Can one speaker in a set be louder/brighter?

StopherJJ1980

I was watching the Eagles in DTS the other night and thought that the RF channel was pretty accentuated. When running through my receivers test tones and those on the Avia disk the test tones on the RF speaker seemed louder and a little higher pitched. I am also doing most of the adjusting by ear since i dont have an SPL meter yet.

So overall my levels for LS/LF/C/RF/RS used to be -3/-5/-4/-5/-3 respectively. I dont know is keeping them all in the negative really helps the AVR out but I figure it cant hurt. But I ended up taking my right front channel down a whole 2db steps and leaving the new levels at -3/-5/-4/-7/-3. This definitely seemed to help even things out on my ears.

Is it normal to have the front mains at different levels to have equal output? It just seems weird if they are the same speaker and running from the same AVR. As far as the tones having a higher pitch in that channel I dont know if that was just me hearing the higher volume or not. Would there be any reason for a slight change in pitch?

Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

cfrizz

Get yourself a Radio Shack SPL meter & recalibrate.

StopherJJ1980

Yes I know I should get one...

But my question remains... Is it normal to have different speaker levels for mains?

scottnbnj

no, not really normal. it could be that one speak is closer to a wall or some other object that reflects or absorbs sound.

)

michael_w

Usually speakers are built to be within around ±0.5dB of each other (or close to that tolerance...), so having a speaker sound brighter and louder isn't really normal. It's probably placement that's messing with things. Also, do you have them toed in equally (or not toed in equally)?

bpadget

If the difference in sound is being caused by location of the speaker the SPL meter won't fix the difference. A speaker next to a door opening will sound different than the same speaker in a corner or next to a window.

mldennison

i usually have mine off by 1db or so, but that is due to my non-symmetrical placement. i think you will be suprised when you finally get the SPL at how different the actualy sound levels are from what you thought sounded right, i know i was :eek:

StopherJJ1980

Thanks for your input guys...

When I got home from work I switched the speakers, made the left the right and vice versa, and the same speaker continued to have a definite tonal difference. The pitch of the test tones are higher on one. I figure this rules out room acoustics, wiring, etc.

As far as volume or SPL, i do need a meter because it is really hard to tell volume difference between two different tones.

StopherJJ1980

OK, I doubt if anyone cares but I solved my dilemma. Turns out that the two speakers were definitely just different, one was much crisper and louder and the other was duller and not as loud. All drivers and tweeters were working on both speakers so I dont know why this would be (crossover??).

So I just went and bought another new RTi8 and compared the sound to the two I had. Turns out my budget Yammie AVR complicates things by having a tamer center channel, Im assuming due to not as much power as the R and L channels. So when comparing the three, the center always sounded tamer and duller, which is why my center was matching the duller of the two original RTi8's. But after much switching and testing the new speaker matched up well with the crisp/bright/loud speaker I originally had. So I guess I just got a speaker which was duller and softer and that was the culprit of the whole ordeal, if you can even still follow my musical-chairs like arrangement.

I think I saw a posting with someone going through a similar ordeal but Im too lazy to try and go back and find it. So if anyone else had this experience, it can happen. I was just glad to know I wasnt nuts and it wasnt in my head.

But now there is definitely much more clarity and imaging from 2-ch and even 5.1 sources and have no complaints about my RTi's, they are great speakers.