Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Help calm my fears--my VP160 sounds bad

After you do all that Andrew suggested....

Audyssey is as much of a pain in the ass as it is a blessing. You really need to take your time with it, and make damn sure the house (and neighbors) are quiet, and move the mic to all eight spots. Make sure to use a tri pod to hold the mic too, not YOU. It must point straight up, always. Get rid of all your pillows, blankets, whatever. If someone drives by with a hole in their muffler while in the middle of the cal session, start over.

Then after you are done screwing around with Audyssey, get your good old RS meter out and verify channel levels. You'll most likely have to set the mains/center to large, or at least move the X-over up to 80. Do not ever lower a X-over.

Guys, thanks for the advice. I have checked to make sure the cables are correct. I'm using Axiom bulk cable and know that the side with the logo on it is the red side. I plan to move the VP160 upstairs tomorrow afternoon and if it sounds as good as the first time I heard it, I'll know it's no the speaker.

I'll take some photos of the room tonight and post them.

Dakkon, thanks for the helpful manual. There is no doubt that I'm getting serious slap echoes in the space between the speakers and the listening position. I suspect the acoutsic panels will help eliminate this.

Here's some photos of the home theater as it is today. Hopefully next week my acoustic panels with arrive and I can improve the space. The good news is, when I came home from work today I took the VP160 upstairs and hooked it up to my TV in place of my VP100. Everything sounded fine and I even put in the Blu-ray I've been viewing to test the system. The dialog was fine. Bigger sound than the VP100, and a huge improvement over what I was getting in the theater. So the speaker is probably not to blame. I've re-checked the connection, and unless the labeling on my cables is flawed, the speaker must be in phase. I'm getting serious slap echo and am thinking that it must be so pronounced that it's making a good speaker sound bad. Once the panels are in place, I'm going to re-run the Audyssey then do a manual set-up and see what happens. In the meantime, does anyone have any suggestions on speakers placement?

Gorgeous!

It only takes a second to reverse the connections on the speaker (only).

If you can, i would pull the 160 away from the wall a little bit...


Also, in the mean time, you could use some blankets as sound panels... if you dont mind putting a couple holes in your wall.... hang the blankets from the wall to get rid of the hard surface of the wall.... That is what i personally would do in the mean time. i would think 1 blanket on each wall would be sufficient to tell you if you are having an echo problem...

i would also verify each end of the cable, both on the speaker and the receiver, or what ever you are using for power.

What a beautiful room!

The room does look great Bayne.

Just had another thought - since you are familiar with the VP100 sound, why not bring it down to the HT and see if the sound from VP100 is also affected by the room?

Moving the VP100 will happen if, after the panels get installed, the sound remains the same. Right now the room is too bright, acoustically speaking. Later today I'm going to wire the center speaker out of phase and run the Audyssey. It should pick up the error.

Hahzah! Never so relieved to see an error message. I switched the speaker wire on the VP160 and the Audyssey told me it was out of phase. So no question about that.

But the really good news is that my Primacoustic panels arrived today. I'll be able to pick them up tomorrow and finally see if they can tame my room.