Setting up for the best sound?

[Alone]

I've got a Yamaha HTR-5830 receiver and some paradigm speakers (7s, 3se, CC170) and an 8" Cerwin-Vega sub. This is my first step into audio and I really don't know how to set up the receiver/my computer to output the sound properly.

When listening to music, what mode should I have it on? How about for movies?

 

[funboy6942]

For me, with music, I set my receivers up to what I liked best. If it has options for hall, concerts, and the likes, I would just go through them and set them depending on your mood and what sounds good to you, rather what someone else things is best for you. You may like it in stereo the way it was recorded, or in concert with a little refurb action going on coming from all around you, for me it just depended on my mood, and what I was listening to and where, that made my decision as to what the receiver setting should be.

As for movies, same applies, but for I I set up no extra refurb stuff at all, just have it decoded in DD or DTS, so I can hear it the way it would of been recorded, or at the theater. Again, thats for me, experiment and watch some movies going through all the setting and seeing what works best for you.

If your looking for speaker distance and the likes, you may want to get in touch with YOyoYOhowsDAjello for that. He likes to go by specs and the book, whereas I go by my ear and what sounds good to me and my listening space, rather then have some book tell me this is how its got to be. I tried it a few times, and it wasnt for me, but again, thats me, and how I been doing it for 20 years

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Well you said before that Dolby Digital is showing up when watching DVDs using VLC or Zoomplayer, that's what you want to be using.

Some discs will have DTS tracks instead, which are usually of higher quality than the DD tracks, so generally use those when available.

The player software should be set to bitstream or passthrough so that the receiver is doing the decoding. If it's saying Dolby Digital now, that means it's working, so you're good to go.



For music, unless you're listening to DVD-A or another multichannel audio format, the signal is stereo like funboy42 mentioned.

As he also mentioned, the general concensus is to not fvck with it and keep it in stereo
PCM from your digital output of your computer and then setting the receiver to do plain stereo will probably give you the best results. Applying effects like "Hall" etc. will add some effects that you may like, but it also screws up the soundstage and can have some negative effects. If you can set up your front speakers well, stereo will sound very good and you'll have nice imaging going on :thumbsup:

You'll want to get your speakers (especially the front three) as close to equal distance away from you as possible.

Holy Moly, Dolby just re-did their speaker setup page...
http://www.dolby.com/consumer/...inment/roomlayout.html

Lots of tips to read in there.

 

[Tiamat]

Doing things by "the book" and your ears will be a compromise based on your room acoustics and other limitations. Doing things by "the book" works the best when you room is also by "the book". Unfortunately this isnt the case for many homes/dorms etc, so you have to make due with what your ears find as acceptable. In the end, you gotta do what sounds best for you as that is the whole point of audio - which is a highly personal and subjective thing.

My advice would be to spend a good chunk of time getting your system setup as best as you can in terms of listener location and speaker location with respect to minimizing room modes, reflections, and speaker boundary interference problems. A good first stab is to make a equal. triangle with the front two speakers and your head at each apex. Next, try to keep your listening position away from 1/4, 1/2 of your room length. Third, place your subwoofer at your listening position and crawl around the room, the place the sub sounds decent to your ears while you crawl will be a good spot for the subwoofer. Forth, if you don't have a Radio Shack SPL Meter, buy/borrow one so that you can calibrate the loudness with respect to your speakers correctly. Fifth, (this takes two people) play some music and have someone slowly play around with the subwoofers phase -- you have to determine what you like best, there are better ways to do this, but it requires sine waves which you may not feel like dealing with. For the other speakers, just follow dolby's outline as Yoyo posted.

Now you are ready to play with your receiver settings (as everything else fundamental, compromise or not, is at its best state).
Have fun!

 

[ScottFern]

My DVD player (Toshiba HD-A1) surprisingly has distance settings for each of my 7 speakers so I set that up that way. Also, my Pioneer VSX-815 Receiver has this small microphone that you setup 10 feet in front of your receiver and it does an auto-calibration itself.

