hi, own a pioneer vsx-d711, the volume of the centre speaker is too loud, i hardly can hear the surround speakers, when setting the centre speaker level to -10 dB, its seems to be ok..
What kinds of speakers do you have for your surround setup?
Sometimes you will have problems like this if the speakers in your system are very badly mismatched. What I mean by this is using something like Bose surrounds with Klipsch fronts and a JBL center. You may have problems with matching the sound quality with all the speakers if their overall qualities and capabilities are very different.
Your center channel may be more efficient than the other speakers in your setup, particularly your surrounds. You can try to compensate for this by lowering the center channel level (which you have) and also boosting your surround levels.
Another idea would be to scrap your current surrounds and get a new set of surround speakers that are more efficient. - Reinhart