My cobbled together 5.1 system, looking for suggestions!

[mg0078]

Hi all,

My experience with 5.1 has been mostly limited to listening in my 2008 Acura MSX with ELS Audio. But with the pandemic and all, I just don't really drive much anymore. So I decided to sort of cobble together a basic 5.1 listening setup for my basement. Before anyone accuses me of being cheap...I mean...I might be. But I have my first kid on the way, and have dumped like $5000 into my vinyl listening setup, so it just isn't in the cards for me to build another "audiophile" grade 5.1 system in my house right now.

I was going through my stuff to make room in storage for the new family member, and discovered I had an old Polk PSW450 subwoofer and some audio cable. I recently upgraded from Wharfedale bookshelf speakers (Diamond 10.1) to Monitor Audio floorstanders for my vinyl setup, so I have these pretty nice Wharfedales sitting around collecting dust too. I already have a Samsung UHD TV and blu-ray player in the basement. So I figured I just needed a center speaker, some rear channel speakers, and a receiver. I picked up some used stuff online:

• Denon AVR-1513 (from CL, $100)
• Wharfedale WH-2 Centre channel speaker (from FB marketplace, $50)
• Pair of Polk RT15i bookshelf speakers (from CL, $30 for the pair)

I purchased some 14 and 16AWG cable from Amazon to supplement what I had, and hooked everything up!

It's not easy figuring out how to play everything, but it's been educational.

1. I immediately ran into the common issue that dialogue is pretty impossible to hear in movies, even with DRC enabled on the BR player, so I've had to crank the db level on the center channel speaker. I don't love this as a solution and wouldn't want to mess with the audio mix when I listen to DVD-A and Blu Ray music content, so I wonder if there's another solution.
2. It's been impossible to figure out how to get the BR player and the receiver to agree on the audio codec...If I tell the BR to send bitstream unprocessed audio (from a source disc using, for example, DTS-HD), the AVR isn't consistently recognizing that it can encode the inbound data into DTS-HD. Supposedly it should recognize that? So I switched the BR player to encode the DTS HD sound and set the AVR to "Direct" to receive it, and that seems to work. Any suggestions here?
3. My TV doesn't have ARC, so I used a TOSLINK cable to send digital audio from my TV to the receiver for when I stream from Netflix/Amazon or whatever. But that has also been a bit of a crapshoot with the receiver recognizing the audio encoding from streamed sources.

I haven't tried listening to my surround music yet, because I want to get it configured as best I can first. Then I'll have Kraftwerk, Opeth, Steven Wilson, Pink Floyd, Yes, Diana Krall and some other goodies ready to go!

If you read the above and have any suggestions for me, please let me know. I'm new at this and enjoy learning.

Matt

 

[mg0078]

Current status of my system build, again looking for suggestions for improvements and quality bottlenecks.

• Sony UPB-X800 M2 Universal Disc Player
• Amazon Fire Stick 4K
• Denon AVR-1613 Receiver
• Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 bookshelf speakers (front speakers)
• Wharfedale Diamond 11.CS centre channel speaker
• Pair of Polk RT15i bookshelf speakers (rear speakers)
• Polk PSW450 Subwoofer
• Audioquest G2 Speaker Cable and "Black Lab" subwoofer cable

Obviously this is just a 5.1 setup, so any suggestions to improve on that would be welcome. With all the Dolby Atmos content coming out right now, eventually I'll want to upgrade to Atmos, but I'll need a different receiver for anything more than 5.1.

 

[TwoMuch]

What sort of improvement input are you looking for? Better equipment? Better sound quality?

My first advise would be not to spend so much on your speaker + sub cables. Any good quality 12 or 14 gauge wire will work just as well, (depending on your run lengths). I always go to Bluejeans Cable for my sub cables, ( Subwoofer Cables from Blue Jeans Cable ), although I do consider them to be a bit overpriced.

Some info on your room layout and walls would be helpful. You would be amazed how much a few modifications, (i.e. window coverings, etc.), would help your sound quality.

 

[jimfisheye]

Cobbled?

I'm a scavenger with high standards.

Speaker alignment. Be critical with a tape measure and level.

You can alter the speaker positions relative to the walls and corners while keeping the proper array dimensions between speakers. Get your system roughed in this way. Play with this to avoid bass blooming and standing wave issues as much as possible as a starting point. (Instead of grabbing for an eq first.)

Use some test tones to verify or help you dial in the speaker array.
Especially if you are setting up a speaker managed array. (Anything that needs the channels altered. eg. the popular small top + sub array where you redirect all bass frequencies from the 5 main channels into the Lfe channel.)

A few different test tones to flip between to check levels from highs to lows. A frequency sweep to verify that you transition from high driver to mid driver to low driver to sub with no artifacts or phase weirdness at any crossover point.

Just doing those basics and some listening with familiar mixes will get you a better dialed in system than 98% of the people you know.

 

[jimfisheye]

Oh yeah, agreed on the cable comments. Buy quality copper wire. Extension cords from Menard's is a great place to buy speaker cables. You need copper in the AWG appropriate for the power used. The crap in the back pages of the audio mags with Plutonium Nyborg alloy wire and rare earth ceramic speaker wire stands is pure bs!

Copper.
Solid connections.