"Official" Audyssey thread (FAQ in post #1) - Page 1806

Feri,

That's a red herring. How we hear has nothing to do with the sound from the speakers grazing the mic capsule during Audyssey calibration,

Jeff

I didn't even think of this. My surrounds are in ceiling. Hmmmm

I would nominate position 1 to where you have your MLP (Main Listening Position), coz that's where Audyssey will measure and set levels and distances. The rest of the positions are meant for collecting "mo info" of your room for the final filter calculations.

Agree Jeff, but hearing dialog and imaging across L&Rs from up above while looking at the display on the front wall would be, as Tandy says, sub-optimal. Yes, I know we are trying to help asere with his in-ceiling setup, but in the end I have a feeling his final SQ will be sacrificed and will have lower priority than not cluttering the living room with stand alone speakers positioned at "natural" ear height or so.

I also agree with Jerry that basically any speaker in any room placed anywhere has the potential to be EQ'd to a flat response all over the entire frequency band with "clever" workarounds, but isn't the overall SQ of a HT system at stake when we finally sit down on the couch?

Just my 2c.

Ok so what would someone who has both do? Hide behind the couch and then angle the mic after the fronts and center are done? My fronts are normal. My surrounds are in ceiling. Oh and don't knock in ceiling. They can sound excellent , at least for surrounds.

Yes Tandy, surely the ceiling pointed mic is pointing more or less to the in-ceiling speakers, but on another note, the ceiling-pointed single mic position is supposed to be the position that will translate the Audyssey algorithm's measurement results into the way our ears hear sound in the room. By all means I think in-ceiling front LCRs are not gonna render an SQ one would expect from a HT system at this level of sophistication. Just thinking out loud!



Well, in that case asere has to be fully aware of the sub-optimal nature of such a speaker setup.


Well, IMHO these are still work-arounds for in-ceiling speakers, but still a bit far away from the desired overall SQ. What could be recommended for folks for the placement of front heights for Dolby PLIIz or DSX? Can't go higher than the ceiling, eh?

I had ceiling back surrounds and followed the set up guide. All worked well. When does your 80.3 arrive?

All my surrounds are in ceiling. Hopefully it will arrive this week.

Just as an aside, I was dreading getting in ceilings because I thought they would suck. I got Totem Mask surrounds and I am so happy. Ideal? Probably not but everyone who hears my HT literally drops their jaw lol! I can't wait until the 80.3 shows up so I can tinker with XT32.


I will experiment with angle.

Did you keep the mic pointing at the ceiling?

I am sure he did although I'll wait for his reply. That being said, I don't know how much difference you would notice one way or the other with only back ,in ceiling surrounds being affected.

Here's what Chris has to say on mic orientation for in-ceiling surrounds.

But surrounds are a different "animal" than front LCRs. Some even like them diffused, well, ...although I've also heard of folks using bi/dipoles for Front Mains... Hmmm.

Thanks for that.
While I like my in ceilings for surrounds, I personally would never use them for a front stage. That's where the meat and potatoes are.

Fully agree, ...again IIRC our ears are not so sensitive to elevation from the sides and rear as they are up front, so surround height, although always recommended (by Dolby) to be placed above seated ear height, the exact height may not be so critical. Ears can easily compensate for that when sound is coming from surrounds.

And here are some additional comments from Chris posted here back on 11/10/08:
audyssey
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dan.crouthamel
Was the mic always pointed towards the ceiling?


Pointing the mic differently will have no effect on the issue you are asking about: crossover finding. It will have an effect on high frequencies, but you will have to weigh that against the negative effects you would introduce by sitting near the mic. My suggestion is to leave it pointing up.

Regarding the 150 Hz xover, it is most likely due to the fact that the speakers are in a cavity that causes a bump in the 100-200 Hz region. That is very common. The specs published are for very ideal conditions and not really based on in-room conditions. If you follow the recommendations in the guide floating around the thread you will be fine.
__________________
So Chris seemed to suggest that the location of the speaker (in the ceiling)
had less to do with MultEQ setting a high crossover, than with the installation of the speaker in the ceiling withot an enclosure

Great point...so ideally-placed height speakers would have a very different grazing angle than ideally-placed front speakers. I wonder if Audyssey accounts for this in some sort of channel-specific mic calibration adjustments?

Otherwise, the mic is going to see more HF for the heights vs the mains and subdue those octaves accordingly, all else equal. From my experiments tilting the mic, 45 degrees has a large effect on the HFs.

And of course those bipoles/dipoles for surround, where the tweeters are firing everywhere but directly at the microphone. Those folks will have the opposite problem of the in-ceiling crowd--HF boost like crazy. And we know this isn't accounted for in the algorithm since it never asks which type of surrounds are being used.

The examples above, plus the in-ceiling conundrum are further evidence why Audyssey should allow a user to opt-out of adjustments above 4kHz or so. If getting the HF "right" is tightly correlated with the correct grazing angle, yet we have shown this many examples of common setups where the grazing angle just can't be correct, what is a user to do, other than live with sub-optimal HF response in certain configurations?

