2. home-theater
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Trying to fix specific issues with my listening area

90% of time I feel my RX-A3060 is a fine performer on daily tasks. Unfortunately, the other 10% of the time when I want some more extreme forms of music at much louder volumes, I feel like it's missing the magic was contained in my first Yamaha from the 90s (I don't remember the model). It's really hard to quantify without using flowery and poetic language. My current setup is as follows.

Yamaha RX-A3060
2 Klipsch RF-7 II
1 Klipsch RC-64 II
2 Klipsch RP-250S
2 SVS PC-2000 

Like many homes, our floor plan is not ideal for critical listening so we are making due with what we have. There is no perfect seat in our living room.It's designed to entertain 4 people with games,movies and music with a fair amount of compromises. This is a very common floor plan in South Florida.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KFEgtukOSNj59e6Dz9Q_73dMvEyO-L66w7hzK138V4E/edit?usp=sharing

When sitting on "Couch 1" (see Google doc), it sounds good until you increase the volume on the receiver to "-16.5 dB" and then it starts sounding harsh.I measured the volume at that seating position at 76 dB. I would like to get to 85 dB every once in a while when I'm in the mood for something loud.I think the harshness is coming from the Yamaha/Speaker combo but I'm not 100% sure of it.The room has a massive rug on the tiled floor plus there is a couch facing the "wrong way" in front of one of the speakers. I'm leaning towards the Yamaha/Speaker/Room combo having a timbre that kicks in once you hit -18 to -16 dB on the display.It's like I turned on an instant "Make it sound harsh" button when hitting that volume.

Here's some of the things I'm doing to correct the issue.

I'm ordering some room treatments for the areas I can fit treatments from GIK.
https://www.gikacoustics.com/product-category/acoustic-art-panels/

I turned off YPAO by using the Yamaha Pure Direct feature.
I got some interesting results.
The bottom end was a little less refined but the harshness was reduced a fair amount.
I'm going to try to manually fix the TPAO results using the built in EQ.

Here's what I'm planning to do in the future
I'm going to buy an external amp at some point just so I can off the av receiver hamster wheel
and get an amp that I can count on for years.
I'm going to look at various Tekton speakers if I'm still having issues after resolving everything else.
I haven't added any gear yet because I don't want to buy more gear and still have the same issues.
Hopefully this helps someone else.





djfalstaff
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
You are on the right track with Tekton, it will be an improvement. And acoustics, depending on the meaning of "massive rug" and how much of the tile floor it covers it may well be too many hard surfaces contributing to the harshness you're hearing. 

But my money's riding on it being the AVR. Those things are all pretty bad in terms of sound quality. You already noticed it sounds better with some of the processing turned off. The problem is all those processors and amps and other stuff is still there in the box no matter how "Pure Direct" they want to pretend it is. Pure Direct in a AVR. Good one.

If you want lots of channels you are pretty much stuck with the AVR. But if you want sound quality its pretty easy. Ditch the AVR and surrounds, keep the subs, and get a decent quality stereo integrated amp with Tektons. Whichever ones you can afford after selling the AVR and Klipsch. This will be a huge improvement. At 85dB it will be clean and clear and nowhere near harsh.
erik_squires
16,057 posts
 
Room acoustics are  a great first step, they'll live with you no matter what you find.

I have experienced room acoustics as the root cause of problems similar to what you are experiencing.  The amount of reflected high frequency hash makes things sound harsh at higher listening levels, but OK at lower volume, so I would leave everything alone until those are in.  After they are installed, re-do the ARC and see if you find it performing a lot better than before.  It often does.

One thing I did not read is whether or not you are listening to all speakers at the same time.  If so, turn off all but the L&R.
erik_squires
16,057 posts
 
One final tip, a great way to assess room vs. speaker/amp issues is to get up close to the speaker. Unfortunately this may be a little loud, but see if your perception of the problem changes next to the speaker, or is worse. 

If it changes, it's the room.  If not, it's the speaker/amp combo.
auxinput
2,920 posts
 
I would agree with millercarbon on this.  I think your Yamaha is running out of gas (smaller power supply).  I would probably get an external amplifier for the left/center/right (at least) and use the pre-outs on the receiver to connect to amp. 

That being said, I don't have experience with those Klipsch speakers, so the harshness could be coming from them.
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