Rotel RSX-1067 owner manual Delay Setup, Contour Setup, Calibration with an SPL meter

RSX-1067Surround Sound Receiver 36

Calibration with an SPL meter:

Calibrating the system with an SPL meter, rather than by ear, provides more precise results and improves the system’s performance significantly. Inexpensive SPL meters are widely available and the procedure is quick and easy.

Both Dolby and DTS specify a standard cali- bration level for all theaters to ensure that soundtracks can be played at the volume level intended by the director of the film. This ref- erence level should result in spoken dialog played at a realistic level for normal speech with the loudest peaks in any single channel at about 105dB. The RSX-1067’s test tones are generated at a precise level (-30dBFs) relative to the loudest possible digitally recorded sound. At the Dolby or DTS reference level, these test tones should produce a 75dB read- ing on an SPL meter.

Set the meter to its 70dB dial setting with SLOW response and C-weighting, held away from your body at your listening position (mount- ing 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 RSX-1067 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 com- pensate, 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. Exag- gerated bass effects come at the expense of proper blending with the main speakers and place stress on the subwoofer and its ampli- fier. If you can localize bass from the sub- woofer, the subwoofer level may be too high. Music can be useful for fine-tuning the sub- woofer level as excessive bass is readily ap- parent. The proper setting will generally work well for music and movie soundtracks.

Remember the setting of the master volume con- trol used during this calibration. To play a Dolby Digital or DTS soundtrack at the reference vol- ume 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. Regard- less of your listening levels, using an SPL meter to calibrate equal levels for all speakers in the system is strongly recommended.

Delay Setup

DELAY SETUP

LEFT: 12ft 3.6m

CENTER: 11ft 3.3m

RIGHT: 11ft 3.3m

R SURROUND: 6ft 1.8m

R CTR BACK: 8ft 2.4m

L CTR BACK: 9ft 2.7m

L SURROUND: 5ft 1.5m

SUBWOOFER: 5ft 1.5m

MAIN MENU

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.

The RSX-1067 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 pro- vides a range of settings up to 99 feet (30 meters) in 1 foot (0.3 m) 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 setting. 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

CONTOUR SETUP

SPEAKER:Front

DEFEAT:On

HF CONTOUR:+5

LF CONTOUR: 0

MAIN MENU

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/cen-

ter back/all): Select which speaker or group of speakers to adjust. Selecting ALL permits 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 fre- quency 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 fre- quency 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 accli- mating to the sound of the system with the contour adjustments defeated and then mak- ing adjustments, if necessary, to address spe- cific speaker response issues or personal taste.

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