Home Theater Sound

Hey Jim-Is your theater room a dedicated music and movie room? Like Rick said, your room acoustics will have a greater effect on sound than just your DTS settings. Placement of furniture and nic-nacs becomes important. Many years ago when I was really into home theater, I had read that a good idea was to hang tapestries or drapes at approx. the 1/3 distance along the left and right walls if you need to soften the sound somewhat. I would also recommend purchasing a sound meter to determine the decibel levels from each individual speaker. They used to be about $20.00 at Radio Shack. I don't know if your Yamaha has a program for doing this like my Marantz, but I still use the sound meter as well just to get the sound fine tuned. I've found that there is a definite difference between DTS and standard 5.1. Good luck and happy listening!

Hi Jim,
  I purchased from Best Buy a Yamaha 7.1 home theater receiver about 2 years ago. I was very dissapointed in the surround sound  with this unit until I discovered that the unit had to be calibrated to the room via a provided microphone. Once I performed the procedure The surround sound came alive and I couldn't be happier with it. I'm wondering if your unit is the same my model # is rx-v471. I hope this helps.

RXA720 Receiver. It had the Mic room analyzer and I have retuned the room after each modification of it as the acoustics changed with furniture rug and drapes. Still don't like the sound in 5.1 mode better than stereo. Not sure is it is me the settings or room but I'm thinking it is me.

Bose speakers to me were always like surround sound in a box...more or less.  Competition between Bose and Yamaha for same real or imagined acoustical space???

Maybe you have too much "softening?"  Pull up the rug, especially if you have a floating floor (such as a laminate), see what, I mean hear what happens.  Could be better.  Could be worse.  Could possibly not affect perceived problem at all!

I have a feeling it is a "bit" more complicated...

Rock ON & Keep the Faith,
Rocket

"He still doesn't charge for mistakes! "
http://jbonamassa.com/tour-dates/
"Everybody wants ta get inta the act!"
“Now, this isn’t your ordinary party crowd, here.  I mean, there are professionals in here.”

You didn't hear Bose was best from this sower sez.  The "live" Bose characteristic can be very pleasing and comfortable, but manipulations YOU may wish or wish to make are not always possible.  Or if you are me, it can get annoying even, at times.  But Bose gets branded bested at their game by a better brand, Von Schweikert- look it up.  Almost was a low level employee for Albert, in the home town, even...his workplace got flooded by New York (d)rain and he was temporarily out of business.  He's located 3 different places here in Southern California since.  Von Schweikert, Genesis, Infinity (vintage "reference" at least), etc. be repaired to shed some large salary, though!    Paradigm headphones may be a little better if less well known,  but they and Bose's noise-cancelling headphones are great for passenger travel on Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.  Speakers and speaker placement are more of a concern than room acoustics, initially, based on the premise you are not designing or redesigning the room, in which case The more more more spare ca$$$$$h you have to spend on this junk, the more you might want to hire an acoustic engineer or at least someone professional to "setup" a home-theater for you, just like getting your guitar setup by a pro.  But for common setups, you are pretty much on our own.  Where was I going with this???

Where's jim when I need him?  Jim, are you using S/PDIF instead of HDMI cables?  Nevermind, you like simple answers so here is a blatantly simple explanation: you are missing the extreme to-your-left and extreme to-your-right channel speakers, which should more than less line up with your holes in your head, no, not there, and no, not your nostrils, your ears.  Missing the straight shot put paths into cerebral distribution and processing.  With the your hearing loss, it must be significant.  You explaining the great sound of the 7 speakers generic "stereo," to myself, solidifies my opinion.

Rock ON & Keep the Faith,
Rocket

ps-once again, for the record, the classic definition of stereo is ANY multichannel, regardless of number of channels above "mono."  Quadrophonic was stereo, all surround sound is stereo, and 2 channels, 2 speakers is (and always will be) always easily recognized as stereo.   Yes, 8 channels of an original mono signal technically transform it magically (or per craps tragically) into "stereo."

"He still doesn't charge for mistakes! "
http://jbonamassa.com/tour-dates/
"Everybody wants ta get inta the act!"
“Now, this isn’t your ordinary party crowd, here.  I mean, there are professionals in here.”

Well, I'm confident that even without experience, college degree, or expensive test equipment (although I can use much of that), I could make a nominal improvement in your listening experience if I were there.  Guido had the best idea in my opinion.  Put a SPL meter to work.  Measure and tailor to taste!  But I would try a cheapskate-lazy trial mode of keeping the receiver system always set at DTS 7.1 and always select 2 channel stereo for music video and 5.1 and above for movies at the player itself from the DVD audio setup menu.  Another along the same cheap-lazy-practical route is disable/power off the LFE channel/amp for music only.  These could be starting points and perhaps experimentation will at least yield some sort of conclusions, pros or cons or balanced/mixed results.

Rock ON & Keep the Faith,
Rocket

"He still doesn't charge for mistakes! "
http://jbonamassa.com/tour-dates/
"Everybody wants ta get inta the act!"
“Now, this isn’t your ordinary party crowd, here.  I mean, there are professionals in here.”