In Over my Head

vague_notion

My brother is giving me five lightly used speakers tonight: two monitor 70s, two monitor 30s, and a cs1. The only receiver I have is a Denon AVR-650 which I've been using with cheap Sony speakers for about 15 years now. I spent about 3 hours yesterday reading these forums and other websites trying to figure out what to do next.

As far as I can tell I have a few problems.

• Should I be worried that the 70s, 30s, and CS1 aren't properly matched?
• Will my receiver work with these speakers at low to medium volume or do I need to replace it?
• What's the most inexpensive receiver I can get which will do these speakers justice?

There is so much information about audio equipment out there it's hard coming to it with no experience.
I asked my brother and he said, "Don't worry about it, just hook them up and it'll be fine." He told me to stay off the Internet until I actually heard the new set up but I couldn't help myself.

All advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

thsmith

Welcome to CP. I agree with your brother, hook them up and enjoy. The center will be just fine with the 70s.

Oh yeah, a very nice vrother you have there.

Just read the manual for your AVR and set them up as described.

thuffman03

Welcome to the forum!

I would not get overly worried about matching speakers. They will sound just fine. In my HT none of my speakers are "Matched". MY L/R, Center and rears are all from different manufactures.

Your AVR should be just fine in powering them.

Huck344

Your brother gave you good advice. Listen and enjoy them. If you spend too much time here, you will go broke!

packetjones

Welcome to CP.

Listen to the people here. hook them up and enjoy. If you feel that you are missing something, come back and talk about it and we will give tips on other things to tweak. you have to keep in mind that the people here are very picky about sound and many are considered audiophiles. it really depends on how picky you are about things.

Hook it all up and try it out. then come back with any questions that you have. Do you have a sub?

wutadumsn23

The Monitor 70's, 30's and CS1 are all timbre matched so you will have no problems there. The only "issue" I see is the CS1 may have a bit of a hard time keeping up with the 70's, but you should be able to increase the volume on the CS1 in your AVR's menu to compensate. If you feel like something is lacking, get yourself a CS2 and you will be set. You may want to look into a sub at some point in time, and the PSW 505 is a great sub for the money, Newegg has them for $250 shipped. The Monitors are a very efficent speaker and also very easy to drive, so I wouldn't worry about buying a new AVR. Do you have a Blu Ray player or a HDTV? If you do you may want to upgrade your AVR if you are thinking about getting into Blu Ray, but other than that the one you have now will do just fine. Sit back and enjoy, and make sure to thank your brother, that was quite a gift he gave you. Welcome to Club Polk.


-Jeff

ben62670

Your good. If you want to upgrade your receiver look for a refurb from HKdirect on ebay. This is straight from the factory. Also 50watts HK beats many receivers rated at 110 watts/
Welcome to Club Polk.
Ben

hearingimpared

Welcome to Club Polk vague_notion! Your brother is a good dude. Stick around this is the best audio club on the net.

vague_notion

I've spent a night listening and the speakers sound good. The advice to like what I have and avoid going broke is well taken. I definitely thanked my brother.

Music is noticeably better in stereo mode then it is in surround modes. (Pro Logic, Concert Hall, Live) When all five speakers are running it sounds like everything is coming from the center channel and the fronts are sort of muted. With just the fronts it sounds great.

We watched the first two episodes of The Wire which sounded good, better in surround then stereo. In this case having the center seemingly overwhelming everything really helped with understanding the dialog. It still didn’t seem quite right though.

I don’t have a sub woofer. The model suggested looks good but I’m afraid to bother the neighbors.

I do have a HDTV but I don’t have any plans to move to Blu-ray. DVDs on the upscaling player look great to me. I know that Blu-ray is crisper but not enough so to justify the cost.

I looked on my AVR-650 and I see that the power supply is listed at drawing 3 amps. So that would mean 180 total watts. That’s about 30 watts per channel right? Would that explain why the little CS1 sounds so much louder then the 70s in five channel modes? Are there settings I should change on the receiver?

I have plenty of room for a CS2 if that would be a smart upgrade. It looks affordable.

Thanks for your advice everyone.

vague_notion

I'm itching to buy the CS2 and compare. But what will I do with the center I don't like as well?

wutadumsn23

IMHO, the CS2 is a much better center channel, but I am curious to see where your settings are at that the CS1 is overpowering your 70's. Have you watched anything in DD 5.1 yet? In stereo mode, or something less than 5.1 the center will be the dominant speaker, esp. for TV watching, unless you change the mode or mess with the settings. Try watching a movie in DD 5.1 and see where your CS1 falls in to play with that. You could always try to sell the CS1 here in the for Sale section (minimu post count of 100 required I think) or put it on your local CL, or even Epray.

-Jeff

vague_notion

I found the CS2 for $105 and ordered it. (Is posting prices against the rules here?) I'll get to compare first hand now. I'm pretty excited. I never cared much about audio before this week. It either worked or sounded terrible. I didn't perceive better then "working".

The copy of the wire was in Dolby 2.0 according to the DVD case. I found one that was Dolby Digital 5.1 and it did a better job of not sending everything to the center.

I wish I knew how to tell you more about my settings. I think I'm using the defaults. The AVR was made before DVDs were available in the USA. It does have a TV/VDP (Videodisc?) input though and that's the one I'm using. For mode I'm pushing a button labelled "Pro Logic." There are also buttons labelled Stereo, Center, Concert Hall, and Live. What settings should be available for a unit of this age?

Hillbilly61

Welcome to Club Polk. You have a great bro!

Also, welcome to the slippery slope of audio and AV (or as it is said within the movie the "Matrix" - finding out how deep Alice's rabbit hole really is)!

