Pioneer LX82 and Music

[admin_exported]

Hi

I currently own a Pioneer LX82 AV receiver, Kef XQ one speakers and REL R-series sub.

While this all sounds fantastic for movies I have never really been able to get the sound I want for music.

I am looking to get a night club feel with some heavy bass but the LX82 does not seem to use the sub for music.

Am I doing something wrong or is this a limitation of the LX82?

If so what would you recommend for good movie and hi fi sound?

 

[The_Lhc]

Do you have the high-level input connected on your Sub?

 

[ellisdj]

If you use the amp in pure direct it only uses the main L&R you dotn want this

To get it to use the sub just use it in stereo - I would also select for Stream Direct to be on as it improves the sound.

Can de done on the remote or front panel

I would also select ATT to be on - check when you listen to music - if you see a red OVER flash up then you are overloading the A to D convertor in the amp.

Slide down the flap on the remote and hit the button that says ATT - then turn the volume up (instructions from LX83 but likely the same You will find a cleaner sound that once you give the volume a boost will be better, with much less harshness / distortion.

I think thats where most people go wrong with the pioneer digital amps and say they are bright

 

[bigboss]

I think thats where most people go wrong with the pioneer digital amps and say they are bright

Check the latest issue of What HiFi (Pioneer LX86 review). You'll of course have the said issue!

 

[ellisdj]

I have read it as I am in it

Still stand by the comments I wrote above especially RE the ATT setting - the amps soudns harsh with that not on as there is overloading. This is only the case in stereo mode but I have found that's the best setting for music, despite the unwanted digital conversions and processing

This has been true of about 5 or 6 different analogue sources I have tried on the LX83 and LX85 - so probably all of them.

I can lower the source inout voltage on my Meridian and it stops it, but thats a rare option with a cd player etc

 

[Frank Harvey]

Having owned an 82, 83, and 85, I can hand on heart say that I have never once found them to sound bright, and I haven't even needed to use the X-Curve facility to lower the HF level. If anything, I found with the 85 that I had to up the treble by 2dB to give it a little more bite when I was using R300's. Even with M&K S150's I never had an issue with brightness.

I'll be honest - I never really got on that well with that XQ series - I just don't think they were that well balanced. Maybe that combo just isn't working. Check your menus and make sure there's no "auto" or "adaptive" features switched on. Switch them all off.

Many receivers will disable the sub when in Direct mode, so you'll need to use it in stereo mode. The downside here is that any EQ applied by the auto set up will still be effective, which you don't really want when playing two channel music (personal preference of course).

 

[ellisdj]

I think in an ideal situation you would use the av receiver in pure direct or similar with no processing - however I don't think they cut the mustard that way

Even though there is processing and you can hear it the best sound from my lx83 is in stereo mode using the sub, I wish it wasn't but it is. In this instance there is a sacrifice of depth of soundstage for clarity and balance - however I don't think many if any av receivers will give a true 3d soundstage like a quality stereo amp.

i do have my sub setup very well with eq on it - anti mode which makes a Huge difference to the bass especially for music, a sub setup badly ruins music as its all you can hear

To the op try biamping, try in stereo mode (stream direct on), make sure you have setup mccac properly I find mccac sets the sub 3db hot so that should give you the Club bass impact you are after - Make sure you have your sub setup well otherwise you won't be getting the pumping bass you want - it will either be moding or a null depending

 

[Frank Harvey]

I did a demo yesterday with an RX6av package on the end of an LX72 and music was sounding great streaming from our NAS drive (Rip-N-Play). I used Direct without the sub.

 

[ellisdj]

Its a shame we are not closer, I could happily spend some time with you and we could go over things re all discussed in this thread.

I would love to hear your great sound and see if its the same as mine. Is you demo room acoustically treated ?

 

[Frank Harvey]

Its a shame we are not closer, I could happily spend some time with you and we could go over things re all discussed in this thread.

I would love to hear your great sound and see if its the same as mine.

Anytime

Is you demo room acoustically treated ?

Nope. It's a 500 year old building, so it is timbre framed, suspended floor (quite bouncy!), and no solid walls at all. I know there would be benefits to get them treated, but I feel that differences between equipment can be heard regardless of what the room sounds like. If we treated our rooms, and we told anyone who came for demo, they would more than likely feel we were 'cheating'. It is surprising though how many people assume our rooms are treated (even though there's no visual evidence of anything that looks like room treatment).

As it stands, everything I have taken home has sounded much better than in store. I think people would appreciate that more than being a little disappointed that it didn't sound as good as in our demo room. Having non treated rooms doesn't seem to affect sales - I presume because, as I mentioned earlier, differences can be heard in any room.

