Delay Setup, Contour Setup | Rotel RSX-1550 specification

English

Set the meter to its 70dB dial setting with SLOW response and C- weighting, held away from your body at your listening position (mounting the SPL meter on a camera tripod makes this easier). You can point the SPL meter at each speaker as it is being measured; however, positioning the meter in a ﬁxed position pointing at the ceiling is easier and probably produces more consistent results.

Increase the master volume control on the receiver until the meter reads 75dB (+5dB on the meter scale) when playing the test tone through one of the front speakers. Then, use the individual channel adjustments on the TEST TONE menu to adjust each of the individual speakers, including the subwoofer, to the same 75dB on the SPL meter.

Note: Due to meter weighting curves and room effects, the actual level of the subwoofer may be slightly higher than you measure. To compensate, Dolby suggests setting the subwoofer several dB lower when calibrating with an SPL meter (i.e. set the subwoofer to read 72dB on the meter instead of 75dB). Ultimately, the proper subwoofer level must be determined by personal taste and some listeners prefer to set it above 75dB for ﬁlm soundtracks. Exaggerated bass effects come at the expense of proper blending with the main speakers and place stress on the subwoofer and its ampliﬁer. If you can localize bass from the subwoofer, the subwoofer level may be too high. Music can be useful for ﬁne- tuning the subwoofer level as excessive bass is readily apparent. The proper setting will generally work well for music and movie soundtracks.

Remember the setting of the master volume control used during this calibration. To play a Dolby Digital or DTS soundtrack at the reference volume level, simply return to that volume setting. Note that most home theater listeners ﬁnd this setting to be excessively loud. Let your own ears be the judge for deciding how loud to playback movie soundtracks and adjust the master volume control accordingly. Regardless of your listening levels, using an SPL meter to calibrate equal levels for all speakers in the system is recommended.

Delay Setup

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The DELAY SETUP menu, which is reached from the MAIN menu, allows you to set the delay for individual speakers. This ensures that the sound from each speaker arrives simultaneously at the listening position, even when the speakers are not all placed at equal distances from the listener. Increase the delay to speakers located closer to the seating area and decrease the delay to speakers located farther from the seating area.

This Rotel receiver makes setting the delay time for each speaker very easy. Simply measure the distance (in feet or meters) from your seating position to each speaker in your system. Set the measured distance in the line for each speaker. The menu provides a line for each speaker conﬁgured in your system and gives a range of settings up to 99 feet (30

meters) in 1 foot (0.3m) increments with each increment equivalent to an additional delay of 1ms.

To change a setting, place the highlight on the desired line using the UP/DOWN buttons and use the +/– buttons to increase or decrease the delay. To return to the MAIN menu, press the ENTER button. Press the MENU/OSD button on the remote to cancel the display and return to normal operation.

Contour Setup

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The CONTOUR SETUP menu allows digital adjustment of the bass and treble response of each group of speakers in the system. For example, if your center channel speaker sounds too bright, you could roll off the extreme high frequencies.

SPEAKER (front/center/surround/center back/all): Select which speaker or group of speakers to adjust. Selecting ALL allows adjustment of the entire system as a whole.

DEFEAT (on/off): Selecting the ON setting defeats the contour adjustment, bypassing the contour processing entirely for that speaker or group of speakers.

HF CONTOUR: Adjusts the extreme high frequency slope over a range of -6dB (MIN) to +6dB (MAX). Negative number settings reduce the high frequency output; positive number settings increase it.

LF CONTOUR: Adjusts the extreme low frequency slope over a range of -6dB (MIN) to +6dB (MAX). Negative number settings reduce the low frequency output; positive number settings increase it.

The contour adjustments are designed to work at the frequency extremes and be relatively subtle so that they do not have a negative impact on midrange sounds. We recommend acclimating to the sound of the system with the contour adjustments defeated and then making adjustments, if necessary, to address speciﬁc speaker response issues or personal taste.

Note: You can also make temporary contour adjustments using the TONE and UP/DOWN buttons on the remote. See the Contour/Tone Settings section of this manual for details.

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