I have very few SACD or DVD-A discs and I don't play them very often. Tonight I was listening to Pink Floyd DSOTM SACD and Eagles Hotel California DVD-A and noticed something odd. Let me back up first: I manually calibrate my 990 using the internal test tones and a RS SPL meter. I have a variety of settings: L & R are at -7, C at -3, Surrounds at 0. However when listening to the discs noted above I had to adjust the calibration to have all five channels virtually the same. Otherwise, the C and surrounds were really loud and the L & R were almost gone (seems appropriate with my settings). Am I missing something on the 990 setup for 7.1 (5.1 in my case)? Do you need to adjust the calibration for 7.1 playback? FYI, my speakers are all 4 ohm, all set to small, 80Hz crossover and the subwoofer is "on". Seems odd I'd have to make such a radical adjustment. Any thoughts?

Having a variety of trim settings like that is perfectly normal. You should not need to change the trim settings when using the 7.1 direct input, assuming that no trim adjustments are being performed upstream of the 990. Is the trim on the 980H set to 0 for each channel?

This is a very good question. While I don't play SACDs (and therefore have that issue) I have noticed that for different movies and dts cds I will occasionally need to boost the surrounds and center...and this is regardless of the spkr settings.

I'll be interested to note others' comments.

Nfaguys, it's very possible that what you have encountered is a result of how certain discs are mastered.

AvFan, here's a test you can try: play a DVD on the 980H, using both the coaxial input (or optical, depending on which you have connected) and the 7.1 Direct input. The two should produce the same levels. If they don't, check your player's settings.

Thanks for the help solving this issue and verifying my manual calibration settings make some sense. I thought of the OPPO as the possible problem, but the trim levels in the OPPO are set to 0, delay is set to 12 feet for all channels and downmix is set to 5.1 channels. The OPPO delay settings are not correct but I can't imagine it would be the cause and I'm not sure I want to induce double delay settings; I'll let the 990 handle that chore. Strange!

gonk wrote:

it's very possible that what you have encountered is a result of how certain discs are mastered

Actually I believe that is correct. I told my wife this, while adjusting during moves. Also some of our old recordings when played back in 4 ch as originally recorded (play LS-LF-RF-RS)will sometimes require a boost or cut in a given channel.

So.....not to worry.

I have three or four other SACDs that I will try and report back whether Hotel California and DSOTM are unique in the way they play.

AvFan: You're calibration settings do seem a little odd just looking at them. However, if that's what the meter is telling you, then I guess they're good. You may want to try the test tones off a THX DVD (such as Star Wars) if just for comparison sake.

As for the Oppo, I'm not an owner but I was wondering about the "downmix" setting. After reading the manual, I would set it to "7.1" Why? Well, it seems to me that that's the only setting where the player isn't doing anything to what's on the disc. Are all of your speakers set to "large" in the Oppo? Same reasoning for that question as above...

AvFan,

Have you looked at the Audio and Sound Effect settings on your 980 and they are turned off? I used to own an Oppo 970 that had those features and don't remember if they can affect your hi-rez playback. My speakers are 4 ohms as well and are within 1-2dBs of each other whether I use my Radio Shack meter or the mic that came with the 990. I have the same hi-rez discs you have and many more. Didn't have an issue with either disc when compared to my other hi-rez discs. There may be some perceived differences in the way the recordings were made and may need some fine tuning. Especially so with DVD movies and the center channel for me. But I never experienced a 7dB gain needed in order for a channel(s) to keep up. Only from 1-3dBs. Could also one of the other settings in the 990 be turned on/off as well? Such as Panorama or the Tone Defeat? Just thinking out loud other "potential" issues that may have been overlooked?? Hope you are able to solve this.

Thanks for the suggestions guys! Gotta love this forum. I'll check my OPPO 980 as well as some of the 990 settings later today. I've recently added some acoustic absorbtion at the right speaker's first reflection point so I should probably do another calibration anyway. However, I must say treating one FRP did not cause what I heard last night. I checked both with and without the treatment and the disparity in individual speakers was equally pronounced both ways. I'll report back later today. Again, thanks for the suggestions.

Hi Avfan, I have both those dvd-a's and I have noticed they are mixed kind of strange. for instance you have guitars or vocals louder than the original cd, the foreigner dvd-a is like that,vocals jump out at you.

In the original post I noted that I used the 990's internal test tones to set the speaker calibration. From what I can tell from this forum the the 990's test tones are white noise. I have a copy Digital Video Essentials and it has pink noise test tones. When I ran the DVE test tones the speaker settings changed rather dramatically. Now the L is -3 (-7), C is -4 (-3), R is -5 (-7), RS is -2 (0), LS is -5 (0). Original settings using the 990's test tones are in parenthesis. I do notice the stereo image is slightly to the left when listening to CDs in stereo and I may make some minor adjustments to those settings. DVE does a pink noise pan across the speakers and the SPL meter waivers very little. During my limited listening sessions I like the sound better now.

From a 2006 post, Gonk summarized:

"Basically, white noise is a "flat" line all the way across the frequency spectrum, while pink noise is filtered to account for the behavior of human hearing."

So the question is: Is it better to use white or pink noise to set speaker calibration?

If this was a poll, at this point I'd say use pink noise.

That is wrong, and the differences have nothing to do with human hearing. White noise is flat per frequency - i.e. all frequencies have equal amplitude, but pink noise has equal energy per octave, which will yield a perfectly flat trace if a system is dead flat in response. If you look at white noise on a spectrum analyzer, you will see a 3dB per octave rise with frequency - not something you want to use to measure for flat response.

