Time Delay Question? (1 Viewer)

[scott_tinari]

I have a pioneer ELite VSX35 reciever, I have Energy EXL15 for the front and Energy C for the center andtake 5 for the rears and Energy 8" sub, Now I sit 9 feet from the fronts and 9.5 from the center, its alittle back from the fronts, and Iam 6.5 aways from the rears. Now my question is, I know I just plug in the distances from my speakers in the reciever.But is it ok, if I put my Time delay for my fronts around 8.0 and the center 8.5 and the rears like at 6.0 instead of my actually seating distance, would this make the sound tighter?

 

[Charles M]

I never hear a difference when I use time delay. Is there difference? Maybe I can get some clarification on this as well.

 

[Kevin C Brown]

When you set the distances correctly, what you are doing is to make sure that the peaks and valleys from all your speakers arrive at your listening position at the same time.
(That's way simplifying, but that's the idea.)
If you change the distances like you suggest, nothing will get "tighter," but what can happen is that the sound will be "smeared" because now you have built in little delays *between* all of the speakers.
But will you be able to hear a difference? Probably not, because most speakers within themselves are not time aligned. I.e., the woofers, midranges, and tweeters all within 1 enclosure.
Only Thiel, Dunlavy, and Vandersteen, among a very few others, manufacture time-aligned and phase-correct speakers.
Bottom line? Try it and see if you can hear any difference.
Listen for "impluse" type sounds: gun shots, snare drum hits, stuff like that. Listen for the "sharpness" at the beginning of the impulse.
One other thing, it's not enough just to measure on the floor. You only get the horizontal distance that way. Make sure to account for the fact the usually the center channel is higher than the mains. It's the distance from your head to the actual drivers that counts.
I actually went out and bought a heavy duty tape measure that would stay straight out to the 10 odd feet I needed to measure for all my speakers.

 

[Jeremy Anderson]

Also, if you have the Avia disc and a SPL meter, there's a way to find the proper delay settings to get time alignment perfect. I was the one who started the thread, and Avia's Guy Kuo gives a very detailed explanation of how to do this (and it works!).

 

[scott_tinari]

Well, what the proper way from AVIA, I didn thear anything on the disk that talks about time delay? Where on AVIA does it talk about time delay.Thanks

 

[Jeremy Anderson]

The Avia disc doesn't have anything directly concerning time alignment... but Guy Kuo has posted the method for using Avia's phase tests to time align your speakers. Do a search for that thread.

 

[Kevin C Brown]

If you set up your system such that everything is in phase, more than likely then it follows that you will also have correct time alignment between all your speakers too.