby’s new technology could be just the next strike in a war of escalation reminiscent of razor blade ads that once one-upped each other with more blades for an even closer shave. Dolby Atmos, with 64 speakers, can create a ridiculously lifelike sonic experience with localized sound in front, beside, behind and now on top of the audience. Atmos will envelop you in such an extreme sonic experience the ticket-booth will have to hand out diapers with their 3D glasses."

Unqte

Whole article here. And as you may also know there is already a separate Dolby Atmos tread here on AVS.

Take care! And sorry for the OT!

Feri,

This is a commercial cinema sound system and those spaces are so big that even a pinpoint sound will be somewhat diffused by the time it gets to the ears. It does allow mixes to use both pinpoint and diffuse sounds just be mixing them dry or wet as they see fit. And as sophisticated as this system is, there might be a way for them to measure the decay times of the space and enter that into the "soup."

It will be interesting to see how they scale this for small residential use. I follow the thread ... lurking mostly.

Jeff

I can see it now, "Honey, you know the 6 speakers that we have now in our living room? Well, don't freak, but I would like to add 58 more.........What do you think?"

Uh, just make sure you do not allude to that in the Atmos thread. It is heavily policed for any such notions as to possible industry motives.

Hi Jeff, yes, even though for the moment it is a cinema sound system, but what I wanted to point out was the start of a trend itself for moving into the direction of pin sharp localization of sounds all over our surroundings.

For the home environment we surely need to wait a bit to be implemented.

Having said that, my thought is that cinemas need front firing speakers to do the job, coz those will be able to reproduce mixes recorded both for pinpoint and diffuse sounds. Bi/di/tripole speakers will IMHO surely diffuse pinsharp mixes, while diffuse mixes will have a chance to be double diffused or so. Hard to imagine how that would sound in reality, though.

I also subscribed to that thread out of curiosity and just to be updated!!

Come on now...

There's no policing going on there.

Dolby creates technologies and make a most of its money on licensing... They have no vested interest in selling speakers...

I have no inkling as to what Dolby plans on doing with Atmos in regards to the home environment...

From the promising technologies I've heard, I really think we are heading towards some really exciting playback technologies that won't rely on increasing the physical speaker count to create a mores immerse listening experience.

The benefit of having more "direct" firing speakers and playback channels should allow us to produce both types of sounds when mixing...

Remember also that Atmos also introduces new tech to the way rooms are set up, tuned and bass managed...

Exciting to see this emerging...

The police are virtualy non-existant, but do come out when someone "alludes" to a commercial company trying to sell new things.

I think the mixers should have control and be able to make something diffuse OR pinpoint as they chose. If the speaker system makes everything diffuse, thrn that can't happen. If the system is capable of pinpoint precision then making something diffuse is possible.

It's sort of like a smart person can pretend to be dumb, but not vice versa.

edit: yeah, what FM said.