 

[ellisdj]

Hi David

I have to hand it to you - I was wrong about the Pioneer LX83 needing all its tech to sound good - I was very wrong in fact.

I have just managed to get it to sound like a good HiFi amp for the first time and I am extremely impressed!!

I had written it off but its just won me back over :dance:

How did I do this - by turning everything off and improving my seating position / room acoustics

I am 80% of the way through acoustically treating my room which has made as much diference as spending prob more than £5k on system components for about £200 + £1500 for a new sofa but I am not counting that.

Moving my seating position off the back wall has made a dramatic improvement and being closer to equal distance to what the speakers are apart has as well, before I was more than double the distance away as they are apart

I am still running the amp in stereo mode (with stream direct on) so still crossing over at 80htz and using my sub.

Back to the amp settings - After hearing true HiFi in the what Hifi test room I knew what I wanted at home from the sound of my kit - I wasnt getting it even with the very expensive system components I own, I wasnt even getting close.

After talking to Ket and reading a white paper written by Meridian on room eq I decided to flatten my eq for all freqs below 250htz as recommended by Meridian, these guys know their stuff. !

I have my cousin to thank for the second improvement - he has already done his room treatments and encouraged me to turn full band phase control off - that has improved the sound no end - there is much better treble and everything is far more organic and less processed sounding - far more hifi sounding

Lastly I turned off standing wave correction - which is good is some ways bad in more so its better off in my case.

** I know I have posted a lot about these Pioneer settings / tech and how good they are, but its a learning curve for me too - if you sit in a very bad spot in your room acoustically these settings can help with movies and music but its not going to give the overall best sounding solution, sorting out the acoustics and seating / speaker position is the best option by far**

I am still in testing mode and still need to make an acoustic panel or 2 more before I am done but I wanted to post about my experiences!

 

[michael hoy]

Hi ellisdj, Followed you Pioneer testing with interest in the past.

Can you link to the Meridian white paper you mentioned.

 

[ellisdj]

Of course mate

http://www.meridian-audio.com/w_paper/Room_Correction_prt.pdf

If you google meridian room correction its the first one

If you are following me - look into what I have said about room acoustics - its made such a difference to the sound I am getting.

I didnt think I could ever get sound this good in stereo from the LX83 - dont get me wrong there is obviously better, but I am seriously impressed by what I am now hearing. My source is medium high end Meridian MC200 Feeding MS600, Speakers MA GX100.

A point to note - I am using the fixed variable input of the Meridian MS600 at -6db. This is not an option on most sources so the other option is to use the Pioneer ATT - slide the remote panel down and I think its button 1 - ATT needs to be on otherwise you overload the D?A chip - a red over flases up if you are and you will hear distortion

People that say MA and Pioneer dont go have got it very wrong - bot tryign to offend or start a debate, just a comment

 

[michael hoy]

Of course mate

http://www.meridian-audio.com/w_paper/Room_Correction_prt.pdf

If you google meridian room correction its the first one

If you are following me - look into what I have said about room acoustics - its made such a difference to the sound I am getting.

I didnt think I could ever get sound this good in stereo from the LX83 - dont get me wrong there is obviously better, but I am seriously impressed by what I am now hearing. My source is medium high end Meridian MC200 Feeding MS600, Speakers MA GX100.

A point to note - I am using the fixed variable input of the Meridian MS600 at -6db. This is not an option on most sources so the other option is to use the Pioneer ATT - slide the remote panel down and I think its button 1 - ATT needs to be on otherwise you overload the D?A chip - a red over flases up if you are and you will hear distortion

People that say MA and Pioneer dont go have got it very wrong - bot tryign to offend or start a debate, just a comment

Many thanks.

And yes MA and Pioneer can exist together.

 

[rendu]

Hello, thanks for the link to the Meridian document, it is very interesting. However, I am not sure that I would not know how to apply any of the recommendations. It is actually fairly complex.

In my case I have recently bought a new receiver Yamaha A2010 and I have spent more than 2 weeks trying to make it sound right. The one thing which has made it improve most was to increase the frequencies above 1khz so, I am definetly not following the advise of not touching anything above 200Hz. I may have to play around with this more but, before I changed these, it sounded flat, boring and dull.

This whole issue to me is related to AV receivers only. It is a very painful process to make them sound right specially for music. When I previously had a stereo system, this was not a problem. I changed house and it sounded fantastic everywhere without need of tweeking. It sounded great in all the places, in my room, in the livingroom, etc. Now with the AV receiver it is a different story, this is like rocket sience. You need to tweek your room, your sofa, the equ settings, levels, your furniture, your dog, make sure that you place your wife in the rithg place before watching a movie and so on... it is ridiculous....

