Room EQ on a budget? Audyssey XT vs XT32 vs MiniDSP

[wfowlerm]

Hi Guys,

Hope you can offer me some expert knowledge and advice.

I recently decided I could no longer tolerate the poor sound quality from our TV so make the decision to get a 5.1 system, with a grand plan of maybe one day adding atmos.

I was reluctant to go for a home theatre in a box solution having read I would get better quality building up my own.

What I’ve wound up with now is 4x Q Acoustics 3010, 1x Q Acoustic 3090c, 1x BK XXLS400 and a Denon AVRX450BT.

I picked most of the above up from RicherSounds as reduced or clearance stock, with the exception of the BK XXLS400 which was an ebay purchase, making setup so far around £750.


For the most part I’m reasonably happy. TV viewing is a decent improvement, and music is enjoyable.
But I am finding myself quite frustrated by the movie experience.

My sub placement isn’t terrible, but isn’t quite ideal either. With that in mind I had planned to add a DSPeaker Anti-mode or a minidsp 2x4 to tame and tune the sub.

A lot of the content I’ve been listening to recently (usually mkv files played back on an xbox one using VLC) has had issues beyond just sub control it seems, vocals are coming through too quite and action too loud.

I’m having to ride the volume throughout the film which is very boring. Currently receiver doesn’t seem to be very effective at reigning it in, regardless of settings.

These issues have lead me to think about the following solutions;
- Upgrade the receiver to something with a more powerful room EQ [Audyssey MultEQ XT] with app control, such as the AVRX2400 [£349] that has

- Upgrade the receiver to something even more powerful [Audyssey MultEQ XT32] ? Such as the AVRX3400 [£529] but these were end of line and probably all gone now, leaving the AVRX3500 available at [£899] Ouch.

- Add a signal processor in line such as the MiniDSP nanoAVR HD with UMIK [Approx £360] for the non dirac version, and an EXTRA £250 ish for the upgrade to dirac if required.

- Or whatever else someone can recommend?

The receiver is still within 28 days return policy, so I can take it back and get a refund of £135 towards an alternate receiver.

Maybe my first step should be getting a UMIK so I can diagnose the responses I’m getting.

Trying to do what I can on a limited budget.

Looking forward to any suggestions, Thank you!

 

[lucid]

From the sound of it, your issue is the levels across the front 3 speakers rather than say an issue with intelligibility of speech, or of certain frequencies booming whilst others are almost missing.

I'm not saying that Room EQ might not be required as well. After all, very few rooms give good sound all the way through the frequency range and for every seating position. I just wonder though if it's the right solution for your issue.

'Voice too quiet / action too loud' is a common complaint. The sound mix as laid down by the mastering engineers is often the culprit. You might find that simply tweaking the levels is enough to tame things.

You might have used the auto calibration wizard only, and not ventured in to the speaker menus. This is the time to change that.

Tweak the levels so that the centre is 2dB louder than its current level. While in the menu, tweak the rears up 1dB a piece too.

Next, in a different menu you'll have a setting for Dynamic Range. Whatever they call the options, it boils down to High, Medium, and Low. If you find it on High or Medium, go one step lower.

Let us know how you get on.

 

[hornetstinger]

As above use dynamic range compression.

Doesn't sound like a room eq problem. But if you do want eq try the sub first get the antimode 8033cinema