Amp For RTi'10's

vandool

Okay. Taking a deep breathe. I have the following:

Onkyo TX-SR803S (105wpc) Owners Manual: http://im1.onecall.com/Image_Products/Onkyo/TXSR803703_En.pdf

RTi10's (Front)
CSi5 (Center)
FXi3's (Surround)
No Sub at this time.


I am a little frustrated and have been playing around with the receiver settings for weeks now. But the problem is that the RTi'10's sound lifeless. Don't get me wrong they look beautiful and most likely I am missing something or doing something wrong. One of the reasons I purchase this receiver because of the THX logo...I know stupid. :rolleyes: But, I like the dual HDMI inputs, XM plug and it's Silver. So I am stuck with this receiver at least for a year or more. My girlfriend would kill me I purchase another one.

The center sounds fine! The surround speakers are also lacking.

I love music and listen to music through two channels, Unless listening to a SACD or AUDIO DVD. And I love watching movies!!


I have been looking into amps aand sub woofers:

I have my eye on the Outlaw M2200 Block. It's a single channel amp (200w). The main reason for this unit because of price ($625/pair) and slim design (only 1.75" for hight) I can stack two of these and have a total of 3.5" Not bad. Now I have read that I should listen to them because amps have there own "sound". Well, I don't have time and personally I hate dealing with sales people. lol I purchase everything offline for the last 5 years or more. So, If anyone can share any input on this amp or know of any other amp within this price range please, I would love to here your thoughts.


I have been looking at the SVS sub's. Now I really like the PC line, the cylinder form. I think they look sharp. But the size are large 31" tall and 16" in diameter. Does anyone know of any other sub woofer manufacture that makes cylinder type? But smaller?



I don't know If the amps alone can help the RTi10's or should I go with a sub. I don't have a lot of money and can get one or the other for now. I spent a little too much on my plasma tv. but love it!

Any suggestions on settings of the receiver to get more out of it for the RTi10's would be great.

Thank you inadvance!! Sorry for the long drawn out questions.

David

Holydoc

Welcome to the forum David.

My Outlaw amp made my home theatre come alive. My RTi12's were sucking the power out of my Onkyo receiver and thus the fronts and surrounds were lacking. Once I put the amp in, everything opened up and sounded much more animated.

I like the Outlaw amp, but I have the 7 channel and not the single channel. As far as telling you if it sounds better than another amp, I have no idea. This is my first amp.

Changing the subject and addressing your sub question. I would highly recommend SVS subs. I know they are large and bulky but their sound and impact to your system is worth it. I cannot think where you can get a better bang for your buck than SVS. As far as I am concerned, they are the king of subs.

cfrizz

Hi David & welcome!

Get the Outlaws! Your receiver will thank you & you can continue to use them with all of your other upgraded receivers!

Early B.

Definitely get the Outlaws.

However, your 10's should not sound "lifeless." They should sound as good as your center channel. You probably have a setup issue. The big hint is when you mentioned that your surrounds are lacking as well.

Before you drop more money into your system, look more carefully at your setup. Maybe we can help if you can give us a detailed description of how you have your system set up. For instance, are your fronts set to LARGE? Is the sub set to "No?" How do you have the crossover set up? What settings do you use when watching movies? What about when listening to music? Also, are you absolutely certain everything is plugged in correctly? Do you have friend or co-worker who is an HT guru that can come to your house and double check your setup?

John K.

David, your RTi 10s are fine speakers and your 803's amplifier should have plenty of power for them except in a very large room at very high sound levels. You don't describe exactly what you mean by "lifeless", but whatever it is is unlikely to have anything to do with the 803 that you're "stuck with". As EB suggests, consider whether your setup is flawed. Are your RTi 10s set large? Are the connecting straps on the RTi 10's speaker terminals tight so that all the drivers are in fact working? Have you rechecked all the speaker wires to make sure that they're all connected with the correct polarity(positive to positive, negative to negative)? Have you calibrated speaker levels and delays using the 803?

