I just got two QS4s and am a little disappointed. Not with the Q4s but with my room setup. I am not sure what it is.

The M22s are about 6 feet apart and about 8 or 9 feet from me. One is about two feet closer to my ears than the other one (due to WAF).

The Q4s are about 2-4 feet away both slightly in front of the line that runs through both my ears (or would if I didn't have a brain in the way). Again one is a foot farther back than the other (waf prevents the speakers from being paralel). I can move the chair to get them equidistant from my head, but it doesn't help much.

M2 for center is about four feet behind the M22s but due to room design I don't think that can be helped.

Sub seems alright.

Room is about 7 feet wide and 20 plus feet long.

I do have the sound and vision dvd and a sound meter (actually two sound meters). I hope to caibrate this weekend.

But I really don't know what I am doing.

My biggest complaint is that I don't get the sense of being in a concert hall or studio or whatever. When I close my eyes it sounds like a collection of good speakers poorly set up in an acoustic nightmare of a room.

Another complaint is that usually the Q4s don't make much sound (I don't care about movies yet - this is with regular cds and some SACD 5.1 discs). (I do have the police sacd, a surround sound organ cd and the flaming lips 5.1 disc - they do have a lot of sound from the Q4s - but this is only 3 discs).

Any ideas of what I am not doing right yet? Or next steps to take? Do the speakers really need to be parrelell and equidistant from my ears? I thought I read that axiom says there is some leeway - especially with the Q4s.

Of course it could be my ears - sometimes they seem a little tin - but it comes and goes. Sometimes I put in a cd and am stunned by how good the M22s sound.

And it could be my expectations I suppose as well. I think I am really susceptible to this "reverse placebo effect" for the first few weeks.

Don, calibrate the speakers for equal volume(and delay)at your listening position to at least partially overcome the non-ideal setup. Use DPLII with CDs and other two channel sources to give the QS4s something to work with and experiment with the dimension and width parameters in DPLII mode.

I agree with John on most counts there, but use DTS:Neo 6 for best sound. Also, it's essential to try out some DVDs with real 5.1 sound. You'll be able to tell. BTW, I changed my crossover on the 4s to 120 Hz today; your mileage may vary.

In reply to:

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(I don't care about movies yet - this is with regular cds and some SACD 5.1 discs).(I do have the police sacd, a surround sound organ cd and the flaming lips 5.1 disc - they do have a lot of sound from the Q4s - but this is only 3 discs).

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This is very telling for me.

I think it's likely that your system could stand some calibration, but maybe you're expecting too much?

With 5.1 channel SACD or DVD-A discs, there's a lot happening in those surrounds...often equal to what's happening with your mains. But with everything else, they're just supposed to add some ambience (Sound F/X or "hall ambience")... NOT be equal in volume and output to the Mains.

Maybe you actually have the levels for them too high in order to "hear more" and that's causing the localization?

Thanks for the advice and encouragement, John.

I got halfway through the set up dvd and ran out of time - will continue tomorrow. I usually use DPL2. I had the dimension up to 5 or 6 with no real effect - maybe most cds in DPL2 and a lot of classical 5.1 discs don't have a heck of a lot going on in the surround tracks.

Width shouldn't effect the surrounds should it?

I will try Neo 6 - I thought DLP2-Music was better for music.

I have a number of dvds I could try out to make sure it is set up well. I really want the music to sound good, though.

I used to put the receiver on "All Channel" till I reread the manual and found out that essentially makes my 5.1 system into a 2.1 system - if I understood correctly. It did involve the surrounds more though.

I don't think I can change the crossover on the 4s only - I think it is a universal crossover on the receiver. And, the dvd player has really high crossovers (150 and 200) so I don't want to use that.

Thanks

"maybe you're expecting too much...they're just supposed to add some ambience (Sound F/X or "hall ambience")..."

You may be right - but I have to put my ear right up to them in order to hear if they are even working - even on some SACD surround discs! The police were the exception as would be the Lips and the Organ cd - each is recorded to take full advantage of the surrounds.

I used to have some cheap speakers as surrounds that seemed to put out more than the Q4s do - So I raised the volume on the 4s but - I don't know - something isn't right yet.

