I'm on my 10th day of my 30 day trial for a Intimus 5T-DB Hybrid HD system. I still find some movies seem to be hard to make out the dialog from the center channel on the 5C. The dialog seems to be overpowered by the other sounds from the other speakers. I've set up the calibration for all speakers and tried bumping up the volume a bit on the center channel but it still seems weak with dialog for some movies such a Master and Commander. Any ideas? Would the 6C be better and if so in what respect? I really didn't want to spend any more money right now. I'm wondering if some adjustments are needed. My receiver is a yamaha RX-V1900 and I usually leave it in the Movie Drama setting sometimes Movie adventure. The speaker cross overs are set to 80hz and all speakers set to small. Any suggestions welcome!

http://www.pbase.com/captain_long_tom/image/108689085

http://www.pbase.com/captain_long_tom/image/108689093

Tom

cybergeek1957:

I'm on my 10th day of my 30 day trial for a Intimus 5T-DB Hybrid HD system. I still find some movies seem to be hard to make out the dialog from the center channel on the 5C. The dialog seems to be overpowered by the other sounds from the other speakers. I've set up the calibration for all speakers and tried bumping up the volume a bit on the center channel but it still seems weak with dialog for some movies such a Master and Commander. Any ideas? Would the 6C be better and if so in what respect? I really didn't want to spend any more money right now. I'm wondering if some adjustments are needed. My receiver is a yamaha RX-V1900 and I usually leave it in the Movie Drama setting sometimes Movie adventure. The speaker cross overs are set to 80hz and all speakers set to small. Any suggestions welcome!

http://www.pbase.com/captain_long_tom/image/108689085

http://www.pbase.com/captain_long_tom/image/108689093

Tom

Based on the sensitivity ratings on the 5C it should be around +3db on the 5Ts.  Where do you have it set?

Cheers 

---

Russ

Joined you!

Hello Cybergeek1957-  I am not familiar with yamahas but it sounds like when you have it on Movie Drama setting it is some type of compression setting.  What other settings do you have?  Have you tried any other settings.  You would want any Dynamic Compression Range set to off also.    Usually also if you have anything like Cinema Eq that should be off also.  Wish I was more familiar with a Yamaha.  Nothing wrong with the center, just have to "tweak" the Yamaha settings-crossovers, Dynamic Comp. OFF, etc.....Hopefully some Aperion owner more familiar with Yamaha rec. can help.  Some actors are hard to understand from the get go...Danny Glover in shooter is horrible.  I believe he had too many Gin & Tonics in between shots. :)

---

24 hours in a day ... 24 beers in a case ... coincidence?

I would tend to agree with Browning.

Every movie is mixed differently, there are flat out certain videos which are not going to sound as good as others. I would also agree that you may want to try using the receiver in it's normal surround sound modes like Dolby Digital, or DTS Masters as opposed to your Drama and Adventure modes. Those usually tend to add things like reverb, time delay, hal effects, etc...and I imagine are heavily influencing the quality of sound  you are getting from your center channel.

Also, did you run any sort of auto setup on your receiver when you first plugged thigns in? More often then not (which is why we are against using it) auto setup can add some very undesirable EQ to your speakers. It can make them sound a bit thin and hollow. We actually get calls often enough on this issue. If you have run any auto setup on the speakers, go in and disable it and make sure your speakers are EQ'd flat. This should help quite a bit. 

Hope this information helps. Please post your results or call us for more information. Our 5C is our most popular center channel for good  reason...

---

David Bolt
Aperion Audio Guru
www.aperionaudio.com

Dave,

You've piqued my interest on the auto-setup thing.  I ran Audyssey when I first got my speakers, and have been relatively happy with it (though I do, on occasion, have similar center channel wants).  In your opinion, should I reset/remove all that, and simply use the SPL meter to set distance...and that's it?

All that and a bag of popcorn.

I would just add that, though a sweet movie demo (especially for your sub) I think Master and Commander is one of the less intelligible movies in terms of dialogue. We (mostly me, really) use one of the battle scenes as a demo clip and I'm always surprised at how low the center channel is mixed.

Though it doesn't really influence your dialog level, another fun note is that you'll notice that "dialog normalization" is different movie per movie. If you've ever watched your receiver's display as a movie is just getting started, it will usually show "Dialog Norm -4" or some variant thereof. I went NUTS one week trying to figure out how to adjust this setting before I finally learned that it wasn't a setting that I could adjust. It is decided on at the mixing studio. Here's a truly interesting article on Dialog Normalization: http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_7_2/feature-article-dialog-normalization-6-2000.html

and a totally unintersting wikipedia entry (zzzzzzzz....) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialnorm

 

 

---

Caleb Denison

Tom,

I have a Yamaha V-1800 which should be similar to yours.  Everyone is right about compression.  The Yamaha's default is MAX for dynamic range compression.  You want to go into manual setup, then into the sound menu and set dynamic range compression to either Min/Auto or Std (there is no "off").  Mine is set to Min/Auto and I noticed an improvement in dialog over the Max setting. Try it.

