Jay5150
Active Member
Finally after years of patiently waiting, it is done! The final leg is here.
After Onam there was a possibility of delay, but I insisted the guy come before the end of the week, as it had been 3 weeks from payment to delivery and again a week more till installation. I was planning to take a day off and supervise the installation as I had an idea what would happen if i was not present. So I had to schedule it during a 2 hour lunch break. :sad:
By this time due my impatience and of course my better half who did not want huge cartons sitting in the hall, I had unboxed all the speakers, connected all sources and done the input assigns/renames and other basic settings on the AVR. The only things left were wall mounting the surrounds, cabling and calibration.
I settled on a lesser discount because I live about 200 km from the dealer and installation was promised.
Since my time was limited I came a bit after the guy had started the work of cabling.
So I asked him "would you be using Audyssey for calibration?"
"No sir! Audyssey is only supposed to be used in rooms built as dedicated home theater. Because of all the ambient external noise as well as the odd placement of the speakers, you will not get an accurate measurement."
If you recall my hall is 25'x15' and I had placed it width wise because otherwise the TV appears very small.
I was like "Ok so how will you set it then?"
"I will measure the distance for each speaker and put in the distances manually"
"Ok cool. so will you be using an SPL meter for level check?"
"No no need for that because I will set it by listening"
By now one hour of my lunch break was over.
I must say he did a very neat job of installing the speakers and routing the cables. Checked the alignment level of the speakers with a spirit level, measured the height etc.
He then went into the setup of the AVR.
By now, with years of lurking at HFV and AVS forums and reading other sources I had some idea of the settings to be done.
He went into manual setup, eyeballed each speaker from the center of the room and put in some distances for all speakers and kept all the levels at 0.0dB :sos:
Went to the SW, pushed it into a corner, set the LFE to off, jacked up the volume. Put in some old ass demo discs, made the room thump some and asked me what time was the next train out of there
Total time to install and calibrate: 90 min!
By now I was getting late, so I just put in some of fav demo scenes to check my personal experience
The Matrix BD - Lobby Shootout
Heat BD - Bank Heist Shootout
PMG-The Way Up BD - DTS Master HD track
It was loud but not the sound I was expecting. I was getting a little panicky.
Contrary to popular wisdom I had gone ahead and bought the setup without a single demo. Add to the fact I had a poor experience with my last demo of Polk Audio, I was like crushed.
Had I shot myself in the foot?..no not in the foot, in the face!
Still I had to go back for work, so I sent the guy on his way. And came back and waited for everybody to go to sleep and locked myself in the hall and ran the full Audyssey setup for all 8 listening positions.
What a difference!
I felt the levels were set a bit low so i set the levels about 1 dB higher proportionally. The sound of the surround facing the open ened of the rrom is set about 1.5 dB higher as it has more work to do I guess. But the SW was set up at -7.5dB which i put to -5.5dB.
Still I am not too happy with the SW I think I have to experiment some more.
DTS HD tracks rock on this setup but somehow i felt the Dolby tracks a bit softer.
Denon owners any point in the Audyssey Dynamic EQ and Dynamic Volume?
I have set it to off in the BD but on for the tatasky. Also on the TS HD channels there is a sudden drop of volume due to the Dolby track (initally it was -12.0 dB but somehow I made it about -4.0 dB)
My inital misgivings regarding the speakers are all but gone, I am very happy now. My best investments were the larger center and the dipole surrounds. They sound superb. I think FS have to come into their own still.
All Denon owners have to checkout Batpig's site and thread and know their AVR inside out. Also the Audyssey setup guide was helpful in understanding the terms and methods.
Since its Sunday today I hope to get time to run some more configs and hopefully get a better sound.
Cheers guys!
After Onam there was a possibility of delay, but I insisted the guy come before the end of the week, as it had been 3 weeks from payment to delivery and again a week more till installation. I was planning to take a day off and supervise the installation as I had an idea what would happen if i was not present. So I had to schedule it during a 2 hour lunch break. :sad:
By this time due my impatience and of course my better half who did not want huge cartons sitting in the hall, I had unboxed all the speakers, connected all sources and done the input assigns/renames and other basic settings on the AVR. The only things left were wall mounting the surrounds, cabling and calibration.
I settled on a lesser discount because I live about 200 km from the dealer and installation was promised.
Since my time was limited I came a bit after the guy had started the work of cabling.
So I asked him "would you be using Audyssey for calibration?"
"No sir! Audyssey is only supposed to be used in rooms built as dedicated home theater. Because of all the ambient external noise as well as the odd placement of the speakers, you will not get an accurate measurement."
If you recall my hall is 25'x15' and I had placed it width wise because otherwise the TV appears very small.
I was like "Ok so how will you set it then?"
"I will measure the distance for each speaker and put in the distances manually"
"Ok cool. so will you be using an SPL meter for level check?"
"No no need for that because I will set it by listening"
By now one hour of my lunch break was over.
I must say he did a very neat job of installing the speakers and routing the cables. Checked the alignment level of the speakers with a spirit level, measured the height etc.
He then went into the setup of the AVR.
By now, with years of lurking at HFV and AVS forums and reading other sources I had some idea of the settings to be done.
He went into manual setup, eyeballed each speaker from the center of the room and put in some distances for all speakers and kept all the levels at 0.0dB :sos:
Went to the SW, pushed it into a corner, set the LFE to off, jacked up the volume. Put in some old ass demo discs, made the room thump some and asked me what time was the next train out of there
Total time to install and calibrate: 90 min!
By now I was getting late, so I just put in some of fav demo scenes to check my personal experience
The Matrix BD - Lobby Shootout
Heat BD - Bank Heist Shootout
PMG-The Way Up BD - DTS Master HD track
It was loud but not the sound I was expecting. I was getting a little panicky.
Contrary to popular wisdom I had gone ahead and bought the setup without a single demo. Add to the fact I had a poor experience with my last demo of Polk Audio, I was like crushed.
Had I shot myself in the foot?..no not in the foot, in the face!
Still I had to go back for work, so I sent the guy on his way. And came back and waited for everybody to go to sleep and locked myself in the hall and ran the full Audyssey setup for all 8 listening positions.
What a difference!
I felt the levels were set a bit low so i set the levels about 1 dB higher proportionally. The sound of the surround facing the open ened of the rrom is set about 1.5 dB higher as it has more work to do I guess. But the SW was set up at -7.5dB which i put to -5.5dB.
Still I am not too happy with the SW I think I have to experiment some more.
DTS HD tracks rock on this setup but somehow i felt the Dolby tracks a bit softer.
Denon owners any point in the Audyssey Dynamic EQ and Dynamic Volume?
I have set it to off in the BD but on for the tatasky. Also on the TS HD channels there is a sudden drop of volume due to the Dolby track (initally it was -12.0 dB but somehow I made it about -4.0 dB)
My inital misgivings regarding the speakers are all but gone, I am very happy now. My best investments were the larger center and the dipole surrounds. They sound superb. I think FS have to come into their own still.
All Denon owners have to checkout Batpig's site and thread and know their AVR inside out. Also the Audyssey setup guide was helpful in understanding the terms and methods.
Since its Sunday today I hope to get time to run some more configs and hopefully get a better sound.
Cheers guys!
