Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Denon Audyssey EQ question

I suspect that my new futon is throwing the Audyssey EQ a curve ball. Everything had sounded great from when I first got it and with all the experimenting I’ve been doing. Then when I bought a futon for seating and every time I’ve run Audyssey since then the center channel EQ sounds hollow and w/o any bass. If I turn the EQ off everything sounds fine.

Am I right in assuming that the new furniture is the culprit?

Dean

I was reading the AVS posting on Audyssey earlier today and read some info about bass issues.

Here is the link:

AVSforum "Official" Audyssey thread

Dean, it seems rather unlikely that the difference between the futon and whatever you were sitting on before would have that significant of an effect, but I'll throw out an idea: did the auto level calibration on the 2807(not actually the Audyssey part of the system)maybe set the center speaker "large" now, whereas it was set "small" before? If so, that would reduce the bass which was fine before because the sub was handling it. Manually set the center channel "small" with an 80Hz crossover. Puzzling.

post 28 of the link you quoted has a lot of good tips about audyssey. I have been talking it down but I need to redo my mic placement. I had my tripod on the couch and didnt have the mic higher than the back of the couch.

thanks for the info

Quote:

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I was reading the AVS posting on Audyssey earlier today and read some info about bass issues.

Here is the link:

AVSforum "Official" Audyssey thread

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Doug
Thanks for the link. Don’t know how I missed it. Still reading but it’s already nice info.

John
It seems to be randomly setting the size of the speakers. When I first got it the only time it ever set anything but the mains to large was when a nearby apartment was playing some loud bass it set the surrounds to large.

However, following your advice I tested it several times and it now seems to be setting the speaker sizes for the center and the surrounds randomly. In the five times I ran it three times it set all the speakers to large, once only the mains and center and once only the mains and surrounds were set to large. The last time I ran it the center was set to small with a crossover of 250Hz.

Manually setting the center to small with a crossover of 80Hz helps smooth it out a little but it still leaves the center especially male voices sounding hollow tin like an very easy to localize in all the auto EQ modes. Turning the Room EQ off solves it and makes everything sound quite natural.

So I copied the flat EQ setting to the manual equalizer and took a look. It had make the following settings for the center channel which I realize are only a few points along the curve.

63 +1
125 -7
250 -6
500 -2.5
1k 0
2k -3
4k -3.5
8k -2.5
16k -4

It had also set the surrounds similarly but they aren’t the ones it makes sound annoying.


I tried these settings in manual mode and voices still sounded hollow. I then reset the 125, 250 and 500 all to 0 and everything sound normal again.

Unfortunately I had not really paid attention to the EQ settings before so I don’t know how these settings compare to when it would set up the center sounding normal.

For now I’m just leaving the Auto EQ off and it sounds fine except that the lower base now fluctuates wildly when I run the 200Hz to 20Hz sweeps. With the EQ on it never did that.

After initially setting everything up I’ve always tried to only change one thing at a time to test what happened but this time I also move the seating forward so tomorrow when it won’t bug the neighbors I will move the seating back and see what that does.

Any other suggestions on what to try are welcome.

Alan has shared his thoughts on the auto EQ receivers several times on the forum. IHis conclusion is that you are better off using an SPL meter than the auto EQ.

Dean, just a thought, but how do you have the room EQ set, most of us that use Denons leave that off.

Ray, I think I’m going to have to agree with him. At first I thought I liked it but now it just seems to be behaving badly.

Michael, I was setting the room EQ to Audyssey. After time I seemed to notice it was making the center speaker seem hollow and tin sounding especially with voices. When I turn the room EQ off or to manual and adjusted the 125Hz to 500Hz bands back up to 0 from the -6 or so it was setting VP150 sounds great and voices are perfectly natural. The thing I just don’t get is that I didn’t notice it was doing that before.

I tried moving the seating position back again and the auto EQ is still setting the 150Hz and 250Hz down to -6dB. I also noticed it’s doing it for all the speakers I guess it was just the most noticeable in the center channel voices.

I guess this isn’t really a big deal since it sounds like many people don’t even use the room EQ and when I turn it off all the speakers sound fine. It’s just that I didn’t notice it happening before and I hate not being able to figure out why something is behaving differently (the mechanic in me).

While I don't have a Denon the Onkyo 804 EQ also makes my Axioms sound tiny and hollow. They sound very good with it off.

Bill3508