Calibration of 7.1 setup question... (1 Viewer)

[Vader]

OK, I’m pulling my hair out (not that there’s much to start with). I recently did a full recalibration of my sound (sans equalization), and am not sure what to do about the rear surrounds. My calibration was a follows:

1)Ran the auto-setup on my Denon 2105, to check speaker phase, set the distances (it is spot-on here), and get a starting point on the channel SPLs
2)Fine-tuned the SPLs via DVE, setting everything 5.1 to 70 dB (sub set to 80dB), ignoring the rear surrounds for now (more on that in a sec).
3)Using the Denon’s test tones, tweaked the rear surrounds to each be at the same level as the center, which was set using DVE.

Here’s my problem. As there are no true 7.1 sources (AFAIK) yet, DVE only allows for 6.1. Consequently, there is no way to individually tweak the left and right rear surrounds, as there is using the Denon’s test tones. So, I set all of the other channels (5.1) using DVE, then tweaked the rear surrounds to be consistant with those. Going back to DVE, the rear surround pink noise now measures several dB louder than the other channels, as would be expected (2 speakers = approx 2x the acoustic energy). However, the “half rear/half side surround” patterns measure pretty close to what they should. My question is, which is right? I mean, the rear surrounds tweaked individually are spot-on with the center, but DVE (since both speakers are used at the same time at the same SPL level) says the combo is several dB hot…
Thanks!

 

[John Garcia]

Get them close with the tones, then adjust by ear to what sounds correct to you. I've found that I actually don't like exactly ref cal levels, specifically for my surrounds. Each is dropped about 1dB from ref cal and it sounds just right to me. That is of course my personal preference and specific to my setup, so adjust yours to your liking. So the real question is: How does it sound?

 

[Vader]

Thanks John,

I first started thinking the rears may be too hot last night when watching "Air Force One".... The Columbia logo sounded a bit hot in the rear surounds (I have the Denon set to use PLIIx), but the movie itself sounded fine (but that was in DTS5.1 using PLIIx for the rears)...