I noticed that your 5C sits below your TV; that's ok but you might also want to play with the Dialog Lift feature that you have with your Yamaha. It'll raise (lift) the dialog from its initial location but you can't lower it, i.e., if your 5C was on top of your TV it wouldn't do anything.  My 5C is above my TV and I had to shim the back of it so it's pointing down a bit. If the dynamic lift in the AVR doesn't help you could do the same but shim it up a bit.

I also have the 5C at +4 over the 5T; a personal preference for sure. Play with it and you'll find something you like; I'm 60 and I need a bit more ooommph on the dialog  Remember, with your Yamaha you can save to memory a number of settings so if you find that stereo music sounds best with a setting that's different from an action movie, just save those settings and you can switch with 1 key rather than bringing up the setup menu and setting everything over again.

I use the Yamaha Sound Field Programs (Entertainment - Movie, Sports, etc) on occassion. I tend to leave my AVR on Straight but there are times that one of the sound field programs sounds better; I find this to be especially true for stereo music but I have also noticed that if I'm watching something like a football game the dialog is better if I switch to Entertainment-Sports.  LIke anything, only your ears can decide.

I do find that some television programs (mostly HD broadcasts) have terrible dialog. I've spoken to Cox Cable about it and they're clueless "we just give you what we get". That's not necessarily true because as they add more HD channels they've compressed the content because of the bandwidth limitation. I asked the Cox rep about that and he replied, "huh?".  But, 90% of the time everything is fine.  I don't have a BluRay DVD. I use a Sony SD connected via HDMI to the Yamaha and have yet to come across a DVD that didn't sound terrific.  On BluRay it's all on how well they re-mastered the contect so, like others said, the quality will vary.

The Yamaha auto-setup is semi-useful. From what I've read in here it's not quite as bad as the Onkyo setup but it's still not something you want to rely on.  When I first set my system up I used the Yamaha auto-setup and it didn't sound too bad.  It got some of the basics down with no problem (small/large, speaker distances, etc) but after it finished I went into the manual setup and used a meter to tweak things a bit. 

Overall I'm very satisfied with the Yamaha and the Aperions (I have 5T's in front, a 5C, 5B's and a 10D sub).  I think once you get things dialed in you'll be very happy.  Feel free to post questions here (there are a few other Yamaha owners) or to contact the Aperion Gurus directly; someone will be able to help.

---

Joe
If you can't have fun doing it, it's probably not worth doing.

Nice post, joetag, very informative for all of the yammy owners out there, thanks for taking the time to write it!

---

Jason Hicks
Aperion Audio Guru

Thanks to everyone who replied especially you Joe for helping me understand the options available on my Yamaha receiver! I must confess this is a brand new and much more complicated receiver than any I have previosly owned and I'm someone who hates having to read the manual! I will see if I can minimize the EQ to help with the compression issue and also test the center channel again and increase it as you did yours. I will make time to read the manual but may hit you up again if I can't figure something out since your receiver is about the same as mine.

Thanks again everyone!     Tom

I know what you mean about reading the manual. When I got my AVR a year ago, I have to say, it is the first time I have read a manual for a piece of audio equipment in all my life.

Remember the old days.....RCA jacks only, no video, red to red, white to white, speaker wires whatever way you decided, fire it up and it played.

Not that the sound was better then...it was just easier, that's all.

I love technology!

---

Scottiemon

Hello Joe,

I have one more question about your Yamaha receiver since it is almost the same as mine. When I scroll through all the sound field programs I see nothing to allow selecting Dolby Tru-HD or DTS HD Master audio settings. I've looked all through the receiver manual for my RX-V1900 and don't see where you can select these options. The receiver says it supports them and by Blu-Ray player supports Dolby Tru-HD and I can select that from my Blu-Ray player but nothing on the receiver shows an option to select them or that I'm listening to that mode. I'm stumped! If anyone can shed light please chime in!

Tom

Hi Tom,

It would probably be helpful to let us know what blue ray player you are using. 

Tom,

Your receiver will only show Dolby TrueHD or DTS MA if the signal coming in is bitstreamed that way from your DB player.  These are not sound fields generated by your receiver, but rather decoded only if the signal coming in is one of the lossless audio codecs.  What this means to you is that your receiver will automatically decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS MA without you have to set anything in the receiver.  You will have to make sure your BD player is properly bitstreaming these formats AND you have properly set the audio format to the lossless format (there is an "audio" button on your remote that iterates through the available audio formats on any given blu-ray disk).  Many studios by default automatically select the lossless format for you, a few do not.  Some of the older BD movies have Dolby 5.1 selected by default.  Just put the disk in and hit play (assuming you setup your BD player to bitstream).   Let me know the BD movies you are watching and what lights up on your receiver.  I'll be able to guide you from there.

Joe

---

Speakers: Aperion 6T, 6C, 5DB, 6IC, Bravus 10Dx2
Monitor: JVC RS20U front projector with Stewart Velux 100" screen
Receiver: Yamaha RX-V1800
Blu-ray: Yamaha BD-S2900
Amplifier: Emotiva UPA-7
Conditioner: Panamax M5300PM