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Audyssey questions
#354008 09/03/11 04:39 PM
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Hi guys,

I did an 8 point Audyssey auto calibration and have a few questons you might be able to help me with:

1. Do the following values look right?:
Front L = -5dB
Front R = -5.5dB
Center = -8dB
Sub = -0.5dB
Seems to me the center is off but it sounds good.

2. I'm using a Denon receiver and can manually change the channel levels but I'm afraid it will change the calibration somehow, is that true?

3. Since I don't really understand the +/- dB levels I changed the main volume control to absolute and stored "71" as the max volume level but want to crank it higher. Given the numbers up above, what would you say my max volume should be from 1-100 absolute? I have already blown speakers from over cranking the volume and having my channel levels to high.

4. How do I balance the dB levels and max master volume so I know I'm safe to tweek the individual speaker dB channel levels? I guess I'm wondering...do I adjust the channel levels at a moderate volume to get a uniform sound that I like then use the master volume? I'm parinoid about blowing speakers now.

Thanks...I'm a newbie


Samsung 65" 3D LCD TV, Samsung 3D Blu-Ray Disc Player, Denon AVR 3311CI, EP800, M80's, VP150, 4QS8's
Re: Audyssey questions
da-drifter #354016 09/03/11 05:20 PM
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when you run Audyssey, it compensates for the differing spl outputs between all speaker and brings them all to a 75dB SPL at your listening position.
it also takes care of phasing between all speakers; this last thing is one reason why the sub distance you can see in Audyssey seems to be sometimes far off.
when i first did my Audyssey calibration, the left front main speaker (M80) was blocking the sub's line of sight to my seating position; Audyssey said my sub was about 16 ft from my seating position, the actual distance was more like 12 ft;
about a week later, i moved the front speakers out from the side of the tv to near the side walls, a difference of about 1 foot, and i could now see the sub from my sitting position. rerunning Audyssey, the reported distance sub/seating pos. was now 9 or 10 ft., very near the actual distance.
i'm inclined to think the difference was caused by phasing, and i know the distances should not be changed manually, Audyssey knows what it's doing and why.

1: your values seem to be ok; as long as the numbers aren't + or - 12 dB, that's all right.
if some values were at 12, this would indicate the adjustments are at the end of the possible adjustment scale and need to be corrected.
your Center at -8dB indicates that the outpût had to be decreased by 8 db to bring it in line to the 75dB standard.

2: Audyssey has set the channel levels for you; if you change them manually, your levels will not be equal in each speaker.
you should never touch them. it's not easy to manually adjust speaker levels with a SPL meter; the needle always moves. moreover, if done manually with a SPL meter, one should use band limited pink noise, 500-2000Hz i think.
Audyssey will do it easily and with good precision.

3: if you use "relative", then your "normal" playback level for movies is 0.0dB. your receiver should have a control that will prevent you from going over this level; at least mine does...
i don't know about using "absolute", i haven't tried it.

4: using Audyssey, you only have to go through the calibration routine as per the detailed article i gave you the address for in AVS forum.
when it's done, you have to change all speaker settings to "small" instead of "large", then, always in your receiver setup, set the crossover to 80Hz, and then change the LPF to 120Hz.
this way you'll get the best out of your sub.

you really don't need to do anything else than what is detailed out in this AVS forum article.
just follow the instructions very carefully, and you should enjoy beautiful sound.
if the result is not very good, then maybe you have a room that's too "live"; if so, then you should treat the room to absorb/diffuse the reflections/standing waves. in reality, this should be done before you use Audyssey; the result would then be much better.

hope this helps. :-)

Last edited by J. B.; 09/03/11 05:56 PM.
Re: Audyssey questions
J. B. #354028 09/03/11 10:07 PM
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quote: "3. Since I don't really understand the +/- dB levels I changed the main volume control to absolute and stored "71" as the max volume level but want to crank it higher. Given the numbers up above, what would you say my max volume should be from 1-100 absolute? I have already blown speakers from over cranking the volume and having my channel levels to high."

my guess at the reason you blew speakers was because you wanted to listen at too high a volume; the amplifier went into clipping, sending too much power to the speakers including some harmonic distortion. whenever your source sounds a little bit distorted and you know the source is clean, it means you're overdriving your amps and it's clipping. this can kill speakers very fast.
muddy and distorted high level sounds is not very nice to hear; the M80's can take a whole lot of clean power and will reproduce sound clearly and cleanly even at very high volume levels. in fact, they can be so loud that you will not be able to stay in the room when blasting away at the full power they can take.

