is there a problem with the avia guide to home theater calibrations

millerman 3732

i have calibrated my onkyo tx sr 600 to the best of my ability, i'am not a profesional' using the avia guide to home theater and a sound level meter (the one that the dvd suggest ) and now my surrounds seem blary and over powering. could the be because of the r15's iam using for surrounds ,which some of you have suggested to be "bright" or could this be in the calibrations them selves. also if it is the speakers would the fxi 3 fix the problem. also for ypur consideration could it be the placement of the speaker which are to the left and right around 3 ft out and back about 1 ft. of the primary listening possion ,any thoughts

Mjr7531

Chances are you aren't used to how it is calibrated, but if you don't like it how it is, Tweak it. You are the one listening to this system so if you'd like it better if the surrounds were turned down a little bit, go for it.

millerman 3732

thanks mjr

reeltrouble1

Something seems out of sorts as most new to HT complain the surrounds do not contain enough info, try running the set up again, set your master volume to "0" on a relative scale then leave it alone, use the trim level only to adjust each speak to 85db with the Avia, make sure you are on slow c-weighting, there is a correction with the rat shack meter for the sub 6db if I remember right.

RT1

PolkThug

Calibrate it with the Onk's built-in test tone and see if you like that better.

Go into Setup, Level Cal

Mike682

Doesn't avia calibrate at 75db? I thought I read somewhere here that avia has a slightly different reference level compared to others...or something like that?

BrentMcGhee

No, avia states that reference level is at 85db but for most home situations that is way to loud and you should calibrate it to 75db. I did it at 85db one time and.... ummmm wow, that was way to loud, it think I got about 60 seconds into the opening scene of twister and I had had enough. To be fair though I was very pleased at how all of my speakers and my amp handled that volume with no distortion at all.

Well anyway millerman, one thing I have noticed about avia is it is very settings specific. Make one little change on your receiver that has to do with crossovers or large/small etc etc then you have to go back and completely recalibrate everything.

I got the avia disc.... wow, well almost 4 years ago now and I was probably using it for a good 2 years on all sorts of different systems before I finally found the way I like to use it. This is what I have found to work really good for me when I am setting up a system for someone or just recalibrating mine because of new equipment or speakers.

Before all for all of this go ahead and pretty much set everything back to 0 on your receiver. All speaker levels should be at 0 including you sub level and the volume knob on your sub should be at about 40%-50%.

First thing you want to do is find your speakers limits so you know where to set their crossovers. Go into your receiver and set all speakers to large and tell it that you do not have a subwoofer. Then pop in your avia disc and go to the calibrations menu. You want to run the low frequency sweep for each individual speaker. (This is the one that is starts at I believe 200hz and slowly drops down in the frequency range all the while displaying what frequency it is at.) Now grab you spl meter and turn the volume up to a decent level (around 70db-80db will be perfect). You want to run the test and watch the spl meter, what you are looking for is the frequency that you speaker starts to greatly reduce in volume. (I usually consider 7db-10db a significant drop. Make note of what frequency that is for all of your speakers.

Once you have found that you can now go in to your receiver and set all of your speakers to small and tell it you have a subwoofer again. Now that your speakers are set to small you have to set a crossover frequency for them. Well hey would yha look at that we just happen to have a list of frequencies specific to our speakers lying right next to us…J. When setting the crossover for the individual speaker I like to set it normally about 5hz-10hz above the frequency that the speaker really started to roll off at. Perfect…. Now we have our bass management set up. Now for the leveling of all the channels.

Pop back in your avia disc and go to the calibrations section again but this time go into main speakers set up and select “left front level” (do not go into the reference tone section and level it with those tones because you will get some weird results use, they are way to loud and don’t really work in the more cozy setting you will find most home theaters in). Now that the pink noise is playing from you left front channel you want to increase or decrease the master volume on your receiver until the spl meter reads 75db. (each tone only plays for 60seconds so you may have to keep hitting the previous track button until you get it right) Now go ahead to the next track which will be the center channel and continue to do the same thing except for the rest of the channels you are not changing the master volume you are increasing the level of that particular channel through the receiver. Go ahead and do that for the rest of your channels.

Now you will notice that it did not do the sub. You need to go back to the previous menu and go into subwoofer setup. Now here is where I defiantly get a little weird but this is way that I found that gives me excellent results every single time on any system. Take a look at the frequencies that you wrote down for your three font speakers and find which one (left, center or right) went down the lowest before the volume drop was too great. You want to disconnect on of the wires going to that speaker (+ or – does not matter) just so that speaker is not playing. Then you want to select that speaker on the avia disc to level you sub. (ex. If it was your center speaker that went lowest select the “center/sub level” in the avia subwoofer setup menu. This test tone is going to alternate pink noise from the channel you have picked and the sub. (Obviously nothing will be playing out of that channel though because we disconnected it. I do that because crossovers are not a dead cutoff but more of a gentle roll so I do it this way so I don’t get any thing from that speaker just the sub) Now using you spl meter you want to level you sub to 75db as well now. The meter is not going to ever stay in one place is going to fluctuating a great deal pretty fast (for the sub leveling I move the meter to the fast option instead of the slow) what I do Is just make it so 75db is right smack dab in the middle of the wide range the needle will be moving back and fourth to and from.

Good now you can go ahead and take out the avia disc hook back up your speaker and pop in a movie and check out the results. I hope you will be as happy with doing this way as I have.


Wow I just realized how long that was…… I just kind of started typing and all of this came out. That was really a long winded answer for your question but if you made it this far then I applaud you, and I hope that it helps.