Adcom Gfa-555

Lowell_M

I finally got a little listening and tweaking time with the ADCOM. Without any tweaking, I wasn't too happy. In 2 channel with the sub on, vocals, particularly male, sounded bloated with some unnatural bass. The highs didn't seem to be there either. Ok... not feeling so good about the purchase.:mad:

I ran EZsetup/EQ to see what the HK set the crossovers and levels at for surround sound. Then I noticed that the HK was sending LFE signals to both the RTi70's AND the Sub. AGHGHGHG! Set the SUB to LFE only. Also, EZset set the L/R crossover at 40 hz. I've had mine set at 60 hz for a while so thought I would give it a listen.

I'm not sure what the EZset did, but the mid-range bloat seems to be gone for the most part and the details in the highs are back. It sounds fantastic. I listened for a while without a sub and love it even more. Very warm full, open sound. I think that my bloat problem has to do with poor placement of my Right speaker, which is jammed in the corner behind an end table. I will have better placement when I move the HT to the basement next week.

Anyway, I nearly freaked out because I just demoed the ADCOM 545 a couple of weeks ago and absolutely loved it. I'm not sure why my initial sound out of the 555 seemed so different, but I think I am back to where I thought I should be with the sound. I don't think this current configuration in the HK logic will work very well for HT though. I'd rather set the crossover a little higher for HT.

My DVD player that I use for music and movies has a coax and an optical digital out, so I think I am going to connect one to the DVD input and the other to the CD input on the HK so that I can have a different setup for 2-channel and HT.

Anybody have any thoughts or input?

Sami

The only thing you need to set differently IMO is the subwoofer gain for music (and run it in stereo mode). SPL meter should be your next purchase if you don't have one yet. EZSet is ok but not as good as doing it with SPL meter.