damage to speakers, according to an engineer at QSC, is cumulative.

if, when watching movies, you often need more volume than what you get with a setting of 0.0dB and everything calibrated with Audyssey, that means you should either 1: get a more powerful AVR or 2: use external amplification.

doubling the volume means you need 10 times the power (10 dB more);
going from 125 Watts/channel to 150 Watts/channel is very little difference, not worth the money. you would not hear the difference.

if you decide to get more power, i think you could use a high power amp for the front L and R, and use the Denon amps for the surrounds; the surrounds usually use much less power than the fronts.

of course, if you like to listen at insane levels, then you surely will damage your hearing and you might have difficulty getting the sound levels you want, whatever the amp power you use.

i used to know a musician who, during practice for a rock concert inside a cinema, told the technician that he could barely hear the monitors in front of the stage and he was telling him to get the volume way up.
the tech showed him on the spl meter that the monitors were playing (during his practice cession) at levels of 120 dB SPL.
he had lost most of his hearing for that reason, but he was blaming the weak sound system.

with the M80's, unless you have a very large room, 125 Watts/channel should be ample to get realistic sound levels, most of the time.

here's some numbers that you might find interesting:
in a small to medium room, where you sit at around 2 meters from the front speakers, one of those speakers will put out approximately:
91dB/1 Watt
111dB/100 Watts
112dB/125 Watts
When the 2 front speakers put out the same sound, then add 3 db to all those numbers.

the movie standards say that the max SPL for a movie is 105dB,
and 115 dB for the sub frequencies.
this is a standard for cinemas, as well as for HT.
Most of the time, when watching movies, the average power going to the speakers is less than 1 Watt total, but very loud peaks will demand much more power, maybe some 50 to 100 Watts (with your system) for a short time.

as you can see, you most probably have enough power for realistic levels, unless your room is very large and acoustically very dead .

hope this helps. :-)


Last edited by J. B.; 09/03/11 10:14 PM.
Re: Audyssey questions
J. B. #354031 09/04/11 12:10 AM
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One thing that some people have done incorrectly, is that none of the measurements should be taken "outside" the locations of the speakers. You want to create a bubble around the listenting location. Taking a measurement outside of the "box" of where your left/right speakers are, for ex., will result in poor results. J.B. pretty much summed a lot of things up. I'm to tired right now to type to much. Been painting the theater.

As J.B. mentioned, any speaker that was set to large by your receiver, (not Audyssey), should be set to "small". It is ok to bump up the crossover point, say from 40Hz to 60 or 80Hz. But, you never want to lower the results found by your setup.


M80s VP180 4xM22ow 4xM3ic EP600 2xEP350
AnthemAVM60 Outlaw7700 EmoA500 Epson5040UB FluanceRT85


Re: Audyssey questions
da-drifter #354034 09/04/11 02:23 AM
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Drifter, J.B. has given you a lot of excellent info. I'll just add a couple comments. If you've followed the suggested procedure for doing the Audyssey calibration and room correction there's no need to be thinking about "tweaking" the settings(except changing a "large" speaker setting to "small"). Our ears are fine for enjoying music, but they suck for measuring sound differences which Audyssey is designed to calculate.

Also, it'd be better if you dropped the "crank it" terminology. It's hard to know exactly what damaged your woofers, especially since the far more delicate tweeters are usually the drivers which fail, but playing too loud("cranking it")is something that should never be done, for the sake of your hearing as well as your speakers. If you're not able to judge appropriate sound levels you should get the digital SPL meter from Radio Shack to give you realistic numbers to guide you.


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Enjoy the music, not the equipment.


Re: Audyssey questions
SirQuack #354035 09/04/11 02:51 AM
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OK, so I wont change any original Audyssey channel levels but I like a lot more bass. Right now my front speakers are set to small but I have M80's. I'm thinking they should be set to large to get the most bass out of them, is this right? Also shouldn't I set the Bass setting to "LFE + Main?" Is it better to turn up the volume on the back of my sub or turn up the channel level on the receiver? Confused...

Current settings:

Bass Setting
SW mode = LFE
LPF for LFE = 120hz

Crossover
Front = 40hz
Center = 100hz

I have the physical crossover on the EP800 set to 150hz but then Audyssey set it to 120hz, but now I should manually change it on the receiver to 80hz? If I change it to 80hz on the receiver then should I go to the back of the sub and physically switch it to 80hz as well?