F1nut

John K. wrote:

You don't describe exactly what you mean by "lifeless"

Seems pretty obvious to me what he means, they sound just like your Sony boombox.

drew spelts

Yet another comment that caused me to join this site. I Love it!

vandool

Just wanted to thank EVERYONE for there input and suggestions.

The size of my living room: 11'8" wide x 17'8" long x 8'1" high.

I took your advice and I did look into the setup of the receiver. Here are the stats of my current configurations:

1. Speaker Setup (Main Menu)
A. Speaker Impedance: 6ohms (4 or 6 ohms are the choices)
B. Speaker Configuration:
Subwoofer- No
Front - Full Band
Center - 100Hz
Surround- 80Hz
Surr Back- none
LPE of LFE- 80Hz

Center/Surround Choices: 40Hz, 60,70,80,90,100,120,150 and 200Hz)

C. Speaker Distance
Left - 14 Ft
Center- 13Ft
Right - 14Ft
Surr R- 5Ft
Surr L- 5Ft

D. Level Calibration - Pink Noise Test.
E. THX Audio Setup - not available because of no surround back speakers
F. EQ Settings (set to AUTO values below)
Left: 60 Hz -6db
125 Hz -5db
400 Hz- +5db
800 Hz- +3db
2 Khz- +4db

Center: 80 Hz +5db
160 Hz -2db
400 Hz -4db
800 Hz -3db
1.6kHz +2db

Right: 100 Hz -6db
250 Hz +2db
500 Hz +5db
2kHz +6db
4kHz -2db

Surr R: 100 Hz -4db
315 Hz -3db
630 Hz +3db
1.25kHz +1db
10kHz +1db

Surr L: 125 Hz +5db
250 Hz +4db
500 Hz +2db
1.6kHz -3db
5kHz -3db

All these values are fixed. The only way to change them is setting it to MANUAL. These are the values that I have when set to MANUAL for ALL channels. I can adjust each value from -6 to +6.

80 HZ
250 HZ
800 HZ
2.5kHZ
8kHz

I did not see any where if the speakers are set to Small or Large. I will keep looking into that. Now I have no clue if 80hz is the low end or the high end. Is it safe to assume under the Spk Configuraton this would be the crossover control? If not, then I couldn't find the crossover section.

G. Audio Adjust Tone Control
Bass: 0db
Treb: 0db

Values from -10 to +10.


As for "lifeless" no lows. Bass isn't there unless I turn the volume up and listen to a rap channel on XM. I hope that explains it a little better. I hope someone can make sense of all the stats above and help me out. Thanks a million. Oh, If a picture of my speaker setup will help you guys out PLEASE let me know. And let me know how to post it here, if it's possible. One more thing, I don't have any friends that have any clue on this stuff. There all computer geeks and thought I was crazy paying $3400 for a nice tv. So, through forums I am learning.

EricBurg

Looks like your reciever sets the channels by crossover frequency, rather than small/large with 1 fixed frequency. Your setting of fronts to full range should be the same as large setting. The only thing I see is that I would probably lower the crossover frequency for your center channel to at least 80hz, but again that depends on what sounds good to you. If you are watching movies, you'll want the extended range of the center channel.

Back to your original question about amps or a sub....I personally think you would get more out of adding a high quality sub to your setup and limiting the frequency range of the front speakers, then later, when you have more money, add the outlaw amps or a good multichannel amp. I know that some 2 channel audio purists may disagree with me, but the sub would give you more low end for movies and take some of the strain off your reciever for music. Subs are designed to handle low bass better than the Rti10's.

I would suggest going with SV if you like the cylinder subs. You might be able to find a company that makes a smaller one, but I would bet that the quality isn't as good. SV makes some of the best subs for the money, however, the tradeoff is usually the size. If the cylinder is too big, maybe look at the box offerings. I have the pb10-isd and love the performance. It is a much larger box than you would think for only having a single 10 inch driver, but it is "small" enough to allow pretty flexible placement. I have it paired with my Rti10's, Csi5 and 4 Rti6 surrounds. I also have a rotel 1080 amp going to the 10's and a rotel 1075 running the surrounds and center channel. I love the setup.

Early B.

