Surrounds.... (1 Viewer)

Hello. I have two Audiofile towers setup as my surrounds. Now I understand that surround channels dont' put out much sound. BUT i do like when you can hear foot steps coming from the side or behind. Or a bullet flying by and I can hear it on my surrounds. Having said all that.

I sometimes cannot hear the side sounds. the footsteps. the bullet flying by. Or the japanese planes flying by in Pearl Harbor. Why? I have them on 80hz XO. My Onkyo HT-R590 only has the option to set a general XO. I cannot set up the XO for individual speakers. I have the level at 8.5db. What can I do? thx.

You should be able to set the rears to large and set them at a lower crossover. If your receiver/processor does not permit this, you'd have to replace it with a unit that will let you do this. Another option is to get a blu Ray player with 7.1 outs and set the rears to large. You definitely will want to get those lower frequencies out of your towers.

Like said above...or the "easy way" is to use "direct" sound mode. Direct bypasses bass management.

Also keep in mind that verything is mixed differently, and even though it may say it's 5.1, there could very well be little to no noticeable directional sound effects used.


Can you give specific movie/disc examples where you have been disappointed with the surround activity?


There are several discs that have, IMO, excellent instances of directional sound effects - even a number of older DVDs were really impressive (the scene in Air Force One (DVD), for example, when the terrorists first take over the airplane - lots of gunfire in the rear channels).

My setup is a 7.2. 2 E90's. Polk center. 2 audiofile surround towers. 2 onkyo front high surrounds. 2 subs. The AVR is set to this mode. I also ran a test tone and all the speakers are sounding even and good.


I actually bought Interstellar yesterday and I could hear the surround really good. Like yall stated it depends on the movie. I also played Rambo (the new one) and that sounded amazing including my surrounds.


So if I set the surrounds both side and front high ones.....to large......they would sound louder?

When you say "front high surrounds" ... aren't those "front presence" speakers? Never heard "front surround" used before.

Ditto what Jason posted. Different movies use surround in different degrees. E.g look at reviews at blu-ray.com old mono or stereo movies that have remastered soundtracks mixed to 5.1, reviewers may specify how the surrounds are used. Great example is CHUNGKING EXPRESS, which was mono, and the Criterion release is 5.1. LOTS of content was moved to side and rear speakers, very skillfully. Other movies, not so much. My DVD of SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE has a 2.0 soundtrack, and a -- no kidding -- 4.0 soundtrack, both of which hardly use the surrounds (hence the single back surround channel).

Just as a counterpoint, Dolby engineers and others will mention that home theater users often put their surrounds too loud for what the filmmakers intended. Sure you want to hear that stuff, maybe to know you got your money's worth, but the filmmakers perhaps didnt intend for you to hear someone's footsteps like Godzilla.

ChromeJob said:

When you say "front high surrounds" ... aren't those "front presence" speakers? Never heard "front surround" used before.

Ditto what Jason posted. Different movies use surround in different degrees. E.g look at reviews at blu-ray.com old mono or stereo movies that have remastered soundtracks mixed to 5.1, reviewers may specify how the surrounds are used. Great example is CHUNGKING EXPRESS, which was mono, and the Criterion release is 5.1. LOTS of content was moved to side and rear speakers, very skillfully. Other movies, not so much. My DVD of SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE has a 2.0 soundtrack, and a -- no kidding -- 4.0 soundtrack, both of which hardly use the surrounds (hence the single back surround channel).

Just as a counterpoint, Dolby engineers and others will mention that home theater users often put their surrounds too loud for what the filmmakers intended. Sure you want to hear that stuff, maybe to know you got your money's worth, but the filmmakers perhaps didnt intend for you to hear someone's footsteps like Godzilla.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. Front high would be like the links i am posting.


http://www.dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-pro-logic-iiz.html


http://www.avsforum.com/forum/91-audio-theory-setup-chat/1212459-front-height-vs-rear-surround.html


http://www.avsforum.com/forum/89-speakers/1343559-rear-surround-front-height.html


http://www.hometheaterforum.com/topic/304799-rear-surround-versus-high-front-speakers/


matter of taste I guess. Since I cannot put up rear surrounds....front ones make sense to me. thx.

Ok, what Dolby calls "front height" speakers Yamaha calls "front presence."

BTW your bass management 80Hz cross over will have nothing to do with hearing footsteps and the like in the side surrounds (surround left, surround right). That simply redirects ELF content to the subwoofer from speakers set to to "small" (as most AVRs call it).

Legendary70 said:

My setup is a 7.2. 2 E90's. Polk center. 2 audiofile surround towers. 2 onkyo front high surrounds. 2 subs. The AVR is set to this mode. I also ran a test tone and all the speakers are sounding even and good.

I actually bought Interstellar yesterday and I could hear the surround really good. Like yall stated it depends on the movie. I also played Rambo (the new one) and that sounded amazing including my surrounds.

So if I set the surrounds both side and front high ones.....to large......they would sound louder?

Click to expand...

I see that I'm not going crazy ... we ARE discussing this on multiple forums.

Here's my understanding in my Yamaha AVR. Setting speakers LARGE and SMALL has nothing to do with performance or "sounding larger." Small tells the AVR that the speaker can't handle the extra low bass, so send all below the cross over to the sub. Setting your cross over to the THX recommended 80Hz won't really make any particular speaker "sound smaller" because frequencies that low cannot generally be located. It also helps performance of the amp and speakers, potentially, by not asking them to produce that super-low content.

Now, with full-range tower speakers as surrounds those can be set to LARGE and content below 80Hz will not be sent to the sub, but stay in those channels. My amp has an "Extra Bass" feature in which content below the cross over is played on both: the speaker marked as large, and the sub. As per page 36 of your manual, the Onkyo Extra Bass function ONLY sends bass from the front Left, Center, and Right channels to the sub as well as keeping them in their source speaker. Hmm....

Personally I think having towers for surrounds is a bit of an overkill, not a lot of content will be mixed with so much coming from them. But then, I could be wrong. Michael Bay and Christopher Nolan may be loading up those channels with sound and music like a retiree fulling up a plate at the all-you-can-eat steak buffet joint (sorry, retirees).

Is this beginning to make sense?

Yes. thx. I decided to put the towers I replaced with the E90's as towers. Better than to have them in a closet or garage collecting dust.....IMO.