Question On 5.1 Speaker Calibration

[leefarber]

Okay, I've been doing my homework. I went out and got the Harley book on High End Audio. I bought the AVIA DVD. And I bought a Sound Level Meter from Radio Shack.

And I'm ready to pull my hair out trying to get these speakers balanced!

I've got three sets of test tones at my disposal... those generated by the receiver (Yamaha HTR-5440), those generated by the DVD player (Denon DVD-2900), and those generated by the AVIA disc. Now to make things more complicated, I can adjust speaker levels on the receiver AND the DVD player. On the receiver, the level of the mains is fixed, and the center and surrounds must be adjusted to match. On the DVD player, I can only lower the level, not raise it.

So here's what I did... I started out using the receiver's test tones. I set the volume on the mains to read 75db on the meter, then adjusted the center and surrounds to match. You'd think the other test tones would all be equal, but they were WAY off! What should I do? Which machine should I pay attention to? And should I be adjusting speaker levels using the controls on the receiver only? Or should I use the DVD player's speaker level adjustments in concert with that of receiver's?

I'm confused!

Lee

[leefarber]

I'm going to pre-emptively follow up my own post.

It seems that the speaker level adjustments on the DVD player only refer to DVD-A playback (or at least 6-channel analog output in general), as the test tone generated by the DVD player is only audible when my receiver is set to 6-channel input. So I went ahead and balanced the levels using the DVD players speaker adjustments and test tones (without touching the levels set on the receiver).

I have no idea if I did this correctly, but it seems to make sense. Kinda sorta.

If there are any patient folks out there that can lend a hand to a novice, I'd appreciate it.

[Clay]

Hi Lee,

Thanks again for your last post. I went and got the RS analog SLM also.
It is pretty cool, I finally put the battery in it tonight. I was surprised how loud the music peaks were - I shut the window :)

Someone else may have another idea here, yet IMO
(substitute movie for SACD or DVD audio as needed below)
Set the DVD to full volume
run the pink noise test off the DVD or Receiver and set the 5 speakers to sound about the same level from where you will be sitting.
Pop in your favorite movie with good rear channel - True Lies or whatever.
Then adjust the rear to be as loud as you think it should be - what sounds good.
For the center - can you hear the voices well? how about run the center higher than normal to bring the voices out a bit more.
Now compare the clarity of the voices to phantom center mode.
Get the voices to sound as clear and loud on the center as on phantom mode.
Log all the positions of the knobs for future reference.
Watch a movie.
Now take out the AVIVA (I still need to get one of these) and adjust the speakers to be the same level from where you will be sitting.
Log the knob positions.
Watch the same movie or scenes from it.
Does it sound better to you?
Not sure - pull out the log of the personal preference setting above and set the controls there again. Does it sound better? switch back again.
Now leave it at one setting for a few days (the one that sounded better)

Does it do it for you? Is it the cats meow? Are you ready to show it off to you family and friends?

If someone says - "that speaker sounds louder, I thought they were all to be the same" - you can say. "It sounds better to me like this from where I sit":) (they will want to sit there and check it out - you are the expert)

I like the center channel and rears up a bit, yet once I get out my trusty spl meter I may find that up is really about equal.

Still not sure - Go to a movie or a indoor concert and then come home and adjust the knobs until you duplicate the sound like it was at the concert or movie.
Now watch a few movies (or SACD or whatever 5.1 you are listening to)

[Steve Hoffman]

Most of us can't get it right with only two channels.

Can you just play something in total mono and adjust everything until it sounds like it's coming right from the middle of you? That's how I would start it.

[lv70smusic]

The short answer is that you should set levels in your receiver unless you are only going to use the 5.1 inputs. If the decoding is done in your receiver, then you need to make the appropriate speaker adjustments there. The adjustments you make in your dvd player will only affect its analog outs, not the digital stream that you send to your receiver. For many receivers, the 5.1 inputs remain in the analog domain and settings for speaker levels and placement distances are not applied to those analog inputs. That's why you need to make the settings in your dvd player if you will be using both its digitial out (for dvd-video or cd audio) and the 5.1 analog outs (for multichannel music such as dvd-a and SACD).

There's potentially more to the story but I need to head off to work soon!