Hi,

First off, I've had the 990 for a couple of months, I really like the unit, especially since buying the Harmony 880 remote. The 990 is in a rack in my newly built dedicated home theater, I use a projector, a 100" screen, a 7.1 speaker setup, and lots of sound treatment. For the first couple of months, I used the 990 on occasion as I finished off the room (room treatments, riser, etc.). Now that I'm done (& have dedicated chairs), I'm really enjoying my system.

I am new to multi-channel processing, for about 30 years I've invested a lot of time & money in 2 channel so a 7.1 system is completely new to me. I'm having a bit of an issue with balance in my system, I think I know what to do but I thought I'd run it by here. The issue is less with the 990 than with speaker & chair placement.

Because of an obstruction in the wall, my sourround speakers are a bit further back than I'd like. When I did a sound calibration in the room, I placed the mike in-between the 1st & 2nd row of chairs so no row would be overly favored by a balanced sound. What I found is that we seldom use the 2nd row (4 chairs) and in the first row, I wasn't getting much benefit (read: sound) from the surround and rear speakers. So I knew I needed to balance things out a bit so I re-calibrated with the mike at the listening position in the first row. After watching/listening again, I find that the movement of the mike forward (maybe a couple of feet) didn't help as much as I thought it would.

So my question is what would be your approach in helping the situation? I could move the mike forward again & do an auto calibration or I could go into the speaker setup area and play with the settings of the speakers. If I do that, would it be better to dial the front/centers down or up the rear/surrounds?

Thanks - this is not earth-shattering or rocket science but I am interested in anyone's experience with not being satisfied with the results of having a mike at the sweet spot.

Bob

First, I'd verify that the distance settings for all speakers are reasonably close to what my tape measure tells me. Second, I'd run the manual test tones while sitting in the first row to get a feel for how things are balanced. At that point, you can also experiment a bit with running the surrounds a bit "hot" (maybe a couple dB higher than the meter and auto-calibration suggest) to see how that works for you.

Another thought is to start out with some well-selected test material. Some offerings simply don't give the surrounds much to do, which can leave you a bit disappointed. Try some good action DVD's (I'm sure we can get some suggestions from the crowd around here, but a few ideas that come to mind are Gladiator, Attack of the Clones, U-571, The Incredibles, Lord of the Rings, ...) and see if the source material has been contributing to the sense of "weak" rear channels.

Bob,

There are a few things I would do try out to get the system balanced more to my liking.

First, place the surrounds properly: side speakers directly to the sides of the listening area and rear speakers spread well (at least 60 degrees) apart behind you.

Next, I would calibrate manually, using a tape measure for distances and a SPL meter ($40 at RadioShack) for levels.

If the balance is still not to your liking, you can deviate from calibrated levels by manually adjusting the surround speaker levels.

Good Luck,
Sanjay

Thanks for the reply guys. I can't place the surrounds ideally becuase of an obstruction (plus the whole theater was pre-wired). They are not that far off, but I wish I could have them closer. I'll get out my SPL meter & do some playing this weekend!

Bob