Hi all,
Back with my one-week experience (around 60 hours):
tl;dr
Major positives:
1. The whole set has turned out to be a well-integrated unit.
2. My feeble dialogue-loud action problem seems to have been solved.
3. Just to be sure, I tested the SPL levels and they were indeed a notch lesser than my earlier range of 65dB for average scenes, and 85dB for loud passages.
Now, it is more like 60dB/80dB for extreme action passages.
4. Have been able to watch a lot of stuff without the need for subtitles after a long time.
5. By far the biggest step-up, even in 3 channels - Surround effects have become superbly spread out and there is a very wide front soundstage for the first time in my room.
I can now place sounds far left (like really from the edge of the room when the sound is off screen), left, left-of screen, centre of screen, right-of screen, right, and far right.
I think I really am going to enjoy going full surround + heights.
6. Bass: Effects that used to be faint in the background have become much clearer while remaining in the background.
Cons:
(Actually, more like minor nitpicks, but nothing like it if I could solve some of them)
1. I noticed this with the sub during the early days, but seems to have gone away. During some intense bassy passages, I could feel the pinch of a bit of pressure in my head momentarily. I hope there is nothing wrong with my head
and that this is just something that happened because I was new to a sealed sub?
2. Room rattle only in one particular kind of scene - the ones where a deep, low rumble kicks in in the soundtrack.
3. While the centre channel experience has been stupendous so far, a very minor grouse is that some of the voices I know are a bit thin are sounding beefier - like an 'almost baritone' when you know the actor's voice is actually a bit trebly.
Would there be something that I can do to bring them closer to natural? Is this because of the 90 Hz crossover by any chance?
Final observation:
The 7-feet viewing was taking away the immersion factor, which is a big negative, but due to no fault of the speakers.
So mid-week, I moved up the couch to 5 feet, narrowed the L-R closer to the TV, and toed them in towards MLP, and reduced the volume a bit.
Haven't run Audyssey for this position, but have got back the immersion without any sacrifice in sound quality.
Will run Audyssey for this position tonight and update after a week.
Details:
Audyssey settings:
Audyssey failed to recognise the sub in first attempt. Also, felt the 75dB that Audyssey asks us to set the sub volume at before the test was a bit low.
I just re-seated the subwoofer cable and it picked up the sub. Also left the sub volume at 78dB.
Manually set speakers to small and entered tape-measured distances for each speaker.
Edited the auto-crossover (set at 60 Hz) to my preference (90 Hz for all speakers)
Ran the first correction using the Audyssey phone app. Measured with three positions - head position at 7 feet, 20 cm to the left, 20 cm to the right.
Audyssey returned an all-negative trim: -3.5dB for L-R and Sub, and -6dB for the Centre. (
Is this fine?)
Post-test:
I disabled midrange compensation, which was introducing a dip at 2K for some reason.
Limited room correction frequency response to 500 Hz for the LCR. It remained at 250 Hz for the sub.
Left Dynamic EQ (compresssion ratio?) on.
Kept Dynamic Volume (kinda night mode) and LFC off
Sent the setting to the AVR and started a movie. Felt the volumes low, and boosted the Centre to -3dB from -6dB.
That fixed the issue.
So far, have tried the following:
Action:
Jungle Cruise - discerned a nice separation between different instruments and weapons
U571 - depth charge scene goes loud and clean with no boominess.
Raging Fire - the movie has a good mix of action scenes featuring gunfire, knives-swords, and hand-to-hand combat. Everything sounded as they should.
Venom 2 - The first carnage scene again went loud, but it resulted in some room rattle.
Legacy of Lies - Has a gunfight scene that has a whole variety of different firearms, and while I wouldn't know if they sounded accurate, each weapon had a distinct signature. This was something I could not pick up in earlier viewings.
No Time To Die, Dune: These last two, I had watched recently in my earlier set up and the difference in bass was very noticeable. The Dune scenes dug really deeper than the older set up, with no distortion or room rattle.
Talky stuff:
Animals, Storm Lake, Hateful Eight
The Centre channel really carried the day, and for the first time after giving up headphones, I have been able to watch stuff comfortably without subtitles.
Mix of quiet passages with sudden spurts of action:
Prisoners - There is a scene towards the end where a circle of high-mast lights are switched off. I could feel the sound move from far right towards the centre as the lights go out one by one.
Out of Time, Sicario: The sub was really at the ready at all times, starting and stopping impeccably.
Music:
Lots of hip-hop, jazz and D&B
Have yet to set up two-channels, so everything is 3.1 and it has been kindda fun.
In hip-hop, the main vocals come through the centre channel, and accompanying vocals and chorus are coming from the L-R.
For Jazz, it has been even more fun - the main instruments are going to the centre channel and the supporting instruments are coming out of the L-R
Besides this noticeable thing, the integration of the sub with the main speakers shines for music.