So based on the report it seems tha automatic systems like YPAO are no good (which I agree at least to my ears they are awful), so then what is left for the poor users? Do we all need degree in electronics in order to purchase modern AV?

 

[ellisdj]

I can understand your frustration - and you have made some very valid points there, however I think gone a bit over board with the thought process

Rroom acoustics, where you sit in relation to where your speakers are and where you place your speakers will impact the sound you hear regardless of speaker / amplification / source.

There is a lot online about it and companies selling products - most overlook the impact of room acoustics which is a mistake

What Meridian say is that any eq above 250htz interferes with the stereo time domain - however below that i.e. bass region its not so apparent - its a simple as that - the rest is explanation and them talking about their room eq system. They are 100% right from my recent findings

The white paper appears complex, but its not really - it shows in room speaker freq repsonse graphs and waterfalls measured in a software such as Room Equalisation Wizard which you can get for free. However it is a white paper from a high end manufacturer so you would expect them to know / brag a bit about sound and be able to produce such documents discussing these important topics in technical detail. Its actually only the basics they are discussing in it.

It may look double dutch at first it used to to me I have self taught from reading and trying to learn.

They say any parametric equaliser i.e. YPAO, MCCAC will not work properly for the many reasons they have listed.

I dont fully agree with that - these systems can definately help improve clarity and help the overall sound in films especially where its not quite so critical - fair play these systems try and make 5+ speakers all firing sound waves into your room sound decent overall - its not easy to do that and what they do achieve is actually very impressive given what I know now, however most rooms have bad acoustics and there is always a trade off. That trade off does come at a big price to what sound can be achieved when you have better acoustics and all these eq type systems turned off. Ket taught me that - I asked him about eq systems and his look said it all - dont get me wrong they have their place and do work well to a degree

The idea of these advanced setup systems is to do all the work for you - analyse your room and try and give you a good overall sound - now if you have bad room acoustics, lots of reflective surfaces walls, glass, wood floors etc you will get lots of peaks and nulls in the freq response caused by flutter echo / high reverb time and what these clever systems do is tone down or boost up the system eq to try and compensate - ie. it lowers the closest freq on the equaliser to try and flatten the curve or it raises it.

The result can be a sound you are not used to or dont want - becuase the system has altered things to try make the best of something that is bad. A stereo amp gives you it all - so you hear the peaks, and dont hear the nulls and probably get used to that sound so you think thats the correct sound and thats what you want

The av amp is taking a lot of that away by trying to improve the sound - its doing more digital processing all the time, which is ideally not what you want so the sound is worsened, at least the stereo amp does very likely no digital processing or analogue to digital conversions for the sound to go through and be worsened

I hope that has helped explain a little bit of why you maybe experiencing what you are - YPAO is trying to compensate for your room acoustics - however it doesnt properly work

Its very hard to explain without sounding condesending writing on a forum - I can explain in more detail but it depends on how important great sound is to you and how far you are prepared to go to understand things / how much you care - I dont mean any of those last words in a bad or critical way - please dont read them like that - more ofd a question?

 

[rendu]

Thanks very much for the detail explanation. I will definetly try to read again the white paper and try to apply some of the recommendations. I do have one question which is not very clear to me. When they talk about the bad work done by the YPAO equalizer, do they refer to all the settings done by the YPAO (for example) or, do they only refer to the equalization (7 band in case of YPAO)? For example in the YPAO there are many settings such as: speaker distance, delay levels, size, etc. Are those settings at least reliable or do they also need to be adjusted manually? I would not know how to set up some things like delay, room size, etc. if I had to do it manually.

Regarding the eq. under and over 200Hz, I will give it a try but only if I can find a way to copy the current manual eq. which I have defined. I must say again was surprise to read this since most amps that I have used sounded a bit more clear and alive with a bit of treble and bit of bass (equalizatin in form of "V"). Also, every amp output has differently equalization altogether so, how can they make a general statement that the equalization of all the amps is correct for ranges 200 Hz to 16khz. There are amps which sound bright out of the box and amps which sound dull so, how can you apply the same comment to both of them? I am not expert in this area so, apologies if I am making stupid questions.

 

[ellisdj]

The statement is not aimed at any company in particular - its a general statement that parametric equalisation likes whats used in YPAO doesnt work properly i.e. it doesnt categorically improve the sound for playback

By that they mean its altering the sound to compensate for room problems which is harmful above 250htz.

Distances, levels are all fine - they are just preamp levels and delays - processing but much less harmful if you ask me.