The "Pro Logic" setting you mention is most likely Dolby Pro Logic decoding. Definitively a good thing. It was boss in its day, but alone is outdated. All of the current Dolby decoded material is backwards compatible with it though, so you are good to go with that setting.

About Stereo, Center, Concert Hall, and Live settings you mention, all of these are are just sound enhancements, excepting (probably) for Stereo. They alter the sound to try and sound like being in a concert hall for example.

Current AVRs have many more settings - all are just trying to electronically recreate an experience. My AVR has a "straight" setting, allowing the material recorded on the DVD just broadcast through the AVR what was intended to be heard via the speakers. Sometimes I use the many other settings I have available for fun, but mostly stick to "straight."

Your AVR is older, so what ever amounts to a "straight" setting may or may not apply.

Hope the above helps.

(About the CS1 speaker, if you decide to get rid of it, $65 or so in Craigs List should move it. If you move it for that price, then you you will have only spent $40 for the better CS2).

Hillbilly

wutadumsn23

Hillbilly is right, Pro Logic should be your best bet until you decide to upgrade your AVR to something that has better/newer codecs. I'm sure you have already done this, but toggle between the different modes with something on and see what sounds best. As for the CS1, there is always demand for those, unfortunately you can't try putting it here in the FS section since there is a minimum post count of 100 I think, best bet is to try CL or Epray. Good luck.

-Jeff

-Jeff

vague_notion

Thanks for all the help, advice, and feedback.

One question I asked early on was "What's the most inexpensive receiver I can get which will do these speakers justice?" I've been reading a lot and I still can't get a feel for it. Will someone throw out a few model numbers to get me started?

Thanks again.

Zeros

vague_notion wrote: »

Thanks for all the help, advice, and feedback.

One question I asked early on was "What's the most inexpensive receiver I can get which will do these speakers justice?" I've been reading a lot and I still can't get a feel for it. Will someone throw out a few model numbers to get me started?

Thanks again.

Sure, I'll throw out a few low/mid priced receivers. Look at the Onkyo 507 or 607 (or last years 606), Denon 1610/1910 or last years 1609/1909, Harmon Kardon 254 and 354. That's just a few to get you an idea on prices and specs

Hillbilly61

I drive my SDA and Monitor HT rig with a Yamaha RX-V663 and it works very well sound wise. It's a couple of years old and used ones are appearing on the market at good prices. If you consider a Yamaha of that class range, avoid the Yamaha RX-V665, as that newer model update is generally deemed to be inferior to the 663 from a power delivery standpoint.

Mon40CSMM10

Music is noticeably better in stereo mode then it is in surround modes. (Pro Logic, Concert Hall, Live) When all five speakers are running it sounds like everything is coming from the center channel and the fronts are sort of muted. With just the fronts it sounds great.

This is a known limitation of Dolby Pro Logic with most musical sources, even moreso if the Center channel speaker has been increased a bit for better dialog presence. (The same limitation can be reproduced even with a newer receiver if the receiver has a legacy Dolby Pro Logic mode.)

This is de-facto fixed in newer receivers with a Dolby Pro Logic II Music mode-- that Music mode has a Center Width parameter that can be adjusted to fine tune the amount of Center presence in the music. Beyond that, some of the newer receiver-specific modes also provide a decent multichannel speaker sound.

So for the older receiver, just keep using the Stereo mode for music sources unless a receiver-specific mode exists that gives a better multichannel speaker sound vs. Stereo.

over50

You can go crazy on audio equipment. Let your ear decide.

cstmar01

vague_notion wrote: »

Thanks for all the help, advice, and feedback.

One question I asked early on was "What's the most inexpensive receiver I can get which will do these speakers justice?" I've been reading a lot and I still can't get a feel for it. Will someone throw out a few model numbers to get me started?

Thanks again.

will come down to a few things for suggestions. what is your budget, what do you want it to do, do you want to add an amp in the future, ect.

More inexpensive models may lack pre outs which would allow you to add an external amp in the future. from the sound of things you probably wouldn't need to add this in, as it seems like you would be plenty happy with just the AVR itself.

Models to look at for inexpensive would be Harmon Kardon, Yammah, Onkyo, Pioneer, Denon. I can't give you specifics because I really don't know what price point you want to hit. If you move up to something like 800-1000 then you could look at the higher end Onkyos used or Pioneer Elite used or sometimes new. Budget will help decide how far and how much you will get.

also if you don't want to to do blue ray or don't think you would ever go there you could look at used AVR's that are a few years older and save some coin that way as well. These probably won't have HDMI or the newest decoders on them but normally you wouldn't need this unless you want to do blue ray. Componet video will still output 1080i or 720p via this connection which would work with your HDTV box. however not sure what type of DVD player you have ect and how you have that hooked up.

even if the AVR lacked HDMI you can always run the HDMI to the TV and a digital coaxial out to the AVR for the sound.

dhart86

vague_notion wrote: »

I'm pretty excited. I never cared much about audio before this week. It either worked or sounded terrible. I didn't perceive better then "working".

That will change if you stay around this forum!!!! You got great advise here, I especially agree with everything watadumsun23 says. I've been a member here since feb 2010. I feel my knowledge about audio/electronic has improved by leaps and bounds. But be careful, because it'll cost you $$$$$$$$

Welecome to Club polk
Darren

dhart86

I'm pretty excited. I never cared much about audio before this week. It either worked or sounded terrible. I didn't perceive better then "working".

That will change if you stay around this forum!!!! You got great advise here, I especially agree with everything watadumsun23 says. I've been a member here since feb 2010. I feel my knowledge about audio/electronic has improved by leaps and bounds. But be careful, because it'll cost you $$$$$$$$

Welecome to Club polk
Darren[/QUOTE]

dhart86

Now all I need to do is learn how to Post properly. lol