Because there is increasing energy within each octave as frequency increases (there are more frequencies represented), the energy within each of those octaves is more; 3dB, or twice as much more per octave.

That said, the signal used in home theater equipment and on most test disks is filtered pink noise. It is filtered to have energy in the approximately one octave region straddling 1kHz, and nothing anywhere else in the audio spectrum (except for the different signal used to test the subwoofer levels).

The full bandwidth pink noise on some disks is actually more accurate in determining the real SPL over the entire audio band, but it is also more work to interpret, since it gives really more information than most people need to do something as simple as calibrating a system.

If you use bandwidth filtered pink noise from your preamp to set levels, chances are very good that if you check the levels using full bandwidth pink noise, the results will be different.

In any event, you should never use white noise for testing any audio system unless you know how to interpret the resulting data.

Thanks for the insights Altec and the recommendation to stay away from white noise to set speakers, at least for us more casual users. In all fairness to Gonk his quote was his summary of a link regarding white and pink noise.

The DVE disc does use filtered pink noise to set individual speakers; it is referenced as "Band Limited Pink Noise". DVE's pan is full bandwidth and at least across my front three speakers the SPL meter held constant. I got a 2 to 3dB fluctuation across the rear speakers however.

Does anyone know with certainty the 990 uses white noise for its internal test tones?

I think I can bet the farm that it uses bandwidth limited pink noise.

White noise is, as I mentioned before, not flat within it's bandwidth.

I guess we could get into a semantic debate because all pink noise starts out as white noise, and is then shaped, but that is more information than you probably want.

Not sure if the 990 uses "white noise" for speaker calibration but I had the same experience using the 990 test tones vs. using my DTS or AIX test tone calibration discs. Using the RS meter and the 990 test tones gave numbers that were completely different than the DTS or AIX discs I used. For some reason, when I used the built-in mic of the 990, then the speaker levels were the same as the DTS or AIX discs. Only the subwoofer level was too low. Had to boost it 4dBs so it could better match the mids and highs. Wish Outlaw would hurry up with the firmware fix of having the 2 channel sub go into the positive range.

I never really questioned the settings using the 990's test tone until I tried DSOTM SACD and Hotel California DVD-A, but now that I look back they were odd. M&K speakers went through a pretty rigorous testing protocol and it seemed weird the center was so much different. I know the room and speaker placement can have a huge impact, but my L,C, and R are placed in a similar fashion. The L and R are about 3 feet away from the side wall thereby minimizing the side wall effect.

If Altec's farm is safe, I'd suggest the limited band pink noise from the various calibration discs (DTS, AIX, or DVE) may be a good source of sound to set up HT speakers.

I would agree with Altec in that it is probably a filtered pink noise being used for calibration. Reason for this is that you want to get as close to a flat response as possible from your sweep. In so doing the deviations from the measured response in flatness are readily apparent. The easiest way to to obtain a near flat result is to utilize a signal with a downward slope of 3db/octave. That of course means a filtered pink noise.

This is what gets me...
We try to get the best possible calibration on our system and the damn movie studios change up the outputs on our channels...
Am I right!

97db wrote

We try to get the best possible calibration on our system and the damn movie studios change up the outputs on our channels...

I think the movie studios actuall y try to get the relative levels they think should be. Though I will change the levels as I see fit I have no quarrel with them since I believe they (probably-?) are trying to get it the way it's meant to be.

My disagreement is with the SACD production. Not all are good. So you don't know which to buy.....so I don't. Furthermore, because of the live recording I did, and with the maasters I listen to (i.e. copied from multi in dts) I don't need SACD.

If the members of these forums happen to be in Northern Maine, sometime, PM me in advance.

There may be another reason I was having such trouble with DDSOTM and Hotel California and other SACD and DVD-A playback. About the time I was exploring other ways to calibrate my 990 due to the way those two discs sounded it started to drop all audio when I was listening to 5.1 sources. I'd get some random snapping in all five speakers and then, sometimes, the audio would drop. I initially noticed it dropping audio during movies but my family, who watches more TV, said it was doing it on cable too. I could restore audio most of the time by switching between Dolby modes but not always. In a few days it wasn't randomly dropping the audio but doing it on a regular basis.

As I understand it the 7.1 audio is separate from the processed audio, but the calibration is not. And there were times when the center channel was louder than other times with the same source. Could how those two discs sounded been the first clue my 990 was having an issue? Maybe.

My 990 is now at Outlaw for a thorough check to see what is going on. My compliments to Edward at Outlaw who did not hesitate to have a look at my 990 after I described its symptoms. His actions are consistent with all my other dealings with Outlaw; they provide excellent customer service!

Now that I don't have it I realize how much I enjoy it. I've moved an Adcom preamp and amp into its place and running everything in stereo. While I really enjoy 2 channel music, stereo just doesn't cut it for movies. To paraphrase Dire Straits, "I want my Nine Nine Oh".

I would tend to agree it is the "mastering" or "engineering" that is at the root of this. When I play SACD...I find that the multichannel sound is fairly equal across all speakers (only a slight variation at best). But, when playing a movie with DD or DTS...or playing a CD and letting the player "engineer" multi channel sound, I find a wide variance in sound levels.

With Blu-Ray, selecting UNCOMPRESSED PCM, and using analog out...I find the sound levels are very similar to SACD. Probably because they were mastered in multi channel as is SACD.

Marcus

The sound levels in any particular speaker are totally determined by the choices made by the recording and mixing engineer (except for stereo or other formats with additional processing in your preamp, obviously). There is no "spec", "standard" or any other factors involved except for artistic choices made during the recording and mixing sessions.