Poor 2 ch from a HT setup

[Rick T]

Spent some time checking equipment calibrations and making minor adjustments to positioning of speakers. I still have to check the sound level via meter.
Sent my wife and daughter on a long errand Wed (here's my bank card.. get what you need!) so I spent the afternoon with Natalie Cole and Diana Krall.... I could almost catch a wif of those luckies and jack daniels. Still not hitting the mark, but those are a pair of lovely voices.
I suspect I've got to try some furniture rearrangement and then if necessary consider the sound panels or different window treatments. Guess that means sending 'them' on another errand.....
Any suggestions for excellent music to test my system for imaging and sound stage?
......
Jeff, from reading posts here I know of SVS brand reputation but have neither seen nor heard them. Richmond Hill is only @ 1/2 hour away for me. Thanks for drawing them to my attention. I live 5 min from Lenbrook Industries http://www.lenbrook.com/products_2005.htm who are the suppliers for PSB, NAD, Athena and a bunch more quality products. My son has a pretty nice setup but his NAD receiver went flakey and seemed unfixable after 5 visits to repair shop. Service Manager at Lenbrook had his techs go over it completely.. found the problem and made the repair at no charge .. same day! Restored our faith in customer service. His setup is NAD 760, Paradigm Ref 80's, 20's, CC, Marantz CD, Sony Bravia 1080P. He has a myriad of music and video servers connected to his Apple computer system that download, store and stream a/v. Tried to swap him for my setup but no dice! Aren't kids great.

[PaulyT]

Originally Posted by Rick T

Any suggestions for excellent music to test my system for imaging and sound stage?

IMHO you can't beat classical music for this, a nice big orchestra with a lot of instrument solos, like Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, or large scale choral work like Verdi's Requiem. These really test the limits of a system - speakers or headphones - to see how well you can place the instruments left/right and even front/back (even in a stereo recording, not talking about surround), and get the sense of being in a big orchestra hall.

[topper]

If you have rear-ported floor speakers up front (as I do), and are limited as to how
far you're able to set them out from the wall (as I am), you might consider a bass
absorption panel behind each of them.
I use them, and they made a definite improvement.

I'd also continue to experiment with with toe in, etc. Moving the speaker only a few
inches can make real difference.


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[weister42]

Do you have any sort of "5 channel stereo" or surround stereo mix mode? I find that a HT seems to be more "lively" when ProLogic II is on and in music mode than just plain stereo with just the front left and right speakers playing.