Should I change the crossover for the fronts and center to 80hz as well?

I'm after seat rattling bass on movie sound tracks (within reason.) Thanks for your help here guys.


Samsung 65" 3D LCD TV, Samsung 3D Blu-Ray Disc Player, Denon AVR 3311CI, EP800, M80's, VP150, 4QS8's
Re: Audyssey questions
da-drifter #354039 09/04/11 03:29 AM
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If you have a sub, your speakers should be set to small. The term "small" has nothing to do with physical size of the speaker. It has to do with the crossover point for that speaker and how the "hand off" of the lowwww frequencies get passed to the sub.

Yes the M80's can handle low bass very well, I have them, but the sub has a much larger woooooofer and moves a lot more air.

Audyssey looks for the -3dB point of each speaker and reports that back to the receiver manufacturer during setup. Denon uses 40Hz, so since the 80's are "capable" and have a -3dB point of 40Hz, the Denon marks them as "large".

You still normally would set them to small. Now, I also bumped up the frequency which was set to 40Hz, to 60Hz, or possibly 80Hz. It is ok to bump up the crossover results, you just don't want to go lower than what Audyssey sets, as that gap won't be corrected.

Just because you set it at 60Hz, or even 80Hz, the low frequencies do not just get "cut off", there is a gradual slope/blend or "hand off" to the subwoofer. 60-80Hz is pretty low.

Yout want your sub handling frequencies down from that to say 20Hz or lower.

Answer to questions:
Your still getting killer bass when set to small.

If you set to small, LFE + Main would not be used, so no.

Turning the gain (volume) on the sub, or the level on the receiver makes really not much difference, it is the same speaker. I would start with a midpoint level on the sub, and after running Audyssey for the first sweep, if it sets your sub on the receiver to low (say -8dBs), bump up the sub and rerun the setup.

The first test from the primary seat when running Audyssey adjusts for distance, and works with the receiver to determine small or large. At that point you can stop the test and check your initial results, and make changes, you don't have to run all 8 positions first.

Leave the LPF alone at 120Hz, this is not the crossover and has nothing to do with your setting on the back of the sub. Audyssey recommends leaving that at 120Hz as there is "some" material during movies that goes above 80Hz and upto 120Hz.

By setting your subwoofer crossover knob to the highest setting of 150Hz, you are "getting it out of the way" or ignoring it, so the receiver handles your bass management.

Leave the sub crossover knob out of the equation, leave it at the highest setting.

For the 80's I would try bumping them upto 60Hz for starters and see what you think, and possibly 80Hz. For the vp150 leave it at 100Hz, you never want to "lower" a crossover point below what Audyssey reports, or you will lose the correction ability between that gap.

You won't get seat rattling from subwoofers unless your running them hotter than you should, get bass shakkers if you want your seats to rattle, or put a sub in your car.


M80s VP180 4xM22ow 4xM3ic EP600 2xEP350
AnthemAVM60 Outlaw7700 EmoA500 Epson5040UB FluanceRT85


Re: Audyssey questions
da-drifter #354040 09/04/11 03:40 AM
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With a 40Hz crossover, your M80s are already playing almost as low as they handle strongly. If anything, rather than having them and the EP800 both playing low bass by setting LFE+Main, stay with LFE, but give your excellent sub more bass to work with by raising the M80 crossover to 60 or even 80Hz.

No, Audyssey didn't set the sub low-pass control to 120Hz. If you set that all the way up to 150Hz(as you should), it stays there.

If you really want to set the sub level a little higher than the calibrated level, set the volume control on the back of the sub just slightly higher.


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Enjoy the music, not the equipment.


Re: Audyssey questions
JohnK #354043 09/04/11 04:10 AM
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Thanks so much for all of you taking the time to explain, your info helped a lot. Not easy for a newbie.


Samsung 65" 3D LCD TV, Samsung 3D Blu-Ray Disc Player, Denon AVR 3311CI, EP800, M80's, VP150, 4QS8's
Re: Audyssey questions
da-drifter #354048 09/04/11 01:59 PM
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Not easy for an oldbie either.


M80s VP180 4xM22ow 4xM3ic EP600 2xEP350
AnthemAVM60 Outlaw7700 EmoA500 Epson5040UB FluanceRT85


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