I can correct such "erroneous" boosts with the pro kit, but many others are not as fortunate. And because Audyssey does not limit HF boost above the -3db point like it does for the LF, it could enter the realm of damaging speakers for the very same reason.

Hopefully they will add this functionality into the next version to make it a more universal, plug and play, one-size-fits-almost-all solution.

My surrounds are on the floor firing up, and they definitely get HF boost when I calibrate with the mic pointed at the ceiling. I suspect you would have the opposite problem I do, where Audyssey is likely rolling off the HF of your surrounds more rapidly than it should (or otherwise would if your surrounds had a 90 degree grazing across the mic similar to your fronts).

Short of upgrading to Pro where you can dial in some additional HF on those speakers only, I'm not sure how you can compensate for it otherwise.

However, it's probably safer for your tweeters to have Audyssey prematurely rolloff HF than to boost it uncontrollably. It also probably helps to diffuse surround content which some of us prefer anyway!

I'm wondering if we are over-thinking the grazing angle. My Heights, Surrounds, and Surround Backs all have tweeters significantly higher than the LCR and Wides. All of my speakers are monopoles, aimed precisely at the MLP. I just checked the EQ graphs on my Denon, and I don't see any evidence of HF boosting for any of the speakers. The grazing angle for the Heights is approximately 45 degrees, so wouldn't you expect some HF boost?

I think the mic should stay pointed directly at the ceiling, regardless of speaker type.

If you are grazing at less than 90 degrees, you should actually see HF cut, not boost, since the mic is seeing more HF than it otherwise would, all else equal. I proved this to myself when I did mic tilting experiments to reduce/eliminate HF boost in my consumer calibrations, before I could do it the proper way with Pro.

You are correct, my bad. But let me state it a little differently. I don't see any evidence in the HF equalization of any of the speakers, whether the grazing angle is 90 degrees, or something less than 90 degrees. And these are matched speakers. So I still think we are wrongly attributing HF anomalies to mic grazing angles. I would hate to think that we need to come up with a complicated scheme to angle our mic's to compensate for different speaker types and placements. Just saying...

A conundrum. The reason to point the mic at the ceiling is to have the HF graze the mic capsule as the mics' calibration file is done at 90 degrees and pointing the mic at a speaker could allow it to hear too much highs and cause an attendant rolloff of those high frequencies.

And line array calibration requires manipulating the mic angle.

But ceiling mounted LCR doesn't?

Thank goodness I don't need Audyssey to watch the Spurs game!

Yes.

None of my speakers are at perfect 90 from mic except the Montis which has 44" line of sound. the stage center is 6 ' off the floor and the NHT dipoles for surround are also 7' off the floor on the side walls. My rear surround are now Celestian 6 which are on the floor behind couch pointed at angle at center of the ceiling.

My phonic mic and my ears report good results with mic pointed at ceiling . I calibrate my ears at concerts in small and large halls.

I did play with angle but this did not lead to easily reproducible results since I had to change mic quickly to maintain 90 degrees for each speaker.

Using pro I do vary heights of mic for my 14 spots but mic is now pointed at ceiling.

Thank you for your in-sights.

An interesting conversation between two Fellas we all know: https://audyssey.zendesk.com/entries...w-height-spkrs

Take care!

Here is Chris' response to my query:

"The importance of tilting the mic for in-ceiling speakers has been debated for some time. The truth is that it may make a tiny difference at the very top of the frequency range, but in my opinion not enough to worry about. However, the AVS forum wouldn't be what it is without obsession (or is it passion?) :-).

Some have gone as far as to time the Audyssey chirps and swoop in to tilt the mic back before the test signal gets to the surrounds..."

Audyssey doesn't care what type of speakers are used. The mic 'hears' the sound they make and creates filters accordingly.

Thanks for sharing that reply from Chris. I think his reply points to something I have suspected for a long time - that we tend to overthink things here on the thread I spend a silly amount of time, for example, when I do a calibration to make sure that the mic is exactly vertical in all planes. I am sure that it makes no real difference if it is slightly off (and Chris seems to confirm that) but I can't help but do it. I suspect a lot of the other 'lore' is similarly overthought - mic positions for example measured to the inch and so on. But as Chris says, where would the thread be without our obsession passion!

I agree that it probably makes little or no meaningful difference, when you consider that unless the listener at the MLP has his head in a vise, the frequencies that come to his ears (and the nature of room reflections) are going to change just from normal movements of the head while the music is on on or a movie is playing.

Passion is the right word, IMHO! On another thought Keith, how about collecting so called "do's and don'ts" and sometime later on amending the FAQ with another chapter called: "Don'ts"? 'Do's" we have enough for our passion!

Good idea. Any suggestions from anyone on a list of 'don'ts' would be welcome.