Probably something obvious - so I want to watch the setup dvd all the way through and do every step. I can't even hear much ambience these days. Maybe hydrogen peroxide in the ears is the answer?

Anyway - if I have the surrounds up too high the setup disc and the meter should reveal that.

Thanks for the response.

If you've gone through the calibration process and can hear the tones playing equally loud through every speaker, then that discounts there being anything wrong with your setup -- regardless of how high the speakers are mounted.

I just finished the set up disc. Some things that were a bit confusing:

There are two sets of levels to set up your speaker levels -
1) on the dvd player - for SACD and DVD-A this is the only leveling that gets used with my onkyo receiver.
2) on the receiver - for every disc

There are three sets of test sounds to go by:
1) on the Sound and vision dvd
2) on the dvd player
3) on the receiver
- they are all a bit different but pretty close. with the S&V disc everything was leveled but then with the DVD player levels I had to turn up the right side one more notch. That made the fronts leveled so that seemed to make the most sense (so the dvd by sound and vision is off?). The receiver levels had no competition - so they worked ok.

I have a 5.1 cd on now - sounds good

Except I set my speakers to small on the dvd player - a mistake since the crossover is so damn high on the dvd player - 200Hz and under crosses to the sub on DVD-A and I think it is 150Hz and under for SACDs. Stupid Pioneer!

But it sounds ok on large I think.

Sounds like it is balanced now. Maybe a few wall hangings for right in front of the main speakers - since they are so close to the wall they probably need something. (I got my wife's ok) and with that everything should be ok.

I wonder if a better dvd player with more sensible crossover settings would help the dvd-A and SACD discs? I could set the speakers to small then in the dvd player.

Thanks for the advice everyone

Don, yes a player with better bass management for DVD-As and SACDs(or a separate item such as the Outlaw ICBM)would be helpful on those discs.

How much difference would there be? $300 worth (or whatever an ICBM costs)?

About $200 worth, if you buy a B-Stock ICBM, which is precisely what I did.

I just bought an ICBM 2 weeks ago, big improvement with my Pioneer DV-45A, bigger than I was expecting. I forgot about the B-stock option and paid full price $250.

OK, I've been kicking this question around in my head for a few weeks, and I've got to ask: how is an ICBM different from doing the same thing in your receiver? Or is that another feature that only H/K has? I mean, I know an ICBM makes it easier to run 2 subs, but... What am I missing?

I don't know about your receiver Ken, but when I select the multichannel inputs on my Onkyo, it bypasses all signal processing, including speaker size and crossover, thus sending full range signals to all speakers.

My Denon 2910 has some bass management (speaker size, and distance), but it applies the same crossover point to all speakers. With the ICBM, I can select the appropriate crossover point for each speaker. If your HK applies it bass management to the multichannel inputs, then I don't think an ICBM would be an improvement.

Ken, while listening to SACDs and DVD-A's with a universal player it is connected to the receiver via the 6/8 channel direct inputs so therefore the sound is direct and bass management must be accomplished though the universal player rather than the receiver and most (almost all) universal players do not have any bass management.....this is where the ICBM plays a role, it provides the bass management that the universal player does not.

Does the help?

You both have answered most of my questions. The H/K 525 has bass management available on the 6/8 input (or I can use them direct). Since I don't have an SACD/DVD-A player, I haven't investigated this, but I imagine that it will fill the role nicely.

Well, that's one piece of equipement I don't need. How about that BFD, now...

HK's bass management is a really strong selling point. I'm enamored with the HK 435. However, HK will not do what a BFD does.

Sorry Jack, we posted at the same time. My H/K did not provide bass management to the multi-channel inputs so the ICBM was a big improvement with my system in the SACD/DVD-A discs.

Is it true that if you use an ICBM, you have no control over delay/distance of the speakers?

The ICBM does NOT give you control over delay/distance. But, my Denon 2910 DOES. So, I set the distance in my 2910, but set all speakers to large, and use the ICBM to select individual crossover points for each speaker.

Outlaw recommends that you set all speaker distances the same (on the DVD player)in order to get the sub phase in line with the mains.

If you set the distances differently, then the low pass information will arrive at the ICBM at different times, which will make it more difficult to set the phase. I think the impact is very minor unless you have big distance differences between speakers.

There is a thread on the Outlaw site that explains this much better than I just did.