Upgrading my YHT-395 (1 Viewer)

[celsmore]

Hi folks, I thought my system was completely fine for my needs. Then I was at a friend's place who had a very nice setup (some higher end polk towers, a gigantic matching center channel, all in a very small room), and it got me thinking that I should look into updating mine. I currently have a YHT-395 system. It sounds pretty decent, but it doesn't seem to put out quite be enough for the reasonably large room it's in. We have a TV mounted over the fireplace, and the center channel placed directly below that. There is not enough clearance for anything much taller than the existing center channel. I can measure exactly how much I have to work with if that would be helpful. After hunting around here, it looks like my first priority would be front speakers with a matching center. I was thinking a pair of bookshelf speakers, along with a center channel, then eventually the bookshelfs could move to be my rear channels if I ever decided to upgrade to towers. My budget would be around $300 to work with now. I could certainly expand that eventually if I can't get anything much better than what I have now for that. Does anyone have an general recommendations for me, or see any gotchas with the direction I'm looking? I'm completely dumb when it comes to audio related stuff. I can plug in the wires, follow the placement guides and such. At the end of the day though I'm still in "Oh, Pioneer, I've heard of them" mode. The biggest frustration I am running into is finding a compact center channel that isn't cheap enough that it makes me worry about quality. Thanks much!

 

[Jason Charlton]

Hi Cory,


The biggest "gotcha" that I see in your plan is the size restriction on the center channel. According to what I dug up online, the current speakers is only about 4" high. The good news is that you have a solid receiver as the hub of your system, so any 8 ohm speakers will work for you (impedance (ohms) is the most important spec to worry about, followed by sensitivity (in dB) - wattage numbers mean very little). Speakers with sensitivity at 90 or above don't need much power to be loud.


Clearly, you understand the importance of matching the center to the mains - that's great!


When I think of "decent small speakers" I think of Energy. Amazon has a pair of CB-5s and a matching CC-5 (which comes in at 5.7" tall) but together they come to nearly $400 and that doesn't include shipping.


A very brief search online found that you might be able to do slightly better than Amazon on the center channel price, but all three for $300 is a tall order.


Perhaps others can chime in with other brands that might better fit the bill.


The only other issue I see is the idea of updating the mains later, and still being stuck with the 4" or so limit on the center. I don't think you'll be able to go bigger on the mains unless you relocate the TV so you can go bigger on the center. The center is important - arguably moreso than any other speaker in the system - so you don't want that to be the "weakest link".


As another thought, you could consider making a change at subwoofer instead. The stock sub with your system is an 8" model with only 100 watts. Size and wattage matter for subs. That's not a powerful sub at all. For $300 you could make a serious upgrade there. The 12" Lava can be had for $285 with a discount for HTF members. It will rock. For a good bit less, you could opt for a Dayton 12" from parts-express.


Either one of these subwoofers will add a lot of "impact" to your system performance. Combined with a little calibration and setup tweaking, you could ease the strain on your existing speakers a bit, too and see some minor added benefit there.


I hope I didn't give you too much to think about. The good news, though, is that you have some flexibility in where you go from here.


Best of luck.

 

[celsmore]

Thank you very much for your response. You've given me a lot to think about, but I don't think you've overwhelmed me Those energy speakers look like they would fit the bill nicely. I'd be willing to spend a bit more, or scour craigslist or whatever to find somebody that is getting rid of theirs. I'd love to hear any other suggestions that would would fit the bill as I go hunting for used equipment. This is probably the last tweak to the system that I'll be putting in for the house that we are in currently. We'll be moving in 3-5 years, and then one of the things I'll be insistent about is a room that I can put a proper home theater system into. Complete with a large center channel and all that. Those CB-5s would make for fine rear speakers if I eventually went with a different setup, correct? The subject of the subwoofer is where my lack of knowledge is going to be completely apparent, I apologize in advance. The sub I have now I only have turned up about half way, otherwise the bass completely overwhelms the rest of the system. Would one of the options you suggest add more bass (which I feel like I could obtain by turning up the one I have), or would they add higher quality bass (is there such a thing?), or some mix of the two? Sorry again about the newbishness of the question. Finally, if you had to choose between splurging for a set of CB-5s with the matching center or grabbing the 12" Lava, which would make more sense? I guess I'm asking if you would see my front/center speakers or the sub as my weaker link. Thanks again!

 

[Jason Charlton]

I guess it may be best to back up a bit and find out what it was, exactly, on your friend's system that made you want to upgrade yours? If it was overall sound clarity, then perhaps the focus should be on the front soundstage.


I'm also assuming you've already made the switch to Blu-Ray and already utilize the lossless audio formats such as DTS-MA and Dolby TrueHD? That right there is, IMO, a huge step up in audio clarity and fidelity.


No need to apologize on the subwoofer issue. There are actually a number of factors that come into play with subwoofers - all of them interrelated to one degree or another - that make them a whole other beast, so to speak.


The first thing about subwoofers is that they are all about moving air. This requires size and power. Bigger is better. I wouldn't go less than 10" unless it was a pretty small room. 12" and up is where you start seeing much better performance.