Meridian Room Correction uses a knotch filter eq system - not parametric which is supposedly better - I have no experience of that so cannot comment.

If you want to try their reco - set your amp up as normal - depending how you have it setup - I would have speakers small - 80htz crossover and the sub does the rest. Depending on how well you sub is setup will make the difference to the bass you get.

Then go in and level out - i.e. put on 0 all the eq bands that are 250htz and above for the L & R.

I would do this in another memory slot - start from scratch rather than go over your exisitng then you can go back and fourth in testing to hear the difference,

Let me know if you do it, how you get on and if you need anymore help?

 

[rendu]

Thanks, I will give it a try and share any experiencies if I anything is worth sharing. Regards.

 

[ellisdj]

Further reporting on from before.

I have all 6 acoustic panels installed now - 2 on each side wall and 1 front and 1 back.

Every panel I installed I could hear the bass tightening each time. I was going to run some room measurements but didnt in the end too busy testing, I can hear the effect and can guess what the measurement results might look like.

Back to the sound quality - something to pass on.

I am now running my front 3 speakers with no eq - full band phase off and standing wave off.

For music I like the levels MCCAC has set - however in films the bass is too much as its not fully controlled in the real deep stuff so a reduction of 2db gets it in line - I am also thinking of the neighbours

What is something worth noting - I have no real acoustic treatment for my rears - my cousin suggested using mccac in front align mode - so that the rears are eq's to sound like the fronts - that has worked very well, much better than I had hoped.

This has really helped with the rear channel transparency and overall sound blending and imaging front to back

 

[Anonymous]

G'day you all

I also own an LX-82, but my question is actually even more beginner: where do I learn about Audio & Speakers? Would anybody know of any tutorial that enables me to grasp what seems all to easy for you all but is way beyond my leak? I mean, without me googling and clicking for months? Because I have been doing that for the last four hours, only to become completely depressed. Even the 'explanations' I found that are aimed at 'beginners' assume so much implicit knowledge, that all you do is run around / click around in circles ('what does this word mean the author uses but doesn't explain so assumes knowledge for the beginning reader).

I am a complete noob as it comes to audio, and basically, my problem is this: two years ago I bought one of the last Kuro's (KRP-500A). I decided to buy an LX-82 (and an LX-52) to go with it, since the retailer offered a great deal. The Kuro has been used intensively (nice TV

), and so has the LX-52. The LX-82, however, has not been used whatsoever, it has just been standing there for two years, right under the TV, looking all shiny and making me wonder every day 'and what might that machine be capable of'? (This last sentence was meant to make you all laugh ).

The problem being is: the Pioneer manual appears to be a sort of 'point and click' (if you want this setting, then press this setting). But the bigger picture isn't there. All kinds of terms I have no clue about what they mean, so I have no clue what I am 'tweaking' or what I should be tweaking. I mean it like this: there is no reference model in my head, the foundation of audio. To give an example: I see many people all easily discussing the best setting for a cross-over, but I have no clue what a cross-over is in the first place, so nice that the Pioneer manual says 'if you want to change the cross over', then go this menu, but I am lacking the foundation of it all: the 'audio 101'. Another example: standing waves, ok, my stupid brain (I studied economics, so there you go; point proved ) says 'well, I have no clue what is, its probably the brother of the lying wave (again, meant to make a laugh for you ).

Now, like said, it will take me months to google every word, sift through the sites that don't properly explain it, and then, finally, I will probably end with a list of words with explanations. And then I have to connect all that to something coherent (and pray that I don't make errors due to misunderstandings), to arrive at 'the conceptual, high-level, frame work of audio'. And once I've done that, I can dive into the Pioneer manual, try to understand their settings and how to relate that to the conceptual audio framework. And to do this a little bit more efficienty (the alternative is throwing the LX-82 in the garbage can because I can't spend months on this, there are mouths to feed in this family and I am the choosen one to do that ), I am looking for such a 'audio for complete dummies: what the words mean, and how it all relates to eachother'.

To give one more example: I studied economics. For sure I can't tell non-economists about how to monitor the beta of a stock market share if I don't lay the foundation first: what stocks are, how the stock market works, how stocks are valued, how to tend to evolve. And including statistics foundations in this matter too. Only then, after I have explained all that, if I have been a good tutorial, the student is ready to understand what 'beta' means in the stock market, and how to interpret and work with it.

I was hoping someone here would perhaps be so (too!) kind to point me in the right direction. I was thinking, I can't be the first one to ask for a document like this, so it has to exist somewhere. But I can't seem to find it.