I setup my speaker height to the same level my ears are when sitting down on my couch. Although I have no idea if that even helped. lol

 

[venkman]

Originally posted by: ScottFern
My DVD player (Toshiba HD-A1) surprisingly has distance settings for each of my 7 speakers so I set that up that way. Also, my Pioneer VSX-815 Receiver has this small microphone that you setup 10 feet in front of your receiver and it does an auto-calibration itself.

I setup my speaker height to the same level my ears are when sitting down on my couch. Although I have no idea if that even helped. lol

Excellent combination of equipment. I hope you have the A1 setup with the Analog cables as the 815/A1 REALLY sing with TruHD. I think I liked them better than my current A2/HDMI Onkyo setup.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: ScottFern
My DVD player (Toshiba HD-A1) surprisingly has distance settings for each of my 7 speakers so I set that up that way. Also, my Pioneer VSX-815 Receiver has this small microphone that you setup 10 feet in front of your receiver and it does an auto-calibration itself.

I setup my speaker height to the same level my ears are when sitting down on my couch. Although I have no idea if that even helped. lol

Is the HD-A1 player your only source? If it's not, you may want to try to do the distance adjustment through the receiver rather than the one specific source.

How do you have the player hooked up to the receiver? I have not used an HD-A1 before, but I'm wondering if the distance adjustments only apply when you're using the multichannel analog output from the player? Is that the connection type you're using?

I had a Pioneer 1014 I used a while ago that also had MCACC. I tried it several times with the same setup and got quite a range in different auto settings. After messing around with it for quite a while, I found I got the best timbre matching and results I liked the best by just leaving it off.

 

[ScottFern]

Let me clarify. No, I have the Toshiba HD-A1 hooked up via optical cable to my Pioneer and those distance settings are ONLY for when I watch DVDs. For everything else, (watching TV or playing a console) the MCACC is what I used to calibrate my speakers, if you want to even call it that.


I had my Vizio P50HD ISF calibrated, however I never got my sound system calibrated. However, I don't think its good enough to pay for that.

 

[venkman]

Kill the Optical setup and get some Analog cables PRONTO. The Optical cable doesn't have the bandwidth to pass the newer Higher Quality Lossless audio formats and instead the A1 down converts the signal to 1.5mbps DTS. Assuming you upgraded the firmware to at least 2.0, your player is capable of decoding 5.1 TruHD lossless audio which is a pretty big improvement over the down converted DTS audio. Do this and throw in a movie like Batman Begins, Superman Returns (Plane Crash scene), or the Matrix movies and your ears will thank you.

The Only thing you will have to do differently (besides re-cabling) is turn up the gain on your subwoofer when watching an HD DVD as analog does not handle +10 db bass management over analog on TruHD tracks. I don't remember if the 815 can do this through the receiver but if not just turn up the knob on your sub as close to 10db as you can get. Don't forget to turn it back when watching an SD DVD.

MCACC did a decent job for setting my system for me when I had the 815. Don't knock it as it is one of the better auto-calibration setups out there. The one that came with my Onkyo is ok as a baseline but quite a few things need to be adjusted +/-2 here and there.

 

[ScottFern]

I don't watch HD-DVDs. My speakers are JBL SCS300.7 also. I mainly bought this Toshiba for its quality job of upconverting regular DVDs.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: venkman
MCACC did a decent job for setting my system for me when I had the 815. Don't knock it as it is one of the better auto-calibration setups out there. The one that came with my Onkyo is ok as a baseline but quite a few things need to be adjusted +/-2 here and there.

I'm just saying don't just run it and assume it did a good job. The distance settings it came up with for my setup were way off and the auto-equalization would vary +/- several (3-4) dB from run to run.

Seeing the variation from test to test with me keeping all other variables as constant as I could was enough to get to not trust it at all.

 

[venkman]

Originally posted by: ScottFern
I don't watch HD-DVDs. My speakers are JBL SCS300.7 also. I mainly bought this Toshiba for its quality job of upconverting regular DVDs.

