Congratulations zuter! As Chris mentioned and the others, you really can't judge by the speaker settings. Your old system could very well have had a boosted midbass hump or some other anaomoly that affected the settings and your perception of 'loud'.

Hi Zuter,
I have the Pio SC-05. I run MCACC but then I defeat the EQ setting it applies (my personal preference). The one thing I really like about the MCACC is the standing wave correction - definitely go through and measure it at 3 spots in the advanced mode to cover your prime seating positions. Other than that I also go back and tweak my speaker levels manually with my Radioshack SPL meter. I like to set the center at 0dB offset and the other 6 channels relative to that so they give the same SPL in the prime seat. The reason I do that is I will often bump up the center for movies and back to 0 for music - it's just easier to remember my base calibration setting that way

I have smaller speakers (M22's) so set the X-over at 80Hz. Because of the QS8's you might want to do the same as you can't do per speaker X-over in the Pio's (unless this has changed recently). What sub are you running?

Hope that helps,

It's the goal of the receiver to get -0 dB to be "reference", so it just may be that the M80s are that efficient.

The number on the display doesn't really mean all that much, and really can't be directly compared between receivers, and that goes doubly so for different brands.

Don't worry what the number reads, just set the volume to a comfortable listening level for you. As long as it isn't in the + range, you'll be fine (the noise floor rises quickly when you get above 0).

Standing waves are low frequency sounds that tend to "pile up" in a room because of its parallel surfaces (ceiling to floor, and opposing walls). Pioneer includes a feature to find the three largest bass peeks and attenuate (cut) them down.

EDIT: If you happen to have a room where two or more of the parallel surfaces are equidistant, you're really screwed.

If you happen to have a room where two or more of the parallel surfaces are equidistant, you're really screwed.