What's the use of speaker distance setting inside receiver ? (1 Viewer)

[Kelana]

Hi,
I'm not very clear about the speaker distance setting in our receiver. I had play around with the distance setting, but looks like no different between 1 meter or 6 meter distance for my rear speaker. Acually what's the use of the setting ?
P/S ; Sorry for my bad English..

 

[Cagri]

That setting basically is there for your receiver to adjust the delay time for each channel. If you set your one rear 1 metr and the other 8 meter, the sound is processed and sent to each surround so that the sound waves reach to your ear from both speakers at the same time. IOW signal to the speaker which is set at 8mt is sent a bit earlier by the receiver. But these are very slight differences it is normal that you don't hear the difference. Hope this helps.

 

[Kelana]

Hmm..thanks Cagri for your quick reply...I am begin to understand

 

[Cagri]

Obviously the sound from both surrounds reach your ear at the same time if it is the intention of the engineer. If there supposed to be a delay of sound from one channel against another, the distance settings let the receiver to adjust this delay.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Yes, and to be clear, this does NOT affect the volume of each channel, which might have been what you were expecting. That is done separately.

 

[James_SCEA]

Just to let you know on a THX Certified receiver (Select or Ultra), for every Foot that you adjust the distance settings, it compensates for 1/2 milisecond - it doesn't sound like much, but consider the speed of sound!

A meter would fire the channel's audio about 1.5 milliseconds before that of the original on the 5.1 mix.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

You'll get a bigger change by tilting your head one way or the other (this is how insignificant the gain/loss is).

In reality without audio measuring equipment the "naked ear" is unable to comprehend the difference in several milliseconds, and adding the feature to every HT reciever is really unnecessary (Can anybody even prove the function works on most recievers???).

 

[James_SCEA]

Unfortunately I cannot "prove" that the feature works on most receivers. I can tell you however, that with my Marantz SR 8200 I increased the distance settings for my right rear channel. With my particular setup, my sofa is closer to my left rear than my right rear by about three feet. My distance settings on my Marantz are in increments of feet.


I carefully listened to the scene in The Matrix when Neo dodges the bullets on the roof with my rears on only. The rear imaging seamed more accurate, and with more subtle rear effects the sound staging seamed dead on. The feature on most receivers exists because of the very fact that increasing channel levels will not always help in situations with ackward speaker arangements.

JC

 

[Joseph Anlacan]

i just read this somewhere. 2 methods (there are others) by which our brains determine the location of the sound are (1)intensity of the sound and (2)timing. for example, if you stand at the exact center between two speakers outputing the same sound with different amplitudes, the louder speaker will determine our perception where it is coming from. if the R speaker is louder, we will perceive the sound to be coming more from the R. If the intensity is equal, but one of the speakers' output is delayed, then we will perceive that the sound is coming from the other speaker, the one that is relatively more advanced. all other things equal, sound that is first to reach our ears will be considered the source of the sound while those which are delayed are considered "echoes" or reverberation. of course, these are theoretical considerations. and, since you're talking about the rear speakers, it might make even less noticeable differences. but there's no harm using the correct settings.