Just got the Outlaw 990(second hand) and an Emotiva LPA-1. Finally set them up and overall not a great experience.

System setup:

Outlaw 990
Emotiva LPA-1
Sony PS3
Toshiba HD-A1
Onix Rocket RS1000
Onix Rocket RSC200
Onix Rocket UFW-12
Onix ELT Surrounds x 4


Issues:

Hardly any bass at all. You can feel the subwoofer working when you touch the woofer but the room no longer shakes, rattles and rolls as before. I have reviewed several threads (mainly advice from gonk so I am sure he will come to my rescue soon, LOL) and tried those things (ie crossover turned all the way up on the UFW12 etc). If I crank the volume WAY UP (and I mean WAY above what I normally listen too) it begins to rattle some but still not like it used to be and now the other channels are so loud its painful.

I have played with all setup parameters and no luck. Auto-calibration set the following levels

L - 0
R - +1
C - +1
RS - -1
LS - +2
RSB - 0
LSB - +1
SUB - -7 (did this 3 times and it gives this setting each time)

I have manually adjusted the SUB to all the way and am still unhappy with performance.

Speaker settings set as follows:

Front - LARGE, 60Hz
Center - LARGE, 80Hz
Surrounds - SMALL, 100Hz
Subwoofer - LFE+Front (tried with LFE only as well)

2. Lastly and MORE IMPORTANTLY all the sound sounds like I am in a tin can. Its VERY artificial and "tinny". Its really bad. The artificialness really takes you out of the "movie" feel and its basically unpleasant to listen to. My old Denon 3803 sound WAY BETTER than this does.

TEST MATERIAL is T2 BluRay, Fast & Furious HD-DVD, 2 Fast 2 Furious HD-DVD, Toy Story 2, Dave Matthews Band Central Park, HD Sattelite. Basically it all sounds bad and with very little bass.

Looking for any thoughts and advice.

I will say this that the system blends very well together now and sound pans through nicely. Unfortunately the type of sound is pretty bad.

LMK what you guys think.

Thanks

Greg

(FYI headed to bed now .. 1:25am on the East Coast and I have to be up at 6:30am so I will catch any and all responses tomorrow).

Also I did have the Denon 3803 hooked to the LPA-1 for a few days and I DID NOT have this issue (either one that is) so I am sure its something to do with the 990. Most likely something I have setup wrong.

Hope you guys can help.

Greg

A couple of thoughts, GCS. First, don't be afraid to adjust the sub trim manually: that's the most difficult channel for the auto setup to dial in, and it's one that people routinely calibrate "to taste" (which often means hotter than reference). Before you do that, though, there's one other thing to look at first: you have the front and center both large, so the only bass the sub's going to get is the LFE track. I know the bigfoot is a mighty large center, but you really need to run it "small" with a crossover of 60Hz or 80Hz. You might even try running the RS1000's as "small" with a 40Hz crossover: the -3dB point is 29Hz, after all.

How are you playing your sources? There's Blu-ray, HD-DVD, and regular DVD in there along with HD satellite - presumably at least three of the four (or all four) are using digital connections, with one perhaps using the multichannel analog.

Two other things to toss into the mix, just for the sake of curiosity. Do you know what version of the firmware your 990 has installed? (Latest is 3.11 - when the unit is in standby, press "SELECT" and "INPUT" on the front panel simultaneously and it'll display the version on the front panel, but be warned that "SELECT" and "MENU" resets the unit to factory defaults.) Also, do you know if any settings such as tone defeat, night mode, or theater compensation are turned on? I run tone defeat "on" normally since I don't mess with bass and treble controls, but I only use night mode on rare occasions and generally don't use theater compensation.

Firmware - 3.10 04

BR - Optical
HD-DVD - multichannel
Sattelite - optical

Tone Defeat - tried running with it on and off and no real effect

Theater Comp and Night Mode are both off

I have tried it with the center/fronts as small crossed at 80 as well (as THX would suggest) and I didn't really notice any real change either.

Currently the sub is a +7 and its better but not anywhere near what it used to be with the Denon in place.

Honestly the only thing I can think of is to lower all the speakers several clicks and keep the sub at +7 and see if I can get what I want.

Greg

Any thoughts on problem #2 btw as thats more serious in my mind

Greg

I don't own a 990 so consider this "generic" advice.

Whenever I hear someone say that they can't get any bass out of a sub (or speaker) and describe the overall sound as you have, I immediately suspect a phase issue of some kind.

I've blown the fuse on a speaker that was out of phase and where I had to adjust its level way up to get any relative output out of it. Of course the speaker itself was, by then, absorbing a ton of power - and luckily the fuse went before any damage was done. It was only when I sat back and asked why did it occur to me to check the leads (which I had recently changed) and found the phase problem.

It's probably not the culprit in your case - but worth checking if you've not done so already.

Jeff Mackwood

The only difference between 3.10 and 3.11 is a fix for the subwoofer trim (3.10 has a bug that shows up when you set it to -15dB, causing it to effectively disable the sub trim and act just like a 0dB setting).

