I just moved into a new condo and set up a monster home theatre, 250" Sony 3LCD HD Projector and 42" plasma in the same room with split signals so you can watch them on both walls. (More or less because I have seating going all the way around in a circle. But regardless of that, I'm having a problem with my surround sound. I have two 15" Jensens set for the front, two 12" Sonys' for the back surround and 3 smaller RCA speakers for the center. I have a Yamaha HTR-5960 receiver and it's great. The only problem is the hundreds of presets and settings. I can't seem to get everything down between Neural sound, Adventure, Sci-fi, etc... Not to mention all the other settings. To me it seems that the sound isn't being distinguised from front, back, center, as much as I believe they should be. I've tried just about everything, any help would be appreciated. Thanks, T.J.
T.J., the first thing is to make sure you've configured the receiver correctly. You have to tell the receiver that you are employing a 5.1 system, not a 6.1 or 7.1. This to make sure the receiver is not trying to send a signal to back surround speakers that are not there. (I know you are calling the 12" Sonys "back surround" but technically they are just the "surround" speakers.)
The other thing is what's wrong with Dolby Digital/DTS on movies and Dolby Pro Logic II on all other sources?
More is not always better and some research into surround sound, speaker count and placement would be a good starting point. I would suggest starting with one good center channel instead of three and sticking with Dolby Digital and Dolby Pro Logic II as suggested by John.
TJ,post some pics I would like to see what the room looks like, and 3 centers wired together could cause impedance problems, if you took two 8ohm speakers and wired them together that would make 4ohm, under heavy loads and there will be more, and that could cause processor problems, unless you have a high quality switch box, and look at all your speakers, if some are 8ohm and some are 4ohm, Its a possible problem
T.J., your "pieces parts" approach to the entire speaker array is probably the real problem here. The timbral mis-match of these different speakers does not serve to give the impression of a seamless sound stage. This, along with wide distortion-free frequency response should be the goal of any home theater audio system.
I know its difficult to scrap speakers that have served you well in the past, but what you really need to do is start over. I would consider a 5.1 speaker system that would match well with that Yamaha. This would be a system that sounds good to you, is adaquate for your room size, and does not over-tax the power reserve in the receiver---assuming there's a self-powered subwoofer in the mix. Considering the vast selection of home theater designed speaker systems available, this shouldn't be too difficult to do.
