Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Dialog Inteligibility with VP180

I trust the grill is not in use on the 180 as you would then have dual cloth components and that might affect dialogue somewhat, reaching for straws with this one.

I still think he should try without all this decor/frame/cloth just to make sure it is not the source of the problem. The one thing I always liked about the VP180 is its clarity and fullness so either there is something wrong with the speaker or something is altering its sound.

I'm just not convinced that the decorative element below the speaker isn't the culprit. Sometimes, you can't have both pretty and functional.

I don't know for a fact, but would running the center +4 at the channel level introduce extra distortion?

My first test would be turning the center down to 0 and turning everything else down to negatives accordingly.

second thought, mains are at 0. Has this been propoerly calibrated? Mains0 Centre+4, surrounds+1 sounds like a by-ear setup.

snazzed

This kind of sounds like the reverse of the roll-off in THX systems where the highs in sounds in the movie theater are adapted for home use since the same highs are boosted because the speakers are behind a screen in the theater. I would think a grill cloth over the speakers would certainly have a noticeable effect in somewhat deadening the sound coming out of the tweeter especially if it is producing a flat response curve.

With a speaker the size of the VP180, dialog intelligibility should NOT be an issue. Obviously, something else is going on here.

Autoboy, I have the NAD T785HD it is similar to the T765. The T785 does have Audyssey Dynamic Volume in light, medium and heavy flavors you can try these to see if there is an improvement. The NADs also have the "on the fly" temporary adjustments for the surrounds, center and sub on the remote (+-6dB).

I really can't add much to what others here have suggested but If Audyssey was used for calibration check that the distance is correct also make sure the polarity is correct. One more idea My Oppo 83SE has a Dynamic Compression in its setup that I make sure is turned off. I don't know what he uses for a transport but you may give that a look see although that should not affect just the center channel. As others here have stated I have not had that problem with the VP180 in my setup in fact it has been a great improvement over the VP150.

I don't really have anything to add but to say that room is awesome!

Did you and/or your brother design and build the rooms yourselves? I wonder how much it would cost to hire someone to build a room like that.

The design was done by Mario Panelli. From what I understand, it was only his second theater and he's working on getting into the business. He put a tremendous amount of work into the theater and went above and beyond what has first discussed, without increasing the cost of the contract. He is a perfectionist and it showed. He would build stuff, find it didn't work, and would rework it at his cost. He's an amazing guy and I wish him the best in his future work.

The cost was less than you might think and is probably attainable for many of you if you wanted something like this. He saved a lot of money by avoiding the super high end electronic and speakers. I went for a bang for the buck approach. The audio/video system was only about 10K but sounds fantastic. I'm just ironing out this one minor issue. I may have made the dialog issue sound worse than it really is. Watching a movie in there is really quite amazing.

I'm still waiting on the word on whether the drivers work. I haven't visited him for some time since he is 150 miles away.

Here's Mario's information (there's a few mistakes in the writeup)

http://www.hometheaterdesignmag.com/content/personalized-theaters

IMO, you shouldn't have to turn up center channel volume to hear dialog. If you have to, something is wrong. Using a VP150 as center, I didn't have any problem with dialog when I was near the main listener's position in my room, and after I substituted the VP180 a couple of months ago, I could also hear dialog plainly in two adjacent rooms. I'm one room away right now, actually, and I can hear every word from my TV. I agree with other posters that he should test the VP180 outside of any additional acoustic barriers, to eliminate the possibility that the cloth or decoration are causing a problem.

The most interesting part is that he hears every word from his TV from the other room but the TV is not turned on.....

Sorry, kidding of course.