Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater VP150 Equalizer Settings?

My new Axioms arrived yesterday - M80, VP150, QS8 for side surrounds, and M22 for rears. Although not fully set up yet, the M80's and VP150 are in position. The QS8's are only 1 inch above bookcase tops, each being suspended between a couple of books to keep the bottom speaker more or less in the clear. They will be wall mounted soon. The M22's are not hung or wired yet. I also have a pair of SVS subs which have been tuned to my R.S. SPL meter, along with the fronts, sides, and center. Although I haven't been "blown away" yet, I expect this will happen once I have all the speakers fully installed and tuned to the SPL.

90% of my system use is home theater with the other 10% being music. One problem I've had for years is the old, "Huh, what did s/he say" when listening to center channel dialog. I've only watched one movie so far with the new Axioms, but I'm still having the same problem. So my question is: What are the optimum parametric equalizer settings for the VP150 center channel for clarity of dialog?

My receiver is a Sony DA4ES with the following equalizer ranges:
Bass, 99 Hz to 1 KHz, +/-10dB
Mid, 198 Hz to 10 KHz, +/-10dB
Treble, 1 KHz to 10 KHz, +/-10dB
Center channel width can be set to Wide, Mid, or Narrow

My center channel settings:
Bass, 250 Hz, +0dB
Mid, 1 KHz, +5dB
Treble, 2.5 KHz, +10dB
Width, Wide

The 10dB treble setting is because I've heard that dialog averages about 3 KHz, so I want all the help I can get at that frequency range.

If anyone has what they consider optimum center channel settings for dialog clarity, I'd appreciate knowing what they are. Or - if you can point me towards a link with information about this problem, this would also be appreciated.

TIA, Bill

I'm just jelous that you can make EQ settings on your receiver. Unfortunately I can't give you any advice in the matter. Good luck to you!

The optimal settings would vary from room to room.

How does it sound with the default settings? Have you done a frequency sweep of the center channel to see what the curve looks like?

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How does it sound with the default settings? Have you done a frequency sweep of the center channel to see what the curve looks like?

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I did some extensive experimenting with my last center channel speaker (JBL S-Center II) and the best settings I found was those mentioned above. I know that I could do the same testing again with the VP150, but I was hoping someone knew some rules of thumb I could apply to help tune the center channel. Or that someone else had experimented and had optimum settings that I could use to start my testing.

- Bill

Bill, although the base frequencies of human voices vary from about 80-300Hz, it's the voice formants which give speech most of its intelligibility, and these formants mainly involve harmonics from about 1000-3000Hz. The adjustments that you describe would appear to be appropriate to maximize dialog intelligibility(although not music)and if it's still not good enough, then it isn't the problem. Is the overall level of the center channel high enough?

I have a recording studio at home and thus I am going to use the same logic I use when engineering:

Buy a compressor.

Run the outboard compressor between the power amp outputs and the center channel speaker's inputs. This will layer everything that goes thru that speaker "to the front" and make it stand out more, the more compression you use. The low passages will be louder and the extremely loud passages will be suppressed in a "smoothed-out" way. Everything will be "evened out."

If this is something you want to consider, I can provide you with recommendations in your price range. Often an optical compressor that is only a couple of hundred dollars can yield optimum results. And now they usually have "auto" settings that can automatically adjust the attack and release characteristics while "looking" ahead at the source material.

-sbc

Oh, no...I made a mistake! I never run the compressor after the poweramp...always before:)!!! Sorry...

So in the scheme of things figure out where that might be. If you are using a reciever, perhaps you can create an effects loop where you can run out of the preamp for that channel, into the compressor, out of the compressor, into an input, then re-route that thru to the poweramp. I know it sounds complicated, but figuring out how to add the compressor will really solve your problems. I use it on recording acoustic guitar passages all the time. It really makes every single note in the "soft" parts shine thru.:)

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The adjustments that you describe would appear to be appropriate to maximize dialog intelligibility and if it's still not good enough, then it isn't the problem. Is the overall level of the center channel high enough?

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Thanks for the information John. The overall level of the center channel is fine - I normally have it 3-4 dB over reference which seems comfortable to me. But your post got me to thinking. Generally speaking, I think the dialog is fine when playing DVD's, but lacking when I watch movies using my Dish DVR satellite receiver. I know that Dish uses compression algorithms to cram as much information into their transmission as possible, then my satellite receiver's software uncompresses these transmissions. I also know that the compression is somewhat lossy, which makes me wonder if I might be losing small bits of the dialog sound track. Or maybe the software realizes that the decompression is losing small amounts of dialog, so it inserts whatever it thinks should be there. If this is the case, these small changes in the sound track may be what is causing my problem. What do you think?

- Bill

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Buy a compressor

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Hello SBC, Thanks for the advice. Right now I have a LOT of ideas I can try which won't cost me anything. If I exhaust all these ideas and still haven't solved the problem, I'll get back to you for suggestions as to which inexpensive compressors might help.

Thanks again,
Bill

Bill, I certainly don't have any special expertise in the area, but it seems very doubtful that the compression/decompression algorithms used for the satellite transmission could significantly affect dialog intelligibility. Again, since there's a difference, consider whether it's simply a matter of slightly lower volume from the satellite as compared to the DVD player.