It is a great upconverter, but you are missing out if you don't use that puppy for HD DVDs. They BLOW AWAY the quality of the best upconverting player.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Alone
I've got a Yamaha HTR-5830 receiver and some paradigm speakers (7s, 3se, CC170) and an 8" Cerwin-Vega sub. This is my first step into audio and I really don't know how to set up the receiver/my computer to output the sound properly.

When listening to music, what mode should I have it on? How about for movies?

For music, output the signal from the PC as stereo.

From the receiver you have a few options. You can leave it as stereo, which will sound good. I personally think dolby pro logic II music mode sounds pretty good, but I never liked the funky hall reverb type stuff.

For movies, just pass the signal over SPDIF and decode the sound natively.

For consoles that dont support DD5.1, DPLII movie mode is what you want.

BTW, thats quite a nice setup you got there.

 

[AlienCraft]

Originally posted by: funboy42
For me, with music, I set my receivers up to what I liked best. If it has options for hall, concerts, and the likes, I would just go through them and set them depending on your mood and what sounds good to you, rather what someone else things is best for you. You may like it in stereo the way it was recorded, or in concert with a little refurb action going on coming from all around you, for me it just depended on my mood, and what I was listening to and where, that made my decision as to what the receiver setting should be.

As for movies, same applies, but for I I set up no extra refurb stuff at all, just have it decoded in DD or DTS, so I can hear it the way it would of been recorded, or at the theater. Again, thats for me, experiment and watch some movies going through all the setting and seeing what works best for you.

If your looking for speaker distance and the likes, you may want to get in touch with YOyoYOhowsDAjello for that. He likes to go by specs and the book, whereas I go by my ear and what sounds good to me and my listening space, rather then have some book tell me this is how its got to be. I tried it a few times, and it wasnt for me, but again, thats me, and how I been doing it for 20 years

I know it's a niggly little point, but since you repeated it, I can assume it wasn't a typo.
REFURB is NOT REVERB! :roll: Unless, of course your reverberation unit has been refurbished, and that's what you call it now as a pun.

 

[funboy6942]

Originally posted by: AlienCraft

Originally posted by: funboy42
For me, with music, I set my receivers up to what I liked best. If it has options for hall, concerts, and the likes, I would just go through them and set them depending on your mood and what sounds good to you, rather what someone else things is best for you. You may like it in stereo the way it was recorded, or in concert with a little refurb action going on coming from all around you, for me it just depended on my mood, and what I was listening to and where, that made my decision as to what the receiver setting should be.

As for movies, same applies, but for I I set up no extra refurb stuff at all, just have it decoded in DD or DTS, so I can hear it the way it would of been recorded, or at the theater. Again, thats for me, experiment and watch some movies going through all the setting and seeing what works best for you.

If your looking for speaker distance and the likes, you may want to get in touch with YOyoYOhowsDAjello for that. He likes to go by specs and the book, whereas I go by my ear and what sounds good to me and my listening space, rather then have some book tell me this is how its got to be. I tried it a few times, and it wasnt for me, but again, thats me, and how I been doing it for 20 years

I know it's a niggly little point, but since you repeated it, I can assume it wasn't a typo.
REFURB is NOT REVERB! :roll: Unless, of course your reverberation unit has been refurbished, and that's what you call it now as a pun.

Sorry thats just my mind going faster then my fingers, I meant reverb, and didnt notice I did that till you pointed it out.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: AlienCraft

I know it's a niggly little point, but since you repeated it, I can assume it wasn't a typo.
REFURB is NOT REVERB! :roll: Unless, of course your reverberation unit has been refurbished, and that's what you call it now as a pun.

:laugh:

My delay dimes! Give me back my delay dimes! Everything is out of plays here.

 

[AlienCraft]

Originally posted by: Rubycon

Originally posted by: AlienCraft

I know it's a niggly little point, but since you repeated it, I can assume it wasn't a typo.
REFURB is NOT REVERB! :roll: Unless, of course your reverberation unit has been refurbished, and that's what you call it now as a pun.

:laugh:

My delay dimes! Give me back my delay dimes! Everything is out of plays here.

LOL,

 

[Rio Rebel]

I know it's a niggly little point, but since you repeated it, I can assume it wasn't a typo.

What is "niggly"? Sounds racist.