Secondly, is frequency response. The biggest improvement you'll see moving up to a better subwoofer is a lower end to the frequency response. This is where, IMO, it's best to spend the extra bucks. Volume (or SPL - sound pressure level) can always be adjusted on any subwoofer, but if the sub can't get low, it never will. Once you start getting into the mid 20Hz range (and lower) you start to get into the range where you don't hear the bass, you feel it. To me, and many others, feeling the rumble is much more impressive than hearing it.


Finally, moreso than any other speaker, the subwoofer's performance can be completely wiped out by poor placement or lack of proper setup and calibration. Properly calibrated and setup, a subwoofer should blend pretty seamlessly with the rest of the speakers. "Boominess" is a common problem and one that can be usually be alleviated by changing the placement and doing some careful calibration.


Of course, all of that is really moot if you feel you'd improve your system more with the new front speakers. You certainly could reuse the CB-5s as surrounds in the future. Matching the surrounds to the fronts is not crucial, so you really wouldn't even be tied to Energys when the time comes to get even larger fronts and center.


From the sounds of things though, perhaps replacing the subwoofer is best postponed until you move into a larger, more dedicated room.


If I can think of any other small but decent speakers I'll let you know.


Cheers!

 

[Al.Anderson]

otherwise the bass completely overwhelms the rest of the system

Jason has a boatload of good information, but to this one point I'll add that the "bass overwhelming the system" problem is usually caused by some combination of (1) the sub isn't very good, or is too small (which Jason mentioned), or (2) you have the corssover set too high. The crossover shouldn't be more than 120, with 60-80 more normal. Try playing with this setting, you can't hurt anything. (One problem you may see is that when you lower the crossover the bass get better, but the system sounds worse because the mains aren't very good.)

 

[celsmore]

The more I'm reading through this and looking at other sources, the more I think I might need to take some time to tweak my existing setup before I decide what actually needs to be done.

I'm also assuming you've already made the switch to Blu-Ray and already utilize the lossless audio formats such as DTS-MA and Dolby TrueHD? That right there is, IMO, a huge step up in audio clarity and fidelity.

Most of our videos are viewed from netflix (where obviously everything is very compressed). We do not have Blu-Ray currently, but a little mouse told me I may be getting a PS3 for christmas . The priorities for me with the system are the xbox, and general music listening (mostly through iTunes, not lossless, but not terrible).

I guess it may be best to back up a bit and find out what it was, exactly, on your friend's system that made you want to upgrade yours? If it was overall sound clarity, then perhaps the focus should be on the front soundstage.

What I liked about it was that it sounded spectacular down at low volume, and no matter how loud it got (even uncomfortably loud) it sounded flawless. Nothing overwhelmed anything else, it always felt completely in balance. When mine gets louder it tends to sound worse and worse. The bass doesn't seem to scale nicely with the rest of the system, or perhaps the rest of the system isn't scaling with the bass.

Finally, moreso than any other speaker, the subwoofer's performance can be completely wiped out by poor placement or lack of proper setup and calibration. Properly calibrated and setup, a subwoofer should blend pretty seamlessly with the rest of the speakers. "Boominess" is a common problem and one that can be usually be alleviated by changing the placement and doing some careful calibration.

I think that you've nailed my issue. My setup definitely suffers from this, and I think it's why I have the sub turned down as low as I do. The louder I turn it up, the more the base booms over the rest of it. The problem I'm having with figuring this out is that I don't trust my ears to know what actually sounds good. I'll have to go back and try repositioning.

Jason has a boatload of good information, but to this one point I'll add that the "bass overwhelming the system" problem is usually caused by some combination of (1) the sub isn't very good, or is too small (which Jason mentioned), or (2) you have the corssover set too high. The crossover shouldn't be more than 120, with 60-80 more normal. Try playing with this setting, you can't hurt anything. (One problem you may see is that when you lower the crossover the bass get better, but the system sounds worse because the mains aren't very good.)

The crossover on mine is set to the default out of the box, which is 80HZ. I have all the satellites set to "Small", though I'm not sure that is correct. Perhaps I would benefit from a complete start to finish recalibration of the entire system, including repositioning the sub and all that. Any good guides you folks would recommend? Bonus points if the guide is geared toward lower powered speakers such as what I'm dealing with. Once I get the system set to the absolute best it can be as is, then perhaps I can make a better decision about where to focus my efforts on upgrades. Thank you very much for all the help!

 

[celsmore]

Just a quick update. I started from scratch, repositioned and angled every speaker, positioned the sub very carefully. I found that everything still didn't sound right. Turns out that my receiver has both a small/large speaker setting (which was correct), but hidden in the bowels of the advanced settings was a "Bass out" setting. It was set to both. Switching it to S/only (which must be subwoofer only) and it was a night and day difference. I've got the sub calibrated to a good spot now, and I love the way the system sounds. I'd like to get a little more kick out of the low end though, so I ordered up the Dayton sub that Jason recommended. It should be here tomorrow. Thanks for all the information and help! I will likely be looking at getting those Energy speakers that were recommended (or something similar) in a few months when the cash allows.