Different test tone levels from receiver and SACD player?

bertram

Hi all,

My system has just the front and surround speakers--no center, back, or sub. All the speakers are 6' from the listening position and on 30" stands.

I have the speakers set as FRONT-LARGE, SURROUND-SMALL, CENTER-NONE, SUB-NONE on both the Denon 1905 and Sony SACD player.

Using the Denon receiver's speaker level setup test tones and the Radio Shack SPL meter, all the channels showed the same level without any adjustment needed.

However, when repeating the test using the Sony SACD player's test tones and the Denon set to "Ext. In" (i.e. the multichannel/passthru input), the surrounds played at a noticeably lower level, maybe 5 or 6 db.

Can someone tell me why the two sets of test tones produce such different results?

Thanks a lot!