I'd be in your debt for helping me out, and I really, really, mean that

Thank you in advance,

Bye,

Dutch

 

[john1000000boy]

G'day you all

I also own an LX-82, but my question is actually even more beginner: where do I learn about Audio & Speakers? Would anybody know of any tutorial that enables me to grasp what seems all to easy for you all but is way beyond my leak? I mean, without me googling and clicking for months? Because I have been doing that for the last four hours, only to become completely depressed. Even the 'explanations' I found that are aimed at 'beginners' assume so much implicit knowledge, that all you do is run around / click around in circles ('what does this word mean the author uses but doesn't explain so assumes knowledge for the beginning reader).

I am a complete noob as it comes to audio, and basically, my problem is this: two years ago I bought one of the last Kuro's (KRP-500A). I decided to buy an LX-82 (and an LX-52) to go with it, since the retailer offered a great deal. The Kuro has been used intensively (nice TV

), and so has the LX-52. The LX-82, however, has not been used whatsoever, it has just been standing there for two years, right under the TV, looking all shiny and making me wonder every day 'and what might that machine be capable of'? (This last sentence was meant to make you all laugh ).

The problem being is: the Pioneer manual appears to be a sort of 'point and click' (if you want this setting, then press this setting). But the bigger picture isn't there. All kinds of terms I have no clue about what they mean, so I have no clue what I am 'tweaking' or what I should be tweaking. I mean it like this: there is no reference model in my head, the foundation of audio. To give an example: I see many people all easily discussing the best setting for a cross-over, but I have no clue what a cross-over is in the first place, so nice that the Pioneer manual says 'if you want to change the cross over', then go this menu, but I am lacking the foundation of it all: the 'audio 101'. Another example: standing waves, ok, my stupid brain (I studied economics, so there you go; point proved ) says 'well, I have no clue what is, its probably the brother of the lying wave (again, meant to make a laugh for you ).

Now, like said, it will take me months to google every word, sift through the sites that don't properly explain it, and then, finally, I will probably end with a list of words with explanations. And then I have to connect all that to something coherent (and pray that I don't make errors due to misunderstandings), to arrive at 'the conceptual, high-level, frame work of audio'. And once I've done that, I can dive into the Pioneer manual, try to understand their settings and how to relate that to the conceptual audio framework. And to do this a little bit more efficienty (the alternative is throwing the LX-82 in the garbage can because I can't spend months on this, there are mouths to feed in this family and I am the choosen one to do that ), I am looking for such a 'audio for complete dummies: what the words mean, and how it all relates to eachother'.

To give one more example: I studied economics. For sure I can't tell non-economists about how to monitor the beta of a stock market share if I don't lay the foundation first: what stocks are, how the stock market works, how stocks are valued, how to tend to evolve. And including statistics foundations in this matter too. Only then, after I have explained all that, if I have been a good tutorial, the student is ready to understand what 'beta' means in the stock market, and how to interpret and work with it.

I was hoping someone here would perhaps be so (too!) kind to point me in the right direction. I was thinking, I can't be the first one to ask for a document like this, so it has to exist somewhere. But I can't seem to find it.

I'd be in your debt for helping me out, and I really, really, mean that

Thank you in advance,

Bye,

Dutch

Hi Dutch and welcome, what speakers are you running?? Speaker size affects the x over frequency. Have a look at this thread, in particular v1c's should give a good starting point.

http://www.whathifi.com/forum/home-cinema/pioneer-help-needed

All the best and let me know how it goes!

John

 

[Anonymous]

Would it be possible to create a better sound using ceiling speakers? Our living area is upstairs and there is plenty of loft space above.

 

[ellisdj]

A quick update - re my experiences with my LX83.

I have bought a seperate power amp and have been using the Pioneer as a Processor.

The results have really impressed me - the sound is still very much tailored by the Pioneer which I am used to and really like and the processing is excellent however with the extra control, weight, scale and timing of a very good power amp the sound is taken up a level definately.

I searched a lot to find info on someone using a LX83 as a processor and couldnt find anything - therefore this is something to bear in mind if you are thinking of upgrading.

The LX83 talents stretch even further - great bit of AV Kit

 

[michael hoy]

A quick update - re my experiences with my LX83.

I have bought a seperate power amp and have been using the Pioneer as a Processor.

The results have really impressed me - the sound is still very much tailored by the Pioneer which I am used to and really like and the processing is excellent however with the extra control, weight, scale and timing of a very good power amp the sound is taken up a level definately.

I searched a lot to find info on someone using a LX83 as a processor and couldnt find anything - therefore this is something to bear in mind if you are thinking of upgrading.

The LX83 talents stretch even further - great bit of AV Kit

What did you buy?