With the help of a friend I have been tuning my system and so thought I would post some notes.
I have made a few changes over the last year:
1. New Audio Physic Centre (tonally matches my Living Voice mains);
2. Focal Dome rears;
3. MJ Acoustics Pro 50 sub for the Domes;
4. Transferred my REL Strata III from the mains to the centre.
New Centre
I find tonal changes very distracting, great relief to find a matching centre - great deal of luck!
Focal Domes
I have been using my Linn Kans for MANY years as my rears, but they are not really suited to this, and positionally are not ideal. The domes are very flexible in terms of placement.
MJ Acoustics Pro 50
Great little sub, which sits behind my chair almost opposite the REL. Initially connected with just the Hi-Level in support of the Domes. I later also plugged in the LFE, which I later removed.
REL Moved to support the AP Centre
Good suggestion from my friend. The LV go down to 25Hz anyway. The Audio Physic cuts off at 40Hz.
Oppo 105D
Set all the speakers to FULL, which also removes a -10db step from the sub output.
My friend used a spectrum analyser on his phone plus a selection of well known film passages. The end result sounded great, but I have been doing further tuning since, mainly winding back the sub output! Reminds me of when I first bought the REL.
I downloaded and converted a selection of files to assist with the tuning, including stepped bass sweeps from 200Hz down to 5Hz and the DTS HD-Audio tests.
Warning: If you choose to download test files from YouTube be aware that whatever the poster describes them as YT do a further conversion, for instance reducing 5.1 to stereo.
I loaded up Android 'Spectrum Analyse', which I used in conjunction with the test files.
I have to say that I am revisiting LOTS of films at the moment - my system sounds GREAT, and I include films in glorious mono, for instance 'House of Games' that I reviewed yesterday. Moving the REL onto the centre was very good advice.
M
Posted on: 18 June 2015 by Mr Underhill
Hi Rackkit,
That must be giving you some great results. I remember when the AV2 first came out and I borrowed one and immediately bought it - my whole system just felt as though it clicked. I never thought that the AV2 was brilliant at sound steering, but the soundfield and music were superb.
As I said above be careful about YT, it can transcribe what was uploaded. Some of the postings give other links to unmodified files ....as always, a degree of trust involved.
There are other sites that do have test tones, including frequency sweeps. I changed the file packaging to MKV so I could stream it through the Oppo.
Stereo files were fine for the Mains and rear. The DTS file helped me confirm I had the phasing right.
I tested using the tones based on: Main; Centre; and Rear. I would only have the channel being tested power amp turned on at the time.
What movie sections do you use for testing?
M
Posted on: 18 June 2015 by rackkit
Originally Posted by Mr Underhill:
Hi Rackkit,
That must be giving you some great results. I remember when the AV2 first came out and I borrowed one and immediately bought it - my whole system just felt as though it clicked. I never thought that the AV2 was brilliant at sound steering, but the soundfield and music were superb.
As I said above be careful about YT, it can transcribe what was uploaded. Some of the postings give other links to unmodified files ....as always, a degree of trust involved.
There are other sites that do have test tones, including frequency sweeps. I changed the file packaging to MKV so I could stream it through the Oppo.
Stereo files were fine for the Mains and rear. The DTS file helped me confirm I had the phasing right.
I tested using the tones based on: Main; Centre; and Rear. I would only have the channel being tested power amp turned on at the time.
What movie sections do you use for testing?
M
I use analogue outputs from a Denon 3800 Blu-Ray player into the AV2 for movies, so i guess that it takes of steering effects.
I've only used the AV2 & Denon's speaker set up so far & used a RadioShack sound meter to get the levels the same from each speaker, so whether that's the best way to do it I'm not sure. Not really found much info on level setting when I've searched. Seems to be a bit of a grey area.
Some films seem to project the centre better than others, so maybe what I'm hearing is correct but do winder at times given that the Axess is driven by a NAP V145 amp (200 on the rears, 300 the fronts, n-Sub obviously has it's own amp. Not really done testing with any particular films but the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan is a good test of any system. It can actually found pretty frightening if you let the volume loose!
Posted on: 20 June 2015 by Mr Underhill
As you say there is variability across films. Personally I have tried to use what are considered to be great soundtracks to test how well I have things tuned, hence me asking in another thread what other people use.
I asked my friend over to tune the setup, and to get an independent set of ears to check what I was hearing. Ultimately I think that the test is whether you are enjoying what you are hearing .....and I would hope that with your system it is excellent. I use a CB 250 for my centre, but that is obviously only one channel.
I have found that adding the second sub has been interesting, and will be playing with it further over the next few months.
M