One thing to try to verify that you are getting proper sub response would be a frequency sweep like that included on Digital Video Essentials (or like my Devious Tiny Disc . There have been cases where people were used to exaggerated bass and were befuddled by the results initially achieved by a flat response. This can also be helpful for getting subwoofer phase checked out, as Jeff mentions.

As for the second problem, something certainly sounds "off." Does the tinny sound show up with all of the sources, or one in particular? It sounds like it is global. Have you double-checked all of the connections? I've had sonic problems before that were the result of a loose cable, which would certainly mess things up across the board.

Yep its on all sources. It was particularly horrible on T2 BluRay but even the crappy DirecTV stuff sound "tinny".

I have plugged and replugged every cable at least twice (thinking the same thing) and no help. Its really weird, I have never heard my system sound this poor before and I am thinking I must be doing something wrong. I've never gone separates before either and now wishing maybe I shouldn't have.

On the sub I will say that it blends extremely well with the rest of the speakers now but there is just not enough of it. I miss the room rattling bass I had before (whether it was right or wrong good or bad).

I know that there is something off on the bass side because in T2 you can't even notice the explosions. Problem is the woofer in the sub is moving plenty. Also on the DMB dvd you hardly even notice the bass player.

FYI I have tried both sub outs as well.

Jeff, no blown fuses anywhere as the sub is getting activity.

I may go grab an Onkyo 804 from CC tonight and put into the mix and see if it gets me back to what I had before. I would grab a Denon 2807 but there are none locally.

Greg

I'll keep chewing on it and see if anything comes to mind. You could try a system reset, just to cover all the bases ("SELECT" and "MENU"), as the results you are reporting are certainly not normal.

GCS

I recently bought the 990/7125 setup, and was coming from a Denon 2802, and experienced the same sort of problem you are, but maybe not as extreme. I adjusted to where I have R and L at large, center and rears at small. Crossover is 60 for R and L, 80 for C and 100 for rear. My breakthrough was on the subwoofer. I adjusted it's crossover as low as it could go (50HZ) and turned the low pass to off. I would say it still doesn't carry as much bass as the Denon, and I like bass, but it is MUCH better. I would agree it doesn't carry as much bass but all the mids and highs are so much better. Sometimes it sounds you like you are the other end of the sound board for music. I hope this helps and doesn't further convolute the issue.

Okay, I went from a Denon 3805 to the 990/7700 combo and when I first hooked it up something didn't seem to sound right. I tried setting the front speakers to large but something still just didn't sound right. After messing around with the settings I set all speakers to SMALL, X-over set at 80Hz. on all speakers and set the subwoofer to YES. Once that was done I ran the auto calibration feature and with some fine tuning everything played just the same but better than the 3805.

My suggestion would be to do exactly what I did and see what happens. If you haven't already, disable the crossover on the subwoofer itself and let the 990 do the work. If you unable to disable the x-over on the subwoofer, set it to the maximum setting that way you don't have to worry able double filtering.

When i got my 990, I made an obvious error, but one I think many make -- i forgot that I had programmed my dvd/cd player for bass control, speaker distance and delay, etc -- and I followed the directions for new My outlaw 990 -- the result was some very strange sounding, tinny sounding musi, because I was controling my sound thru the dvd player and the processor. I went back, set my onkyo 1000 universal player to big, etc and used the 990 for all bass and speaker control. result -- the sound I wanted, paid for, and love.

Sorry fellas I have not gotten back to this yet. I have just been buried with work (tax season sucks sometimes).

It will be a little while longer as my anniversary is this w/e so I won't be playing with any HT gear.

I'll be back once I get a chance to sit down with the system

Thanks for the comments and I'll keep ya posted.

Greg

I know how it can get (just pushed through a major deadline myself early this week, and already getting rolled up on some other projects that were forced to the sideline). Let us know if questions arise or if you stumble across anything interesting.

Sometimes it helps to read the manual!

And a fine manual it is, but I'm pretty sure GCS is aware of that. There's also Outlaw's excellent customer support team, for that matter.

Hi,
One thing I have not seen anyone mention is that you say you have your front (L+R), and center speakers set to large. With them set this way, it doesn't matter where you set the crossover, none of their signal goes to the sub. If you change the setting to small, then the crossover will have an effect, and any signal below the Xover will be rerouted to the sub.

Peter

I know when I redid my setup from a Dennon 3801 to
99/770 I had to tinker with the phase settings on one of the subs to get the base right. It sounded a lot like this problem, it appeared to be moving air, but there wasn't much sonic result. A 180 phase shift corrected the problem. I thought it odd at the time that my Hsu needed no adjustment, but the Velodyne needed phase correction.
I know this was suggested earlier in the thread, but I didn't see any confirmation that it had been tried.

Wonder if GCS ever resolved this.

I think if mains are large, then the sub gets L/R signal if the sub selection is set to L/R+LFE.

Could the 2-ch trim be set really low? That wouldn't explain the lack of bass in movies.

I wonder if the whole "tinny" thing is just sucking bass somehow, and it's the root cause of everything...