If you're not getting bass, you have a setup issue. I see where you have the fronts set to "full band" which is OK. What puzzles me, though, is the Subwoofer is set to "No" but the LFE is set to 80 Hz (that's the low end). Are you sure your receiver is NOT cutting off the low frequencies somewhere?

John K.

David, some comments on what you've reported. First, the size of your room is actually a little smaller than average; there shouldn't be any reason why your 803 wouldn't have more than enough power for the RTi10s and no need to replace it is apparent.

Presumably you checked that all connections were tight and in correct polarity. The numbers don't indicate anything unusual and all your settings appear to be correct. The LPF(low-pass filter)on the LFE, which EB wondered about, is set at the usual 80Hz. Although the LFE channel which sometimes has content during movies theoretically extends to 120Hz, in practice little or nothing above 80Hz is present, so that's a good crossover to minimize noise on the channel. Since you don't have a sub, your RTi10s will handle any LFE that might occur during a movie.

It's apparent that the auto-equalization made some cuts in the low bass. Maybe you'd prefer it otherwise and although you mentioned the manual equalization feature, you didn't say if you tried it. The suggestion would be to set the equalization to off to see if you prefer the flat settings to those that resulted from the auto equalization, especially at the lowest frequencies. You could also even manually add a few dB at the 80Hz point to see if that's more to your liking. Experiment.

vandool

Sorry guys for the delay. Thank you for taking the time and suggestions.

Ok, the stats I have provided were done by the automatic speaker setup when hooking up the Onkyo the first day. So, I didn't adjust any of the specs you see above.

EricBurg, I did take your suggestion and change my Center to 80HZ from 100HZ and sounds better (deeper). Question I have, you said "if watching movies, you'll want the extended range of the center channel", does this mean, when watching movies setting it back to 100HZ? or dropping it to 80HZ making it the extended range. Sorry, not sure what you mean.:) Thanks!!


EarlyB, I looked up your concern about the LPE of LFE at 80HZ good observation on your part. According to Onkyo's manual this only active when subwoofer is set to YES under speaker configuration. But as I was playing around with the manual/recvr, I have notice the front channels volume was at a -2 and the center was at +2 and the surrounds were at 0. So, I adjusted fronts to +2 and surrounds to +1. The manufacture zone levels for bass and treble was set to 0. I increase bass to 8 and made a huge impact on the fronts. Thanks!


John K, yeah it's a little apartment in Buffalo, NY. I guess not understanding 80hz was low or high, or 2.5khz was low or high. But I picked up some valuable information from you guys. I now know 80HZ is low and 40HZ is lower, and climbing the other direction 100/200/400 is higher with 2.5khz even higher. I hope i said that right. Now I can play around with the EQ. Thank you.


Now if someone can explain to me why did Onkyo Auto Speaker setup make my front Left and Right so different under the EQ settings? Is this normal? It seems that the Left is lower more lower HZ and the Right high HZ and more khz. Any insight on this would be great.


When I am ready for a subwoofer do I make my Main 80hz or keep them at Full Band?

Okay, thats all the questions for now. Thank you!! You guys really helped.

David

EricBurg

When watching movies, the center channel is arguably the most important speaker in the system. You'll hear that it contains most of the audible information in the movie track. Therefore, it is just as important to have a "full range" center channel as the L/R channels. The Csi5 is a good speaker and can handle a wide range of frequencies. By cutting it off at 100hz, you are really limiting some of the speakers potential. I would play around with the setup, but setting the crossover at 80hz or even maybe 60hz might sound better. Of course, the sound quality will vary depending on several factors and I would trust your ears as to what sounds good. These are just general guidelines to give you a starting point.

When you do add a subwoofer, I would suggest crossing your speakers over at anywhere from 60-80hz, but again, lots of factors will effect the sound. I feel that subs just do a better job in the low bass region, so why not let them handle those frequencies. It will lessen the strain on your amplifier/reciever running the 10's and also keep from any LFE damaging your speakers.

Eric

vandool

Thanks Eric! I will do that when I purchase a sub. Thanks for taking the time.