I've just bought a 5.1 speaker system to use with my Hercules Digimax 7.1 sound card. All is well except the rear surround speakers and the centre speaker are very quiet. I've tried turning them up with the control panel supplied with the speakers but they are still quiet. Should they give out the same volume as the front two speakers? Please help a NOOB. Thanks Clink
It depends on what you listening to. the front ones should be the loudest. As the others are to offer effect of motion, the back ones you should rarely hear overpowering the front, unless a car is driving in the background or you listen to a DVD audio or SACD. What your hearing might be normal, what is the volume difference like? Try watching a movie with lots of car chaces, they usually uses rear effect for cars driving.
Thanks for the reply. When watching Saving Private Ryan you can hear bullets whizzing about all over the room, which is great. But, the actual dialogue of the film is very quiet. I think this comes from the centre speaker. I would say the two front speakers are twice as loud as the other three. Clink
Ya that is not really normal. the Centre speaker is were most of the dialogue comes from. You may want to look at the movie settings to see what type of audio you have play the movie. You may be haveing some issues with the type of Dolby setting.
This happens, your surround or centre are turned up in volume but still too quiet. Like Prisoner says, the surround should be subtle and only during effects (most have their surround really too loud, hence the need for test tones). But the centre is arguably the busiest speaker! Balance is the key: seems you need to turn your front L&R speakers [bold]down[/bold] Regards
Thanks for the help. I found a setting in the software for the soundcard to turn down the volume on the speakers (can't do it on the control box). Clink
for proper setup you need to calibrate the spl levels of all your speakers to 85db. Get a calibration disc like Avia or Digital Video Essentials and a Radio Shack SPL metre and using the test tones to go through each speakers and calibrate your volume output of each channel so that the spl metre (set to c weighting) shows 85db (or as close as possible)
